Heart of Darkness

My villainous vampire has a heart of darkness. He is a beautiful yet tortured soul who opts for one more try at love before doing himself and everyone else around him in. His immortality has become too much to bear and that which made him happy, now disgusts him.

Nothing new you say? True, mortals and immortals alike see a safe haven in relationships. Finding redemption through love is a miraculous feeling, and most of my vampires could use a little of that in their lonely lives. What is the alternative for my bloodsuckers? Self-destruction or do they take yet another chance on love to give them a reason for existing, a chance to feel loved and not like a monster.

Love is the great transformer, no matter how long you have to live.

Those Forks in the Road

I believe it was Robert Frost who wrote a famous poem about a fork in the road. When we stand at a crossroads in our writing, how does one know which way to go? I turn to my higher self and my muse for guidance. Sometimes I will write an entire chapter and then let it sit for days. If the feeling I got initially when I wrote it is still there, then I go with it. If not, I may scrap it all together.

In talking to a friend about creativity, she said creativity is messy, unorganized and random. I have to agree with her. Some of my best writing comes when I lay down a chapter then edit it days later. It's like my initial writing is the framework for the chapter and I fill in lots of details later. I hear my characters voices, see their faces and body movements. They make love, war and just like me, they are confused at times. Sometimes they make bad decisions, or misjudge, just like me. Sometimes it costs them.

Just because most of my characters happen to be vampires does not mean they are perfect. Let me tell you, having immortality, beauty and superhuman strength does not necessarily make one upstanding, righteous or moral. Having that kind of power tends to corupt, just because it can and that is human nature. We humans make decisions based on our emotions...and logic, but our emotions play such a large part in our decisions. The same is true for vampires. They agonize too and the past has reprocussions for them as well.

There is a great line in the movie The Darleeing Limited. ''The past happens but it's over isn't it? Not for us."

It is that way for both humans and vampires. The actions of the past face us at every turn as we navigate our lives in the present. For most of us, the navigation takes about 80 years. For my vampire friends, it could be hundreds of years. Plenty of time to create both good and bad karma.