Sympathetic Vampires

There are lots of things I don't write about. I don't feel comfortable enough with my knowledge of historical detail to write that novel about Galla Placida, set in the 400's A.D., or to bring to life William the Conqueror. I know a little bit about a lot of things, but not a lot about most things. Maybe they'd come with a few years of research, but they're not something I could write -- or at least write well -- in the course of six months or so.

There are things I won't write because I don't like the subject matter. I can't see myself producing The Great American Porn Novel. It's not that I don't like sex, but I don't like the idea of joining the ranks of people writing about it. With very few exceptions the writing, plotting, and characters... Well, they suck, figuratively as well as literally. That doesn't mean the people I write about don't have sex, merely that it's not the very most important thing in their lives. They have other things to do, too.

And then there are vampires. When I was a kid, clowns were funny and vampires were scary. Now clowns scare people and vampires are sympathetic. Go figure.

There are others, too, like werewolves and... um... other things, I guess. Even Frankenstein was funny, at least when he was Young. You take a figure of evil and then turn things around so that he's sympathetic and misunderstood. The Mummy was just raised from his tomb to look for his girlfriend. Lon Cheney, Jr., was a tormented figure as the werewolf, and Professor Lupin was a perfectly nice fellow in the Harry Potter novels, when he wasn't trying to rip your throat out by the light of the silv'ry moon. Probably our grandkids will be reading about sympathetic Klansmen and Nazis and ISIS.

I won't do it. I won't write a novel about a vampire. If I did write it, I guess I'd make the vampire sympathetic, too. Young girls would be swooning over his dreamy eyes, the tragedy of him being undead, wanting to lie forever in the coffin next to his. Their little hearts would be going pitty pat, until they stopped dead. Then in then end I'd reveal him to be stinking evil, and I mean stinking, with the overpowering odor of death with strong overtones of brimstone around him.

Yeah, and that one will get bounced from all the agents, too.