It Gets In Your Blood

I have heard a lot of authors referring to their own works as their children.  Mine is more surreptitious.  It has worked its way into my consciousness with the cunning of a kleptoparasite (go on, Google kleptoparasitism, I’ll wait).

Menial tasks that should have zero to do with my book bring the characters to mind.  I find myself thinking things like, “Oh, Celeste would like that.”  Places I’ve never given much consideration before suddenly look like really good hiding spots for a vampire hunting a meal.  So I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that when an old Triumph motorcycle with a rider dressed all in black whipped past me on the interstate the other day that my first thought was, “Hey look, it’s Joss!” 

Writing is like that for me, it flavors everything I do with the spice of the particular piece I’m working on.  My experience in the theatre was similar.  Every role, every play worked its way into the mundane moments of my life.  I guess you could call me a method writer? 

I’ve found that submersing myself into the topic helps me.  It brings points up that I would not have otherwise considered.  I am almost glad I waited until this point in my life to push forward with this book because without the internet a great deal of the vampire culture would have slipped my grasp.  As it is I have my paper.li news, Vampaper, bringing me all the daily scoop on the subject of vampires, several vampiphilic (my word, don’t bother looking it up) groups I take part in and plenty of wonderful vampire related links to peruse.  Granted, I’m not young enough to fit in with the crowd in person (not a word), but online it really doesn’t matter.  I’ve discovered several musical artist/groups that I’d never have found without an interest in the subject too.

Recently a Twitter pal teased me about being a vampire.  While I’m quite grounded in reality, I found it rather complimentary.  The topic of my book has gotten into my blood enough, if you’ll pardon the pun, that it is a part of me.  And that’s pretty cool.

Bonus stuff:  Two massively cool things I’ve found recently:  Bloodconcept.com – a new perfume I can’t wait to try despite my love of D&G’s The One and StumbleUpon (stumbleupon.com) a very intuitive way to discover awesome new sites based on what you like.  In fact, if you liked this post, please take a moment to click the SU button over on the right side of this page!