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About Jeanie Grey
Jeanie Grey writes sophisticated, steamy, unconventional romance and erotica for readers who like to think. It was only recently that she realized that writing stories about vampires, murder, torture, corporate-sponsored enslavement, and tarantulas hiding out in vaginas means that she's also a horror writer. She is the author of the Lilly Frank trilogy, a suspenseful vampire romance; a contemporary romance, At First Blush; and Crouch and Other Stories, a collection of short erotic stories. She lives in Portland, Oregon, which has so far not proven to be the best place to meet vampires.
Also this month, Jeanie Grey is participating in the 2nd Annual Vampire Books for Blood fundraiser for the American Red Cross and Canadian Blood Services. She's donating 100% of her net royalties from sales of all of the books in her Lilly Frank series to her local chapter of the American Red Cross. To find out more about #VampBooks4Blood, visit the website vampirebooksforblood.org
Why Vampires?
True story: When I was in high school, I bought an ankh necklace (Egyptian symbol of eternal life) and wore it every day, hoping that a vampire would see it and understand that it meant, “BITE ME, PLEASE!”
Clearly, by high school my love of vampires was thoroughly entrenched. I remember staying up well past my bedtime on school nights reading Christopher Pike’s The Last Vampire series and L. J. Smith’s Vampire Diaries. I watched any vampire-related movie or show I could get my hands on, from Bram Stoker’s Dracula to Andy Warhol’s Dracula to the anime series Vampire Hunter D and everything in between (although I had to draw the line at A Polish Vampire in Burbank, which was so bad I couldn’t even laugh at it).
The vampires I grew up with weren’t the mindless, blood-lusting, undead monsters of early lore; they were emotionally conflicted beings whose vampirism was as much a curse as it was a boon. They were usually portrayed as sexy, wealthy, powerful, intelligent, nearly invincible, eternally youthful (or whatever age at which they were turned), and of course immortal. I wanted to be a vampire not because I wanted to be a monster who inspired fear but because I wanted to be all those other things.
When I started writing the Lilly Frank trilogy, I knew I wanted it to be a vampire tale. What was less clear to me was why I was so attracted to vampires. Why did I want to be sexy, wealthy, powerful, etc.? For some people, I realize, these seem like understandable ends in and of themselves, but I sensed there was a deeper need at work. And there was: safety.
Unlike me, a vampire doesn’t fear going into dark alleys or rough neighborhoods at night because she’s unlikely to encounter anyone who could do her any real bodily harm (though if I really wanted to meet a vampire, maybe I should’ve braved the dark alley; it certainly worked for Buffy). Unlike me, a vampire doesn’t have to worry about working for money to put a roof over her head—she already lives in a swanky mansion or castle—or food on the table—she just has to put the trance on some handsome gentleman and take him out into the aforementioned dark alley for a midnight snack. Unlike me, a vampire doesn’t have to worry about pimples, ageing, or sexually transmitted diseases because her body is impervious to those things.
And it’s not just physical safety; it’s emotional/psychological safety, too. Vampires live outside of human society and are therefore not subject to its laws or norms. They don’t have to worry about “fitting in” because there’s no way in hell they can. As a general rule, humans aren’t a threat to them (obvious exception: vampire hunters). So what does this mean? It means that vampires can be exactly who they are without giving two craps about what anyone else thinks. They make their own rules and live life on their own terms. They don’t need to care for the opinions of their human neighbors, don’t feel pressured to “keep up with the Joneses,” don’t have to pretend to be someone they’re not in order to fit into a particular social group. They are safe from others’ expectations about who they are or how they should behave. Safe from censure. (Okay, except maybe for the part where they get judged all the time for drinking human blood. But they can hardly help that, and anyway most humans don’t have the power to make them stop. Of course that degree of empowerment is exactly what makes vampires such a threat to humans—and to mainstream patriarchal society in particular—and why they’ve classically been portrayed as monsters to be feared.)
A secondary motive for wanting to be a vampire is my love of learning. With centuries at my disposal, I’d have the opportunity to read ALL the books, go to college a thousand times and major in ALL the subjects, live on every continent and experience ALL the cultures firsthand, learn ALL the languages.
And when you combine that sense of safety with a love of learning, you can go anywhere and do anything. Want to be the first person to wade into the interior of Papua New Guinea and live to tell the tale? Go right ahead. Want to find out what those sketchy dudes on the corner are up to and where they’re going? Okay, and it doesn’t even matter if they catch you at it ‘cause bullets can’t kill you and you can rip their heads off if they try anything.
I’m not trying to say that all vampire tales are about safety (though that would be an interesting hypothesis to test), but that’s what ultimately attracted me to vampires. When I made this realization, I knew I needed to make it Lilly Frank’s major motivation: what she wants most desperately in life is to feel safe, and becoming a vampire seems like the golden ticket. But I also knew that I needed to explore through Lilly’s story the assumption that being a vampire means you’re safe. (Hint: it doesn’t.) Paradoxically, it was writing my own vampire story that led to me no longer yearning to become one. (Unless you are a vampire, in which case: BITE ME, PLEASE!)
More Books by Jeanie Grey
Jeanie Grey - October 21st, 2015
October Month of Horror - Guest Post
2 Book Lovers Reviews
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2 Book Lovers Reviews