My current work in progress is a
vampire tale. Considering that I write mysteries and other things, this is
something out of the ordinary though not out of my area of interest. I’ve
written a vampire story or two but haven’t tackled a novel length piece until
now. It’s given me the opportunity to stretch my mind between the books of the
Marco Fontana series, a gay P.I. series set in Philadelphia (if you haven’t
gotten to know this burg, it’s a great place to visit or even put down some
roots). It’s not as far afield for me as some might think. I’ve always been a
vampire enthusiast.
Like a lot of people I arrived at
my interest in vampires early on. For me it wasn’t the horror elements of that
genre that appealed to me. I’ve never been a big fan of horror, which I suppose
is odd if one likes vampires. But frightening myself was never a big preoccupation
of mine. There were lots of other pieces of the undead puzzle which captivated
me. For one, I glommed onto the immortality thing, the powerful nature of the
creature, the ability to plant suggestions that get attention and the other advantages
of being undead. But at the top of my list of favorite vampire traits is
immortality. Vampires can live forever (well, as long as they don’t get
staked). Living forever would give a person a great chance to indulge one of my
other extreme interests: history. What could be better?
Then there are all those other powers
(who doesn’t want to be able to dissolve into mist and sneak around places and
under doors?) and that whole sexy side of vampire life, all those sensuous moments
that just seem to fall into a vampire’s… um… lap.
Is there a kid who could resist the
temptations of immortality, power, money, and the rest? Maybe there are a few.
And maybe if I’d actually been given the chance to go down that undead path,
who knows how I’d have responded? But no one offered to bite my neck back then
or since. I’m still open to the idea.
My fascination with vampires
continued well after my pre-adolescent years. I continued reading novels and
academic studies of the literature and the phenomenon. All the reading
confirmed what I felt in the first place: It wasn’t the blood and the horror of
undead life that held my attention. It was the “otherness” of vampires that
spoke to me.
The marginality of the creature is
a quality lots of people can identify with. Being an outsider among humans, the
vampire speaks to anyone who finds himself or herself on the margins of
society. Gays, other minorities, and young adults all share that feeling of not
belonging, of having to exist on the margins.
The sheer power of the vampire
attracts anyone who feels powerless or marginal and offers them a way to
overcome those feelings.
You can scan down the list of
vampire traits and all of them have a special attraction, for one reason or
another, to those who follow their exploits.
When I became the head librarian at
an exclusive private school, I paid attention to the reading habits of the students.
And, no surprise, vampire novels were among the faster moving leisure reading
books. This led me to wonder about the possible connection between vampire
literature and adolescent development. I wondered if vampire literature
connected in some visceral way with the developmental stages of a young adult.
I see the link between the YA reader
and vampire literature as one key to understanding the world of the adolescent.
Knowing the literature and the reasons it is in tune with young adult thought
and development is important to providing services which adolescents will see as
valuable and meaningful. And to developing readers.
For those of us who write, this kind
of research provides some insight into what readers like and why.
Not that we should write to spec.
But just as it is valuable to know about story structure, about the steps of
the hero’s journey in storytelling, and about a zillion other things with
regard to craft, it’s equally important to know what appeals to readers. Not so
that we can manipulate but so that perhaps we can give our work more depth and
make it more satisfying.
It’s a good day when a researcher
can combine subject matter he’s fascinated with and a project that can be
academically useful and even meaningful. The nexus between the elements of the
vampire’s nature and the stages of a young adult’s development was one such
project for me.
I began reading and rereading
vampire novels. Both those written especially for a YA audience and those that
young adults enjoyed but were not classified as YA. I also had to revisit all
the young adult development literature.
I approached the research I did with
an academic purpose: to get some scholarly and semi-scholarly papers and
articles written. At the time, I wasn’t thinking about producing a vampire
novel. Well, okay, it was simmering on a back burner.
Initially, I did get the academic
benefit from my research. I presented papers at conferences (one of which was
in Worcester, England and is something I won’t soon forget). I also had several
papers and articles published in journals and magazines geared to the
librarian.
After I’d done what I could with the
subject academically, I took a break from the study of vampires and went back
to enjoying the literature for its own sake.
But you never really stop thinking
about things and even while enjoying the books and TV shows and movies, I kept wondering
about the power of the vampire to connect with people.
I eventually came to understand that
vampires appeal to more than just young adults. The vampire figure may
represent all the problems of the young adult reader but it also represents
some of the problems that stick with us long after our YA years.
The adolescent is in a period of
awakening to sexual feelings and to the sense that they can both control
themselves and sometimes be out of control, awakening to a world in which they
feel they no longer really fit. Because of these feelings, the adolescent finds
in the vampire an almost perfect fantasy figure with which to identify. The
vampire is suave and sexy, with immense strength which can be used both for
aggressive impulses, for hunting, for control of others, but also for
self-control. And, the vampire is an outsider just because of who he or she is.
But adolescents are not the only
ones who identify so well with these creatures of the night. Which explains why
there are so many readers of vampire literature who keep the genre wildly
popular.
What I didn’t realize while doing
the academic work, was that the information I learned would stick with me and
help form some of my notions about vampires and how the live their undead lives
as well as help inform my writing.
As I’m finding with my current work
in progress, the vampire figure has a hypnotic and transformative power over
the writer as well as it’s victims and our readers. Many writers try their hand
at a vampire novel. They may start out to write one kind of novel but something
strange happens: their work is transformed by the presence of the vampire in it
– particularly if they take the creature seriously. This is so because the
vampire powerfully represents humanity’s interior issues – the struggle with
self, differentness, marginality, identity, and more.
The story I began to create started
out as one simple thing, then suddenly became something completely different.
The vampire on the pages of my manuscript became something larger than I’d
originally intended.
I’m glad that happened and happy
that it is still evolving as I work, because it’s made for something a lot more
fun and interesting. Something I can get my fangs… err… my teeth into.
Joseph R.G. DeMarco
BIO:
Joseph R.G. DeMarco was born and raised in Philadelphia. His
Marco Fontana mystery series includes:
Murder on Camac (
www.MurderOnCamac.com),
A Body on
Pine (
www.ABodyOnPine.com), and
Crimes
on Latimer (
www.CrimesOnLatimer.com),
and more waiting to be birthed. He has also edited a Sherlock Holmes
collection,
A Study in Lavender: Queering Sherlock Holmes. He is also
Publisher/Editor of Mysterical-E (
www.mystericale.com)
and prior to that was editor of The Weekly Gayzette, NGL Magazine, Il Don
Gennaro, and Kater Street. He has also been a columnist for
The Advocate,
In Touch, and
Gaysweek (NY). His article, “Gay Racism”, which
first appeared in PGN, won the Best Feature writing award from the Gay Press
Association and is anthologized in
We Are Everywhere,
BlackMen
WhiteMen, and
Men’s Lives.
His stories and essays have been published in
the Arsenal Pulp Press “Quickies” series,
Men Seeking Men,
Charmed
Lives,
Gay Life,
Hey Paisan!,
Paws and Reflect,
Heat
of the Moment,
The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide,
The
International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family,
The Encyclopedia of
Men and Masculinities, The journal of homosexuality, and others. His plays
have been produced in Philadelphia, NY, and elsewhere. Though mystery is among
his first loves, he also has an abiding interest in alternate history,
vampires, werewolves, science fiction, the supernatural, mythology, and more.
You can learn more at
www.josephdemarco.com
