Currently writing: Vampire Novel
Feb. 19th, 2026 10:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
witchpoetdreamerIt might take me a decade to write this book and I frankly don't care. Vampire stories have been in my mind since discovering Anne Rice's stories as a young teen (more specifically Queen of the Damned starring Aaliyah and Stuart Townsend). I first wrote them in a self-insert isekai fantasy novel around the age of 15, where Death was a child, all my friends were characters and a half-vampire was the main love interest (this was before Twilight). I never finished writing that novel, and I'm never going to because frankly, it was really bad. But it was really fun.
As a young adult, my stories were mostly inspired by the MCU (I was a huge Thor fan, thanks Tom Hiddleston), mythology, and something closer to urban fantasy. I was in a huge reading slump (fanfictions not counting), so my writing was very sparse, stories playing mainly in my head as a movie or in bits and pieces of prose poetry. Around 2014, I did my first NaNoWriMo and wrote a ghost story that I rewrote in 2016 during the same event (I dropped out of NaNo afterwards, the two years I wrote during the event completely drained me of writing energy for most of the year so it wasn't really worth it for me). I haven't written anything extensively since (fanfictions not counting -- look, I know that writing fanfics is writing, reading fanfics is reading, but I've always liked working on my own stories or reading other people's, and it really bums me out when I'm not doing those things. It's less about hierarchy than it is about discovering stories I don't know anything about yet, if that makes sense. It's the discovery part that I miss).
Cue to now, I've made the decision that to unlock my writing in a way that feels satisfying to me, I need to write about my first literary love: vampires. So I made a notebook for it:
I used an old laptop box for the cover, and paper I've kept for like 5 years that I gathered from old notebooks. The fabric is from the thrift store (I have more of it that I'm planning to use for clothes). It's the first book I've ever made, and despite its flaws, I'm very proud of it. But what I'm more proud of is what I'm writing in it.
The story goes something like this: Vampires have pretty much always existed, but they are weak, easily defeated foes (burn in the sun, die from a stake in their heart), unless they choose to be enslaved by humans through magic? Alchemy? Something of the like. The human's skills determines the vampire's strengths and powers. In this alternate history, inspired by Hellsing (the manga) and classical gothic novels like Dracula, Frankenstein, that kind of good stuff, the french revolution hits and main female character escapes with her newborn daughter after her father and husband dies at the guillotine. On the way, she gets transformed into a vampire and chooses to serve the same family as the main male character in order to survive for her daughter (who is still human). Shenanigans ensues -- overthrowing the system, finding freedom, love? I still don't know if I want the two main characters to end up in a relationship at the end. I mean, they have *a* relationship, but it's like, secret third thing kinda situation XD At least for now. I'll see where the story takes me. For now, I know that they both want something different and that's going to cause problems. But ya, that's about it for now.
And guys... When I say I don't mind if this novel takes me 10 years to finish, I mean it, because seriously the amount of RESEARCH I'm putting into this is just. It's a lot. It started with the French Revolution, then realizing I need to go further back because main male character would have lived through a lot of it (he was transformed during the time of Alexander the Great), then figuring out who was the very first vampire and that would have been way before Alexander, so like. Ya, lots of research, and I really want to do this alternate history justice. I want to know what the timeline is, how vampires changed things through it all. Sometimes it's not at all, sometimes it's a lot, I want to see it regardless.
Also, that ghost story I wrote in 2014? It won't be part of this specific story, but it's definitely happening in a contemporary setting where the effects of whatever my main characters did are there, because vampires are in that story too.
When I'll be done with these stories (this current novel I'm planning to be a trilogy, first one around the French Revolution, second around the Regency era and third during the Victorian era, and the ghost contemporary one), I think I'll be done with vampires. If not for good, then at least for a pretty long time. I think I'd like to explore fae stories afterwards. Changelings and all. It's almost always going to be fantasy for me, that's one thing for sure. There has to be an element of magic to my stories somewhere.
As a young adult, my stories were mostly inspired by the MCU (I was a huge Thor fan, thanks Tom Hiddleston), mythology, and something closer to urban fantasy. I was in a huge reading slump (fanfictions not counting), so my writing was very sparse, stories playing mainly in my head as a movie or in bits and pieces of prose poetry. Around 2014, I did my first NaNoWriMo and wrote a ghost story that I rewrote in 2016 during the same event (I dropped out of NaNo afterwards, the two years I wrote during the event completely drained me of writing energy for most of the year so it wasn't really worth it for me). I haven't written anything extensively since (fanfictions not counting -- look, I know that writing fanfics is writing, reading fanfics is reading, but I've always liked working on my own stories or reading other people's, and it really bums me out when I'm not doing those things. It's less about hierarchy than it is about discovering stories I don't know anything about yet, if that makes sense. It's the discovery part that I miss).
Cue to now, I've made the decision that to unlock my writing in a way that feels satisfying to me, I need to write about my first literary love: vampires. So I made a notebook for it:
I used an old laptop box for the cover, and paper I've kept for like 5 years that I gathered from old notebooks. The fabric is from the thrift store (I have more of it that I'm planning to use for clothes). It's the first book I've ever made, and despite its flaws, I'm very proud of it. But what I'm more proud of is what I'm writing in it.
The story goes something like this: Vampires have pretty much always existed, but they are weak, easily defeated foes (burn in the sun, die from a stake in their heart), unless they choose to be enslaved by humans through magic? Alchemy? Something of the like. The human's skills determines the vampire's strengths and powers. In this alternate history, inspired by Hellsing (the manga) and classical gothic novels like Dracula, Frankenstein, that kind of good stuff, the french revolution hits and main female character escapes with her newborn daughter after her father and husband dies at the guillotine. On the way, she gets transformed into a vampire and chooses to serve the same family as the main male character in order to survive for her daughter (who is still human). Shenanigans ensues -- overthrowing the system, finding freedom, love? I still don't know if I want the two main characters to end up in a relationship at the end. I mean, they have *a* relationship, but it's like, secret third thing kinda situation XD At least for now. I'll see where the story takes me. For now, I know that they both want something different and that's going to cause problems. But ya, that's about it for now.
And guys... When I say I don't mind if this novel takes me 10 years to finish, I mean it, because seriously the amount of RESEARCH I'm putting into this is just. It's a lot. It started with the French Revolution, then realizing I need to go further back because main male character would have lived through a lot of it (he was transformed during the time of Alexander the Great), then figuring out who was the very first vampire and that would have been way before Alexander, so like. Ya, lots of research, and I really want to do this alternate history justice. I want to know what the timeline is, how vampires changed things through it all. Sometimes it's not at all, sometimes it's a lot, I want to see it regardless.
Also, that ghost story I wrote in 2014? It won't be part of this specific story, but it's definitely happening in a contemporary setting where the effects of whatever my main characters did are there, because vampires are in that story too.
When I'll be done with these stories (this current novel I'm planning to be a trilogy, first one around the French Revolution, second around the Regency era and third during the Victorian era, and the ghost contemporary one), I think I'll be done with vampires. If not for good, then at least for a pretty long time. I think I'd like to explore fae stories afterwards. Changelings and all. It's almost always going to be fantasy for me, that's one thing for sure. There has to be an element of magic to my stories somewhere.
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Date: 2026-02-19 09:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-02-19 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-02-19 09:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-02-20 09:32 am (UTC)Also, I'm really intrigued by your alternate history! Funnily enough, the original story concept that has been cooking in my head for years also features an alternate history, but it's more in the realm of sci-fi rather than fantasy.
I'm sure yours will be great, however long it takes 😊
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Date: 2026-02-20 04:24 pm (UTC)What's your alternate history like?
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Date: 2026-02-21 01:02 am (UTC)Thinking about who the very first vampire was is really interesting, too. I'm curious about the route you'll take with that... like, if it's more magical/supernatural in nature, or if there's some sort of grounding biological component to it, or anything else you can think of! There are so many possibilities with a question like that.
And you're right to think about how their existence influences all of these other things too, like religious practices. Also, it's totally okay if your knowledge isn't perfect... no one's is, and that's true even if someone has a PhD in World History. The important thing is that you enjoy the process; it sounds like you do, and it'll be exciting to see how it informs what you create!
I am not sure if I feel comfortable sharing it in a comment, but I may DM you later!!
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Date: 2026-02-20 04:56 pm (UTC)Mori: have you read the Gilda stories by Jewelle Gomez? She does cool vampire stories I’ve liked!
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Date: 2026-02-20 05:24 pm (UTC)and oh... my god! That book sounds amazing! I'm definitely checking my library to see if they have it! Thanks for the rec!
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Date: 2026-02-20 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-02-20 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-02-20 06:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-02-20 07:33 pm (UTC)