Tag Archives: personal

Tales from my wedding

01 Monday Sep 2014

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WARNING – it’s probably best to avoid this post if a)you have absolutely no interest in my personal life and/or b)weddings leave you cold. But I’d assume that anyone who reads this blog ormy books has some taste for romance and some interest in pretty pictures of Oxford and people in black tie.

You may have read the section of my bio that states, “Georgiana lives in London with her fiance.” You may have noticed the nauseatingly sweet dedication at the front of Oxford Blood, “To F, the man of my overheated teenage dreams.”  If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you might remember the post from December 2012 in which I excitedly announced my engagement. If you’re a newcomer, you might have been introduced to the blog and the series via my recent, wedding-themed giveaway. In short, you may have noticed that for quite a while now, there’s been a wedding on the horizon. 

Well, it’s on the horizon no longer. So, in what I like to think looks remarkably like stills from an Oxford Blood movie, here are  pictures from my amazing wedding on August 16th at Magdalen College, Oxford. 

The bride and groom

 

with assorted bridesmaids and ushers

My parents

My parents

 

With some friends

With some friends

 

Aggressively cute cake

Aggressively cute cake

Yorkshire roses for the bridesmaid

Yorkshire roses for the bridesmaid

Overly long train

Overly long train

And then in the evening, we changed and we danced

And then in the evening, we changed…

...and we danced...

…and we danced…

And everyone was so beautifully dressed up

And everyone was so beautifully dressed up

Finally, I leave you all with one amusing book and wedding related fact. The service was conducted by a Bishop who is my now-husband’s Godfather. Bizarrely, he’s read my books – well, one and two anyway. Even more bizarrely (and wonderfully), he referenced them in his sermon, explaining that he hadn’t yet read Ivory Terrors, but could only hope that the heroine ended up with the character who was clearly based on the groom. Cue slightly horrified looks from those members of the congregation who have finished the series, and a gentle shake of the head from the long-suffering man himself!

Anyway, it was a great day, and I had a lovely honeymoon in Bali afterwards. I’ve got lots of reviews to post over the next few days thanks to all my holiday reading, and after such a relaxing time I’m feeling invigorated and ready to make a start on my next writing project. Oh, and you might have noticed that in honour of my Oxford wedding, Oxford Blood was free for a few days. Thanks to everyone who downloaded it and who bought one or both of the sequels afterwards. Just to perfect an already amazing month, August 2014 has been pretty much my most successful ever month for book sales – and all with me not going anywhere near a computer for nearly three weeks!

Midsummer Murders (and parties, and rituals)

21 Friday Jun 2013

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Today is the 21st June, Midsummer’s Eve. In the world of the Cavaliers, it’s the most important event in the calendar – the night of the Summer Party.

I’ve always had a bit of a fascination with Midsummer (and indeed Midwinter). I think I’ve mentioned on here before that I love the changing seasons and I like celebrating all of the year’s events properly. In this case, there’s something that catches my imagination about it being the longest day of the year. Even though summer is only really just getting going, it feels like the climax of something. I think it helps that it’s my birthday two days before so I’m always in a bit of a celebratory mood. Sadly, it’s not a big event in modern Britain, but it is something that seems to have been celebrated in a variety of cultures for whom the changing seasons were important.

My first year at Oxford, my college held their Commemoration Ball on Midsummer’s Eve and made a big deal of the fact. It was the last night of the academic year and some the combination felt perfect. For me, there was no better time for my imaginary society to have the climax of their year of monitoring and selecting students.

And of course, the bittersweet thing about Midsummer (for most humans at least) is that while it may be the longest day of the year, that means it’s all downhill from here in terms of the nights starting to get longer. But for a vampire, of course, what better thing to celebrate than the fact that there’ll soon be less of those pesky hours of sun light and that they’ll be able to hunt and seduce their prey from early evening?

In my books, the Summer Party has taken place every 21st June for centuries. It’s something of a recurring theme in the novels, with Oxford Blood opening with one year’s party and closing with another’s. Screaming Spires climaxes with a third party, and readers also get to see a party from the eighties in one of Adelaide’s flashbacks.

***

For anyone unfamiliar with my novels, the Cavaliers are a society of aristocratic vampires at Oxford University. There are two important points to the Summer Party – firstly, to have a wild and wonderful party and secondly, to turn the year’s five most promising students into vampires.

The structure of the party has remained largely unchanged for hundreds of years. All of the current Society attend, along with the ten candidates for membership. Each of them are allowed to bring a guest, albeit with a bit of room for vetting and vetoing by the Senior Members.

Human attendees are picked up by an unordered taxi driven by a thoroughly mesmerised driver and taken to an unknown location in a clearing in the Oxfordshire Forests. The clearing is magical, lit by torches and fairylights. Music drifts out from unseen torches, leaving most people unable to resist frenzied dancing. The champagne flows freely, along with all kinds harder substances for those so inclined. All of the guests are beautiful, and all of them have made a special effort for this most prestigious of occasions. After a few drinks, some couples can’t resist the privacy of the woods. There are however two things  that might make an observant guest nervous. Firstly, where are the actual members? Shouldn’t they be enjoying their own party? Secondly, why is there a huge scaffold in one area of the clearing?

torches cropped

The moment  that the sun goes down, these questions are answered. The torches extinguish themselves, and when they are relit, the Cavaliers are standing on the scaffold, almost as if they’ve appeared out of thin air. Of course, they want a few glasses of champagne and a taste of the other delights of the party for themselves, but before long, it’s time for business.

Suddenly, a man appears, as he has every party since the event began. He seems to be about forty, which ought to make him stand out like a sore thumb at this gathering of bright young things, but he is sufficiently attractive that he blends in perfectly. This is Augustine, the leader of the Cavaliers, and probably the oldest vampire currently in existence.

There is a speech from one of that year’s senior members. Its words are timeless, almost with the status of a sacrament, but inevitably, each speaker will put his own spin on it, imbuing it with more gravity or humour or terror, depending on their personal tastes.

And then the ten potential candidates are summoned onto the scaffolding. The names of the five who have been selected for the ultimate honour of Cavaliers membership are called, and they are each invited to call their chosen guests to them.

At this point in proceedings, most of the guests find themselves feeling a little confused, but at the same time utterly placid and happy to go along with whatever is going to happen. Anyone trying to rationalise it would suspect they’d over-indulged, but most aren’t thinking that consciously.

And then suddenly, at a signal from Augustine, one of the existing members bites down on each of the potential members. They drink their blood and force-feed them their own, repeating the cycle a few times until the inductees finally collapse, seemingly dead. Those who were not selected for membership are staked to the ground, those who were are gently revived.

The new members are confused and disorientated, but the old members get them a celebratory drink, then line them up opposite their guests, promptly bite into their necks then offer them to the new recruits to drain of all blood.

This sacrifice is necessary to complete the transformation. Most new inductees don’t understand what’s going on, but some instinct compels them to drink the blood anyway, going against all their feelings of repulsion. Those who resist are forced by the existing members, and most thank them for it once it’s all over.

Once the girls are dead and the new members have become fully-fledged vampires, it’s back on with the party. The cover-ups and the plans to get the new Cavaliers into positions of power will be arranged tomorrow, but now it’s time for fun.

***

Most of the instances of the Summer Party in the books are far too spoilerific to be presented to new readers, but to celebrate the lengthening of the nights, here’s the opening of Book One (Stephanie’s Summer Party) and a flashback from later in Oxford Blood (Adelaide’s rather more successful Summer Party)

Adelaide’s summer party

Prologue

Boat Race Day

31 Sunday Mar 2013

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boat race

Hurrah, it’s one of my favourite days of the year: Boat Race Day. I’m reliably informed that it’s also Easter Sunday, but really, priorities people.

In my books and, occasionally, on this blog, I write about all sorts of Oxford traditions, but there’s nothing as high-profile and popular as the annual Varsity Boat Race against Cambridge.

An awful lot of Oxford’s traditions seem to be deliberately complex and odd, almost as if half the point is to confuse outsiders: Merton students running backwards around their quad on the day the clock changes, ultra-prestigious professors at All Souls hunting the ghost of a duck, or the almost pagan-seeming celebration of May Morning at my own old college of Lilith Magdalen. Not to mention the fact that said college is pronounced Maudlin. Now that one I really do think is purely for the purposes of making tourists look stupid.

Even the normal term-time boats race between colleges are pretty complicated if you’re not used to them, based as they are around several boats setting off at once and trying to bump the ones in front of them.

The Varsity Boat Race however is entirely simple. In fact I’d say it’s one of the most straightforward sporting events going. The participants are always the same – one boat of eight men and a cox from Oxford and one from Cambridge. They row along a stretch of the Thames and the first one past the finishing line wins. There’s no offside rule or complicated scoring system to worry about here.

Perhaps because of this, pretty much everyone in Britain seems to at least vaguely like the Boat Race. In some countries, university sport is really popular. In the UK, that isn’t the case and the Boat Race is pretty much the only university sporting event that gets mainstream news and television coverage. And if you go down to the river, you always find the sort of crowds you’d usually only associate with a major national occasion. I think some of the bars near there must be kept afloat almost entirely from their takings on this one day.

The really weird/fun thing is that in my experience, most people with no connection at all to either university seem to have a team they nominally support. I liked the Boat Race long before I ever seriously thought about applying to Oxbridge, and to my eternal shame, when I was very young I randomly supported Cambridge. I think I liked their colours better or something.

There’s lots to admire about the Boat Race. It’s one of the few genuinely big ticket amateur sporting events left. Although in practice both teams nowadays often contain a good few people who row for their country and are doing slightly suspect post-grad degrees, in theory I love the idea of normal students training so incredibly hard for their moment of glory, and you still always get a few rowers who genuinely fit that mould. Looking at this year’s Oxford squad, one is a doctor and one is a vicar – in what other sporting event would that happen?

The other great thing is just how physically demanding it is. With the possible exception of those really long distance cycling races, I think it probably requires some of the highest fitness levels of any sport. They row for 4.2 miles at top speed.

Now, in my first term at Oxford, for some reason best known to myself, I thought it would be fun to give rowing a go. I’m 5’2”, 8 stone and have all my life been reliably rubbish at any sport I’ve attempted. However, I spent most of that term in a bit of a frenzy, wanting to do Oxford properly, so taking up rowing, a sport predominantly based around being very strong and very fit, seemed eminently sensible because IT’S WHAT PEOPLE AT OXFORD DO.rowing

 

Although I immediately gave it up once that term was over, it actually didn’t go so badly. In fact (and I hasten to add that this was in no way thanks to me), my college’s women’s boat actually won the term’s competition. The point of this story though is that the race I did was over a course about 750 metres long. And afterwards I was absolutely physically exhausted. I literally cannot imagine how tiring rowing for 4.2 miles must be. It actually makes me feel slightly sick when I think about it too hard! So my respect for the people who are fit enough to do this is phenomenally high.

And speaking of being fit, every year at least some of the crew are just gorgeous. And usually the really attractive ones tend to be really quite posh too, which needless to say is a combination I like. Here are this year’s squads – http://theboatrace.org/men/squad-list I think I have to treasonously conclude that Cambridge’s Ed Bosson is winning my “hot posh rower award” this year, but he faces some stiff competition. (See update note at the bottom of the page)

Despite all this, when it comes down to it, what I really love is the tribalism. I want Oxford to win to an extent that borders on the irrational. And that’s just the way I like my sport. As a rule, I love sport, but generally only if I have some personal interest in the outcome. Growing up in Sheffield, everyone was into football. You supported either Sheffield Wednesday or Sheffield United, and you did it wholeheartedly. I was (and indeed still am)  firmly in the former camp, because supporting Wednesday was what my family did, going back several generations. On Steel City Derby Days (when the two teams play each other) the city is like a ghost town. Everyone was watching, at the stadium, in a pub or at home on TV. There is no logical reason to love one group of footballers based in your home town and hate another group of them based in the same place, but there’s something oddly satisfying about doing so. It creates a real sense of belonging. Occasionally, in London, in the middle of a busy street or train, I’ve spotted someone in a Wednesday shirt and I’ve just had to go over and speak to them.

hendersons_wednesday

In Sheffield, even condiments come in rival team packaging

In Sheffield, even condiments come in rival team packaging

The Boat Race gives me a similar feeling and arguably with slightly more reason. I went to Oxford. Oxford made me the person I am today. I owe it my job, my fiancé  an awful lot of my friends, some of my hobbies and interests, and I suppose, my books (I’m not convinced I could have made “UCL Blood” work). So watching those boats speeding down the river, I really feel like the result personally matters for me.

Anyway, the race is on the BBC at 4.30 (for foreign viewing, see here:http://theboatrace.org/men/tv-and-radio). Whether or not you have any connection with Oxford, Cambridge or any other university, I strongly suggest that you pick a side, get yourself a glass of Pimm’s and settle down to watch the best sporting event in the world.

Oh and Happy Easter too.

UPDATE – It’s just been pointed out to me that Ed Bosson isn’t actually rowing today. So I can, thank goodness, now give the hot posh rower award to an Oxford rower instead – for the second year in a row, I’m voting Constantine Louloudis http://theboatrace.org/men/compare-blue-boat/2013/7

Boris Johnson and the Cavaliers

25 Monday Mar 2013

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If you’ve ever read Oxford Blood and wondered what an Oxford Union debate looks like, what a dining society is (when it doesn’t involve vampires) or just what sort of accent the Cavaliers speak in, watch the first half of this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01rlx9l/Boris_Johnson_The_Irresistible_Rise/

I don’t watch much TV, but tonight,  I watched this documentary in a giggly blur. There are certainly no politicians I like more than Boris Johnson. There are very few people I admire more, full stop.  If you’re interested in British politics, the whole thing is worth devouring. If not, you should still watch the first bit and revel in the wonderful poshness of it all. I think anyone would understand my novels a little more after this. 

Incidentally, when I was on the committee of the Union, I met Boris. I think our entire conversation consisted of him asking me where the bar was, but I still spent the next few days being too excited to do anything constructive. 

Why I Love Vampire Novels so much – parts six and seven – metaphors and sex

24 Thursday Jan 2013

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Finally, it’s the last day of my “Why I like vampire novels” mini-series. We’ve had history, folklore, romance, perfect characters and awful characters. And to finish, here is one fairly obscure one – a metaphor for everything – and what is for many people, probably the most obvious reason – the erotic power. 

Part Six – A Metaphor for Everything

Most commonly, vampirism tends to be interpreted as a metaphor for sex. All those penetrating fangs and fallen women tell their own story. Beyond that though, they seem to have been as a metaphor for all sorts of things: foreign invasion’ AIDS, the transition from child to teenager or teenager to adult , homosexuality, race. As long as the story doesn’t hit the reader over the head with this connection, I think this can add a real frisson to a novel.

In The Cavaliers, vampirism is fundamentally all about class. You could basically replace every reference to “vampire” with “rich, upper class male.” Underneath all the paranormal romance, there’s a gentle dig at the astonishing statistics regarding the number of Cabinet Ministers who went to Oxford and Eton, and who in many cases, were members of elite dining societies like the one the book portrays. I loved Oxford from day one, but in the first few weeks, everything felt so utterly alien, that if someone reliable had told me that some of the students were vampires, I could almost have believed it. 

Part Seven – The erotic power

Let’s face it, vampires are sexy. Fair enough, a big part of that is the tendency of modern authors to make them incredibly good looking and in many cases to liberally sprinkle their books with sex scenes (I’m undoubtedly guilty on both counts!). However, I also think it goes beyond that. Dracula for example is in no way intended as a romantic hero, and his description makes him sound quite hideous, but rather like the devil in Paradise Lost, there’s still something about him, especially in his scenes with the lady characters, that draws the reader towards him.

The  Vampire Diaries was the first vampire series I read, and it still holds a special place in my heart, however many nominally more grown up or technically better written books I read. In that series, there are no sex scenes at all, but there are scenes of talking, of kissing, and of sharing blood, that are some of the most romantic and yes, erotic, scenes I’ve ever come across.

I think it probably comes down to a combination of a highly charged power imbalance between the human and the vampire, the forbidden nature of what’s going on, and the ever present hint of danger.

Oh and then there’s the blood-taking or blood-sharing (depending on your individual’s vampire’s tastes and manners). I can’t quite come up with a sensible reason for why I like these scenes so much. Even allowing for mesmerisation, it would be pretty horrible in real life (I honestly nearly bleed to death once – long story – and it wasn’t sexy at all) but they work for me and presumably a lot of other readers. I suppose it’s more of the same – power, danger, it being forbidden – only much more so than mere sex. I think all of this is yet another reason that so many readers of vampire fiction also seem to enjoy the new crop (sorry!) of BDSM novels – to a lesser extent, the kinky sex brings some of these elements into play.

With blood though, I think there are two final elements. First blood seems to have had a special resonance in many societies, whether it’s human sacrifices, drinking cow’s blood to become a man, women on their period being considered either unclean or magical, or communion wine. In this context, the idea of someone drinking your blood is simultaneously repellent and magical, part of a grand mystical tradition and utterly outside of the realm of normal human experience. And by some sort of weird transubstantiation, thousands of readers turn that into something sexy. 

 

Phew, that’s my list done. Did I miss any of your personal reasons for loving vampire novels?

 

Why I Like Vampire Novels so much – Parts Four and Five – Perfection and cads

23 Wednesday Jan 2013

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Every night this week, I’m writing about some of the reasons I love reading and writing vampire novels. If you haven’t already read my intro, check it out here, so we’re clear what sort of vampire books I’m talking about – Introduction

Tonight, it’s reasons four and five, a contradictory pair:

4 – Perfect people that you can buy into

5 – Utter cads that you can forgive 

Perfect people that you can buy into

I have a confession to make. I really like characters who are extraordinary. Who are beautiful and charming and intelligent. Who are either extravagantly lovely, or better yet, utter bitches and cads (see point below). I love characters, whether villain, hero or something in-between, that you know are always going to win, going to either outsmart or outfight everyone around them.

Some people seem to like characters who are ordinary and believable, but I think there are enough plain-looking, pleasant enough  people in casual clothes in real life. Oxford Blood once got a really negative review that said, “they’re all so beautiful and amazing and rich and everyone wants to be them and wants to be with her…sickening.” Whilst I emphatically respect the right of readers to give their honest opinion in reviews,  I couldn’t help thinking that the bit of the blurb which says, “The Cavaliers are the most elite society at Oxford University – rich, powerful, and beautiful,” might have given them fair warning that it wasn’t going to be full of average, flawed types with human failings!

I also think that it’s far easier to make this sort of thing work in vampire fiction than most other genres.  As long as you buy into the trope which says that becoming a vampire makes you attractive, immortal, invulnerable to most injuries and have super strength, then it sort of makes sense that the text is lingering on their good points and most characters are either admiring them, fearing them or swooning at their feet.  And as long as it’s backed up by plot, that’s quite fun.

This can be done well with an entirely human character, but it’s harder to suspend your disbelief quite enough to revel in the fun of it. When a character is completely undone by the charm and beauty of an unearthly beautiful vampire, I can see her point. If they’re acting in the same way about a human man, however hot and rich he’s meant to be, I always feel the urge to tell them to get a grip. 

Utter cads that you can forgive

When I talk above about perfect people, I mean in terms of their looks, strength, intelligence etc. Where I do like there to be some flaws is in their personality. 

In researching history, I have a strange soft spot for cads. You know, the sort of men that charm every woman who comes across them, treat them harshly then disappear.

My university thesis was meant to be a broadly feminist text about a woman called Jane Osbaldeston, who despite being female made a real impact in nineteenth century politics. I utterly loved her.

Unfortunately, I loved her charming but caddish son even more. This is a man who stays at a friend’s house and has a threesome with his daughters, who notices a lady at a ball doesn’t have a flower so rides for two hours to his greenhouse and back to get her one, who abandons a successful political career because he prefers hunting, who despite having a huge fortune runs up jawdropping debts.  Several of my fellow students accused me of writing a Mills and Boon novel rather than a thesis, though the very serious tutor loved it. This George Osbaldeston probably wins my vote, but there are all sorts of historical figures like him that I love to read about.

The only problem is, I’ve met people like this in real life. When I was younger and sillier, I’ve even developed crushes on them, even acted on those crushes. And the truth is, unlike in history books, they’re not actually that fun, and unlike in fiction, you’re pretty unlikely to change them for the better.

Increasingly, when I read about caddish types in modern fiction, I want to hurt them, and I want to get the heroine safely away and find her a nice friendly beta male. I think the worst example I’ve come across recently was in a book called Consequences, about a hot billionaire (is there any other type in fiction?!) who kidnaps a woman and repeatedly abuses her, physically, sexually and emotionally. At his worst, he beats her up so badly (not in a “kinky sex gone wrong” way, just in an “angry psychopath with no self control” way) that she is in a coma for two weeks. And yet, gradually, the heroine starts to fall for him, and rather more worryingly, from looking at the reviews, so do a fair proportion of readers. I think I’m in a minority here (there are endless five star reviews), but I can’t remember the last time I hated a book so much. The horrible male lead isn’t the only reason for this, but it’s a major part of it. I couldn’t stand the fact that anyone could like a character like that.

And then, I took a deep breath and thought about some of my characters. To take probably the most dramatic example, George Stewart has, in no particular order: killed Harriet’s cousin, mesmerised her to allow him to take advantage of her for her blood, stolen her protective necklace, horribly injured her boyfriend in a duel and tricked her into forging a sacred blood bond with him. And yet she still really rather likes him. But I (and hopefully readers) can somehow overlook all of that, because he’s a vampire. He’s not subject to the usual rules. You don’t read about him and think about that jerk that slept with you and never called, because he is an intriguing other.

I don’t think this is just a bias for my own writing either. Every bad boy in every vampire novel tends to do the sort of things that would lead any sane woman to call the police if they were an everyday human, but readers and other characters alike can overlook this.

I should emphasise that unlike the other entries, which I think are entirely positive, this one makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. I’m not sure we should be fetishising badness, even under cover of vampirism, but lusting after bad boys and admiring bad girls is a guilty pleasure of mine, and so much pleasanter when it has that detachment from real life that the supernatural allows. 

If you enjoyed this, check back tomorrow for the final reasons – erotic power, and a metaphor for everything. 

Why I Like Vampire Novels so much – Part Three – Romance with meaningful tension

22 Tuesday Jan 2013

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Every night this week, I’m writing about some of the reasons I love reading and writing vampire novels. If you haven’t already read my intro, check it out here, so we’re clear what sort of vampire books I’m talking about – Introduction

Tonight it’s reason three, romance with meaningful tension, which gets a post all of its own.

Part Three: Romance with meaningful tension

Although I believe that there can be good books in any genre if the writer’s talented enough, as a general rule, straightforward romance novels are one of my least favourite reads. It’s not that I’m cynical about love – having recently got engaged I’d say quite the opposite – but there really are only so many ways two characters in the modern, western world can fall in love. There’s very little reason for dramatic tension. Once upon a time, families had a huge say in who their children married. Sex or often any kind of serious relationship outside of marriage was frowned upon. Relationships between people of different classes, races or religions were more or less forbidden. And that’s before you go anywhere near the subject of gay or lesbian relationships.

Most great historical romances have some of these tensions at play, whether feuding families in Romeo and Juliet; class in practically anything from the eighteenth or nineteenth century (Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights all fall into this category, albeit in very different ways), or the perils of becoming a fallen woman in Victorian and early twentieth century literature. Incidentally, the latter has led me to the conclusion that if you’re a serving girl or local peasant and you have sex with the local aristocrat’s son even once, you’re 100% guaranteed to become pregnant.

Nowadays, there’s very little to stop most people in the UK from having anything from a one night stand to a marriage (or civil partnership) with anyone for whom they have requited feelings of some kind.

Historical novels (both in the sense of “written before 1960” and “written recently but set before 1960”) have this sort of tension going on in spades, as do some contemporary novels set in countries that aren’t so liberal (A Thousand Splendid Suns, for example, which is set in Afghanistan under the Taliban, has a beautiful, if utterly heartbreaking, forbidden romance at its core).

Generally though, contemporary romance set in the west has to completely manufacture this sort of tension with silly misunderstandings, an old lover who’s standing in the way, or some sort of minor rivalry, and on the whole, I’m not buying any of that.

Add vampires in though (and let me reiterate once more, I’m talking proper vampires, who need human blood, can’t come out during the day  etc etc) and suddenly there’s tons of tension. Can a centuries old creature who’s become accustomed to seeing humans as food really love you? Will your charming vampire lover lose control and kill you in a fit of passion, of rage or simply not knowing their own strength? If not, might one of their friends or enemies? Are they willing to turn you and would you want that?

Just like with a lover of a different class or race in the past, you might have to keep it secret. Your friends and family probably won’t approve and most likely neither will their’s. There’ll be all kinds of cultural difficulties and differences in lifestyle and moral standards to be overcome. There can be dangers from the relationship (for pregnancy and disease, replace being turned and being drained) and from outside it.

I think this is also behind the sudden surge in popularity of 50 Shades of Gray, Crossfire and all those other “oh no, the hot billionaire I met is into kinky sex” books. In theory, the BDSM creates the tension and the forbidden element, because supposedly a nice girl wouldn’t be into that, and her family and friends will have to either be shocked and disapproving and lied to, and there are potential dangers. Except in this case I just don’t buy into it. It seems so artificial, and so easy to get round via a combination of experimentation and compromise. 

There’s a reason that seemingly every other blurb on a vampire book uses the words “forbidden love.” It’s because it’s at the heart of every vampire romance story and no longer at the heart of much other romance. 

Why I Like Vampire Novels so much – Parts One and Two: History and Folklore

21 Monday Jan 2013

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Every night this week, I’m writing about some of the reasons I love reading and writing vampire novels. If you haven’t already read my intro, check it out here, so we’re clear what sort of vampire books I’m talking about – Introduction Oh and in case you’ve come across this blog randomly, all the title quotes are from my series, The Cavaliers. Grant me a little self-indulgence!

Tonight, we’re dealing with reasons one and two:

  1. History without the baggage
  2. Folklore, tradition and magic

1)History without the baggage

“Harriet thought about the 1920s, one of her favourite periods of history. She was struggling to understand that he had lived through them, had that glorious interwar experience.”

As I think would probably be clear to anyone who’s either read Oxford Blood or spent much time on this blog, I absolutely love history. It was my university degree and it’s an ongoing personal passion. I quite enjoy full blown historical fiction, but only in fairly small doses and only if it’s really well done

There are a few seriously amazing historical fictions novels (Wolf Hall, obviously. Sarum, which tells the history of Salisbury from prehistoric times to the present day. The King’s General, by Daphne de Maurier, which has all the brilliance of her more famous works with the added fun of being set during the English Civil War). I’m seriously considering writing a proper historical novel myself at some point.

I do however have a few problems with the genre. One, unless it’s alternate history (which can be amazing if done well) you know how any major events mentioned in the book is going to end. Two, if characters act in historically authentic ways (eg in their attitudes to women or class) there are only so many ways they can develop, and if they don’t, it can feel jarring. Similarly, an author can either include lots of historical detail, drowning the plot under a pile of cravats, muslin dresses and talk of the war and the King, or they can avoid this and seem inauthentic.

With vampire novels, you can have the best of both world. Most of the plot can be set in the present day, giving the characters freedom to behave as they wish and leaving the ending open, but at the same time, you can have flashbacks to the time when the vampire characters were alive, and you can also have their original time period influence their views on the world. This is done particularly well in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, which whilst they never let facts get in the way of a good story, nevertheless gave me a good understanding of the culture of Renaissance Italy, Ancient Egypt and medieval Russia when I read them in my teens, years before I studied any of those periods properly.

The historical elements were definitely one of my favourite parts of writing Oxford Blood, and the accuracy of them is one of the aspects of the book I’m proudest of. All of this is one of the reasons that one of my golden rules of vampire writing is that at least some major characters need to have been born more than a century ago. Preferably a lot more.

2 – Folklore, tradition and magic

This follows on from the history point and is a very similar argument. I love folklore and mythology and tradition, and vampire novels can be given a liberal sprinkling of this sort of detail without it having to become the entire point of the story.

I find it fascinating how many culture, across the globe and over the centuries, have had some form of vampire legend. I find it fun to compare the differences in detail of these traditions. Oxford Blood plays with this a little, by having two sets of vampires, the Cavaliers and the Roundheads:

“George broke off from his memories. “Tell me,” he asked Harriet, watching her closely, “have you ever noticed how there are basically two sorts of vampires depending on which books you read and which films you watch?”

“You mean that there are the Anne Rice style glamorous brooding ones and then there are the old fashioned scary Nosferatu monsters?” Harriet asked nervously.

“Exactly,” George said with a hint of a smile. “It’s us and them.”

This is taken to a fabulous extreme in the Anno Dracula series, which starts from the principle that all the conflicting tales about vampires are true and pretty much every fictional vampire is real, and that the discrepancy is simply due to their being a variety of different bloodlines, each of which has very different qualities.

Beyond the vampires themselves, vampire novels are a great starting point for bringing in all sorts of other mythology, whether that’s biblical references, ideas about magic and psychic powers or ancient prophecies. I think this sort of thing can put a lot of readers off, but I love it. It comes back to my original point – if the plot would be basically the same if the vampires were human, it’s not a good vampire novel.

I’d love to hear whether you agree or disagree on my thoughts so far, or about any points you think I’ve missed from my list. If you enjoyed this, check back tomorrow for reason three: romance with meaningful tension.

Why I like Vampire Novels so much – Introduction

21 Monday Jan 2013

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Last week, I started thinking about just what it is that makes me enjoy both reading and writing vampire novels. I intended a quick bullet point list, and instead, I’ve ended up with an essay, so I’m doing a separate post for each point each night this week.

So we’re clear, I have a few requirements for my vampire books. Outside of these, my love very quickly risks turning to hate:

  1. I’m mainly talking about books somewhere on the paranormal romance/urban fantasy spectrum rather than old fashioned horror. I like a bit of horror too, but if the vampires have no interaction with humans other than killing them, they probably don’t fall into the sort of category I’m talking about.
  2. At the same time, the plot can’t be just romance. Don’t get me wrong, I like a bit of vampire romance, but there needs to be something else, such as the way all the True Blood books are at least nominally based around a murder mystery.
  3. The vampires need to be more than just super attractive people. If the plot would be basically the same with human characters, I’m generally not interested. To tick this box, they need to tick at least some of the following boxes – has to drink human blood, has killed people at some point, can’t come out during the day.

Oh and finally, all my examples are based around the idea that the lead characters are a vampire man and a human woman. This seems to be the case in the vast majority of vampire books I’ve read, and I generally prefer this approach, but most of what I say makes sense if the genders are reversed or the couple are same sex.

Some of my reasons apply to other genres too, (and that’s great, because I love lots of other genres), but think that they are more pronounced in vampire novels, and that it’s probably the only genre that includes them all the a decent degree, though feel free to argue with me if you disagree!

So without further ado, my reasons (in no particular order) are:

  1. History without the baggage
  2. Folklore, tradition and magic
  3. Romance with meaningful tension
  4. Perfect people that you can buy into
  5. Utter cads that you can forgive
  6. The erotic power
  7. A metaphor for anything

One and two are coming up in a moment.  Check back each night this week for the rest of them.

Gunpowder, treason, and mulled wine

05 Monday Nov 2012

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Well last week I wrote about Halloween, my favourite day of October. Today, less than a week later, it’s time for my favourite day of November – Bonfire Night.

I always love this week of the year, the way that, if you’re lucky, you get proper autumn days in between the disappointing end of summer and the proper, soul-sapping cold that hits not long afterwards. I love the fact that, in Britain at least, the two events run together, and nearly everyone enthusiastically celebrates two of the most random festivals that the calendar has to offer – a barely disguised pagan festival and a celebration of a thwarted seventeenth century terrorist attack. I love the fact that otherwise sensible people spend one weekend dressing up as devils followed by another weekend standing in the freezing cold watching fireworks, and, if you’re lucky enough to live somewhere really traditional, burning figures in effigy.

There’s something beautifully English about Bonfire Night. Mention fireworks in America, and everyone seems to think of Independence Day – barbeques, long summer days and celebration. In China they seem to be associated with New Year – again, a straightforward celebration. But mention fireworks to anyone in England and they’ll instantly think of 5th November. For all the colour, it’s an oddly dark occasion – let’s not forget that we’re celebrating the thwarting of a plot in which someone very nearly blew up the King and the entirety of parliament, and the fact that he was tortured to death for his pains.

I suppose it’s just cultural conditioning, but to me, it seems like the most fitting time of year for bonfires and fireworks. There’s something magical about a bonfire on a cold night, mulled wine or cider in hand, shivering slightly whilst gasping at the fireworks in the darkened sky. In my mind, it fits nearly with Halloween for reasons beyond mere temporal proximity – the idea of fires as the days get colder and the nights longer seems oddly ancient,  redolent of an attempt to keep evil spirits away.

Anyway, moving from the paranormal and onto the posh,  today I put these rather spooky thoughts aside and went to the most wonderful firework party I think I’ve ever attended. The future in-laws live in a house in central London with access to a garden square, and today, they were having a Guy Fawkes night celebration just for keyholders. In my experience, celebrating bonfire night is usually a choice between a few half-hearted fireworks in our own garden, or standing in a crowd of thousands in a public park, straining to see what was going on.

This was in the garden square, which is wooded, beautiful at the best of times, and tonight, lit with a combination of candles, flaming torches and fairylights. (I’ve been before. It might have mildly influence the clearing where the Cavaliers always hold their Summer Party). There were only about a hundred people, but it had the sort of rockets you usually only get at public events. I’m such a kid about fireworks, and these had my oohing and arhing like you wouldn’t believe. And to top it all off, there was absolutely delicious (and worryingly strong for a Monday) mulled wine and fab gourmet hotdogs, plus lots of adorable tiny rich children running around waving sparklers.