Vampires? But, why? From Eighteenth-Century Yorkshire to Vampires in Modern-day Los Angeles, My Journey

 “But you’re a historical romance author… what are you doing writing about vampires?”

It’s a question I’ve been asked more than once. And indeed, what am I doing writing about vampires?

My answer, I think, surprises people. I actually wrote the vampire novel, Moon Flower: Vampires of Los Angeles, first. It was my very first attempt writing a 100,000-word piece. I was a graduate student at UCLA, and, in my fourth year, I decided I wanted to write a novel. I had just sat for my written exams in the Spring, and while I was doing night after night all-nighters preparing for them, I would take breaks and allow myself to watch an episode of an old TV show called Moonlight. No, I am not talking about the Bruce Willis (add name) hit show Moonlighting. I’m talking about the Alex O’loughlan and Sophie Turner show about a vampire private investigator who falls in love with a human journalist that he saved when she was a child.

The writing, even at three in the morning, was dismal; but still, I was hooked. It was set in Los Angeles, and I loved that. It also had a very hip, vintage feel, and I loved that too. So I decided to write a book about vampires, set in Los Angeles, with the same hip, vintage feel. And while my book does contain a mystery and a human love interest, there are no private investigators—just an Australian opal carver who finds herself mixed up in a situation that she simply cannot leave alone.

What attracted me most about writing about vampires in Los Angeles was the lack of research that it would acquire. I was up to my eyeballs in research for my orals, and I didn’t have the time to track down what kind of bathtub people used in the eighteenth century (something that I eventually would have to research for my historical novel, The Black Unicorn, which I wrote later when I was on a leave of absence from school). My vampires were my vampires. I could make them any way I chose. And, in some ways, they were a logical subject for me to write about. Vampires are immortal, and so are by their very nature historical beings. Sonia, my protagonist, is from nineteenth-century Australia. Adrienne, one of the older vampires she has contact with, is from Dark Age Ireland. I have a Viking vampire. I have a thousand-year-old Persian couple. I have a 500-year-old English vampire, a thousand-year-old Armenian vampire, and the list goes on. And with each vamp I write about, naturally I have to go into their history a little bit, so I’m not doing what I just did: throwing out names, dates, and places with no context. If you want the context, read my book!

Another way I flex my historical muscles in my vampire book is to have Sonia dream of her human lifetime. Now this was fun, and did require some research. I really didn’t know anything at all about colonial Australia, and I certainly didn’t know anything about aboriginal Australia. But that changed  with a few carefully chosen books, namely The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia’s Founding by Robert Hughes, and Pemulwuy: The Rainbow Warrior by Eric Wilmot. And, having never been to Australia, I also stocked up on travel guides with photographs and maps to show me the terrain.

But other than the research I did for the dream sequences, I was able to write Moonflower: Vampires of Los Angeles largely off the top of my head. And my goal was simple: to deliver where the television series Moonlight fell short, at least for me. I wanted mystery and romance, and I also wanted the vintage feel of some of Los Angeles’s historical locations. I situated my vampires in Hollywood, mainly because of two reasons: 1. While there are other great locales in Los Angeles, Hollywood is by far the place imbued with the most romance and allure. When people move cross country to find their fame and fortune in Los Angeles, they are not moving to Boyle Heights. 2. UCLA campus is located in Westwood, on the West Side. Hollywood is close. It's where things happen. True, things happen in downtown as well, but I decided to leave that for the sequels.

And so, that’s how this author of historical romance with four degrees in history came to write a vampire book. Vampires are historical. And I can have a great deal of fun with my historical vampires, because I can (and do) draw them from all over. I am not limited to a single locale or culture. One of my favorite vampires to write, and a recurring character in the series, is a medieval Russian vampire named Vladimir. I have fun with these books (I can use plural because I’m currently writing the sequel) and I don’t have to figure out how people brushed their teeth in the eighteenth century. Or how they went to the bathroom on coach journeys from London to York—where did they stop? Did people just hold it, and if they did, how?  Did they go in little containers in the coach? See? So many questions to sort through. Give me vampires set in modern day Los Angeles any day.