The universe has a neat trick to prevent us from being eaten by dinosaurs, chased by Attila the Hun, or robbed by Bluebeard the pirate. This neat trick is 'time'. Neither extinct creatures nor history's villains can invade our lives now. T-Rex is long dead, so are Attila's warriors. We're safe. This thing 'time' insulates us from the past.
But wait a minute. That's not exactly true. Even though the ancient tyrants and legendary warriors of the past might be bone dust, every now and again they reach out a ghostly hand to touch our shoulder and remind us that they were the all-powerful of their day. For example, you're probably reading this in July: a month named after ancient Rome's Julius Caesar. If you've been out of town and are seeing this in August, then this is the month named after the Emperor Augustus. We even invoke the names of ancient gods whenever we say something as down-to-earth as, "Meet me Thursday." Thursday – Thor's Day – is the day of the Viking god of war. Wednesday belongs to the father of the gods – Wodin's Day. Wodin's wife, Frig, isn't forgotten either. From her we get Friday.
I'd been longing to write a vampire novel for a long time, but I wanted to approach it from a different direction with vampire-like creatures who didn't adhere to the usual vampire rules, sleeping by day and crying 'Aaagh!' to crucifixes. It was this idea of the past leaking like some toxic waste into the present that really sparked the story for me. I imagined that those ancient Viking gods (the same ones whose names are unwittingly uttered billions of times a day the world over) becoming frustrated by their lack of influence in the world. And the gods like nothing more than to interfere in the affairs of humankind.
Over the course of nine months I wrote Vampyrrhic with my characters time and again having to confront the reality that what lay in the past could seep into the present and not only affect but destroy their lives.
In Vampyrrhic I pull together a group of characters who by chance find themselves stopping in the same Gothic hotel in the remote English town of Leppington. The town is dominated by an old slaughterhouse that channels the blood of butchered animals into sewers that form a dark labyrinth beneath the streets. Even though the characters don't appear to have met before they begin to realize that they knew each other in an earlier life. David Leppington hasn't visited the town since his childhood. His ancestors lived here; they gave Leppington its name. Bernice Mochardi works in a laboratory that breeds leeches. Jack Black is a brutish thug. He hates Leppington but finds himself drawn to it. Electra Charnwood dresses like a Goth and owns the hotel where this disparate group have made their temporary home. Electra avoids visiting the cellar because she hears strange, frightening sounds coming from beyond a sealed door that leads into the town's sewers. With the stage set those pagan gods, whose names we all invoke so many times a week, raise their vampire army from the dead. Every army must have its leader and David Leppington is presented with a dilemma that goes beyond a matter of life and death.
Writing Vampyrrhic fascinated me. It won't let go. So much so, I'm now writing its sequel, Vampyrrhic Rites. Who says stories don't get in your blood?