Journals of the Undead

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  • Behind the Scenes: Yuri

    Described as a charming devil, Yuri is the only main character in Journals of the Undead who became a better person after turning into a vampire. Cold, cruel and manipulative during his human life, he achieved remarkable personal development as a vampire. Part of this is due to the fact that he encountered vampires of various social backgrounds and that made him get out of his bubble and see the world as it is. Also, Yuri discovered that he’s a good mentor and helped vampires, who felt lost in their new life, as much as he could to accept it or find a purpose.

    Although he was born and grew up in the 18th century, Yuri preferred the 19th century though not the Victorian era. The sudden strict morals and bizarre new customs were too much for him and he eventually left Britain.

    Although Yuri never truly lets go of his arrogance and narcissism, he is fiercely loyal, protective and caring and will always help his friends without asking many questions. His character is in contrast to Arifay, Vincent and Lucretia who were never evil during their human life and also the circumstances in which they became vampires are completely different – Yuri is the only one who wanted to become immortal and therefore the only one who had weighed the pros and cons of eternal life.

    I like creating complex characters and it means that all four protagonists have flaws, bad habits and can get on your nerves from time to time. They are neither good nor bad, living in the shadows and having all the time in the world to decide what they want to do next.

  • KITT

    KITT

    I was a huge fan of Knight Rider when it was broadcasted in Latvia in my teens. Yes, you read that right: following the collapse of the Soviet Union we had a lot of catching up to do on popular culture in the 1990s and early 2000s and watched a lot of classic 1980s TV shows a decade or so later.

    I started watching Knight Rider because David Hassellhoff was in it and it featured a really nice looking car. I also loved Bonnie and Devon: Bonnie because of her brains and Devon because he was always in such a cool contrast to Michael.

    Unfortunately, as the show progressed the scripts got worse and I only kept watching it to see KITT. It was my dream car back then and I’ d still love to own a replica one day. So far all I’ve got is a scale model from the photo (complete with the flashing laser) and a T-shirt.

    I blame my interest in cars on Grandpa, a lifelong petrolhead, a Merc enthusiast and a great mechanic.

    Back to KITT… I wrote Journals of the Undead in my early 20s when getting a driving licence was beyond my means, let alone buying a 1982 Pontiac Trans AM. If I couldn’t drive it, one of my characters could so I wrote a KITT replica into the stories. And, since Lucretia is based on me, she was the obvious choice.

  • Music That Inspired Journals of the Undead

    Music That Inspired Journals of the Undead

    Journals of the Undead was written between 2008-2010 so I only remember the artists that I listened to the most.

    The Rolling Stones, one of my favourite bands. Wild Horses is one of my all time favourites and one of the songs that’s mentioned in the book. It has a special meaning for me and now it is a special song for one of the characters, too: Lucretia first heard the song when she was about to close one chapter of her life and start another and listened to it a lot.

    Sarah Brightman, one of my favourite singers. I saw a recording of her live concert at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna in 2008 and it’s one of the best performances I’ve ever seen. When Brightman sang Fleurs du Mal, it was a magical experience. I love the song so much that I wrote it into one of the stories

    Sisters of Mercy. I was trying to come up with a name for the female lead when Lucretia, My Reflection came up on my MP3 player. I liked the way it sounded and, since she was based on me, the reflection thing, too, resonated with me.

    Take A Shot by the Finnish band Lovex. There was a time when I would listen to this song non-stop and that included the time when I was working on Tiredness, the first story. The lyrics made me think of Vincent and it sort of became his song. Every time I hear it I think of my story and every time I read Tiredness, I think of the song.

    The 69 Eyes aka Helsinki Vampires – an obvious choice but I started to listen to them several years before I wrote the first story. Wasting the Dawn, Brandon Lee and Velvet Touch are still my favourites.

    Over the years, I have edited the stories quite a few times and, when I was editing the English version back in 2020, I started listening to classical music a lot, especially Handel’s Water Music and pretty much anything by Mozart. There is a particular classical music for studying playlist on YouTube that I always play in the background when I need to focus. Apart from liking classical music in general, the fact that no-one’s singing means I don’t get distracted by lyrics.

  • Books That Inspired Journals of the Undead

    Books That Inspired Journals of the Undead

    I’ve been an avid reader for most of my life and the amount of books I’ve read far exceeds the amount of stuff I’ve put on paper myself. When I do write, as it often happens, inspiration comes from an unexpected source.

    I’ve mentioned before that I was studying at uni when I wrote Journals of the Undead and, as part of a research, needed to borrow The Capital by Karl Marx from the library. I had read some of the works by Charles Dickens (Bleak House, Nicholas Nickleby, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol) before so I knew that London in the 1800s was a tough place for the poor but what I read in The Capital was truly shocking. When I started to work on Tiredness, the first story, I incorporated some of that into the story so that we wouldn’t forget how bad things used to be and avoid history from repeating itself. Sadly, there is still plenty of workplace exploitation and poor living conditions in the 21st century.

    Fast forward to the 9th chapter, Revelry, which was inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray with its decadence and the main character’s questionable morals. I’ve always loved Oscar Wilde’s witty language and cracking one liners and I remembered some of them whilst coming up with my own ones. Revelry was written in late 2009, around the same time when the film Dorian Gray came out so it was influenced by that as well, in addition to Wilde’s original story.

    Dracula by Bram Stoker. This book left such a big impression on me that it was written into the novel. In the 5th chapter, Encounter, three of the characters are discussing the book, when they first read it and how it affected them.

    Poetry… Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and John Keats are among my favourite poets. All three are mentioned throughout the stories and a supporting character is named after one of them.

    Another author I want to mention in this post is Jorge Luis Borges. None of his works directly influenced Journals of the Undead but I love how timeless his stories are and was intrigued when I learned that, for Borges, his stories were never really finished, they remained live: he would rewrite or edit them throughout his life meaning that different editions of the same book could be rather different.

  • Behind the Scenes: Vincent

    Today is Vincent’s birthday so in this post I want to talk about my favourite character. It is mentioned in the novel that Vincent is certain of his year of birth, 1802, but does not know his birthday and chose the date himself. As the youngest son of a large and poor working class family in London, his parents wouldn’t have paid much attention to when their children arrived in this world. In those days, they would be more concerned about whether their offspring would make it past the age of 5. Back then five-year-olds were deemed to be old enough to work and supplement the family income.

    Vincent was the first character I created. For a while my favourite character was Lucretia and that heavily influenced the plot but now, when I read my own stories, it is Vincent that I empathise with the most. He’s the only one who never really came to terms with turning into a vampire, there’s something beautiful, sad and tragic about him. He’s one of those characters you want to hug and say that this too shall pass and everything’s going to be fine even though you know it’s not true.

    I was at uni when I wrote his story, Tiredness, and had to do research for a study course, I can’t remember which one now. What I do remember is that it involved reading some chapters of The Capital by Karl Marx. I was so horrified to learn about the terrible living and working conditions of the workers in industrial England that I incorporated some of it in Tiredness.

  • Behind the Scenes: Lucretia

    It’s Lucretia’s birthday today. Although she’s one of the four protagonists and one of my favourite characters, she did not exist in the original draft. Ok, originally there was no novel, there was just one story, Tiredness, that I assumed would also be my last but life had other plans for me…

    I created Lucretia when I decided to include a character based on me in the stories, a supporting character living in the vampire house. However, once her character was created and started to grow, Lucretia pretty much took over the novel and she’s the reason why the book is the way it is.

    Because of the reason mentioned above, she’s the only one that is described in the novel in such great detail – down to the freckles. She’s got my face, we’re the same height, she’s got my qualities, both good and bad, and my restlessness. There is one major difference, however: I’m left handed but I decided to leave Lucretia right handed. And, of course, she is frozen in time and will always look like I did in my early 20s whereas I have aged.

    She got her name from a song. I created my heroine first and then (unsuccessfully) tried to name her. One night, when I was working on the stories, I put music on shuffle and the first song that was played was Lucretia, My Reflection by the Sisters of Mercy. I looked no further.

    As for Lucretia’s surname, Lockwood, I was inspired by Charles Dickens. He had Lady Dedlock in Bleak House, one of my favourite books, and I liked the sound of it. I wanted my heroine to also have the word ‘lock’ in her name. After some brainstorming, I picked ‘Lockwood’ because, figuratively speaking, Lucretia is trapped: locked in a world she cannot leave.

  • On the Origins of Cheyrane

    In today’s post I wanted to tell the story behind my domain name: Cheyrane is my childhood nickname. It was circa 1996, but definitely summer, when a friend of mine and I were sitting in the orchard, practising our English using various textbooks. I started wondering how my name would be spelled in English and my friend’s grandmother, who was also there, suggested ‘Cheyrane’. Now I think it looks (and sounds) more French than English but, anyway, I loved it and it stuck. I used it on my notepads and textbooks and, some years later, pretty much everywhere on social media. These days I’ve reverted back to the original spelling of my name, however, when I decided to build a website the domain name was a no-brainer.

  • Vampires & Mirrors

    Vampires & Mirrors

    As I mentioned in my previous post, I knew next to nothing about vampires when I got the inspiration for my first story. A friend who reads nothing but sci-fi and fantasy enlightened me and I got a rough idea of what my vampires were going to be like. There were aspects of vampire life that I could figure out later and then there were things I needed to decide about before I put pen to paper. The most pressing question was: should my characters be able to see their reflection?

    I decided they should. What’s the point of being forever young and immortal if you cannot see your own face ever again? Also, I was being practical. Tiredness, the first story, starts in 1820 when there weren’t that many mirrors and shop windows about so successfully avoiding them all would have been possible. However, some of the later stories are set in the 20th and 21st century and reflective surfaces are now pretty much everywhere. A creature without a reflection would struggle to hide their secret.

    I’ve always been interested to know why there was an assumption that vampires can’t see their own reflection. Some years later I was reading stuff online about the topic and saw an engineer’s comment, he explained that mirrors used to be coated with silver, which is a holy metal, whereas these days they’re made using aluminium. And that made perfect sense. Holy metal, unholy creatures: creatures can’t see their reflection.  Aluminium has no such properties therefore vampires should be able to see themselves.

    Have you seen Being Human? I didn’t realise that Mitchell had no reflection until he got into trouble because of it. He also could not be captured on film or photographed – which also caused problems. It worked well for the plot but it wouldn’t work well in everyday life!

  • How It All Started

    How It All Started

    Back in 2008 I spotted a Radio Naba (non-commercial radio station in my native Latvia) ad at my uni. They had launched a new show dedicated to fairy tales and fantasy stories, and listeners could send them their own stories. I liked the idea of my story being recorded and aired. There was only one problem… I didn’t have anything readily available.

    After a few days of brainstorming, I saw a vision: a lonely silhouette in the woods. Who was he? Why was everything black and white? Why was he so sad? I tried to figure it out and then, the whole story just came to me. I wrote non-stop for 12 hours. There was no draft. It was Tiredness, Vincent’s story.

    I sent the story to Radio Naba and got a reply. They liked it, however, their schedule was full for spring shows so they would air my story in the autumn. Unfortunately, the year was 2008. Already in the summer there were signs that a recession was coming. I remained optimistic and chose to ignore them. Then reality hit me. A lot of budget cuts happened that year and the fairy tale show was among the casualties.

    Left with a story but no audience, I decided to publish it on draugiem.lv (Latvian version of MySpace/Facebook with some elements of WattPad). I received lots of positive feedback and readers kept asking me if there were more stories coming. No, I said. It was a one off thing. Well, that’s what I thought. A few months later another story came to me. And another… I ended up with enough stories for a book. I did share a few of them online and saved the rest for my novel.

    It’s funny to remember it now but before I wrote Tiredness, I had never been particularly interested in vampires. I had seen Interview with the Vampire and From Dusk Till Dawn and that was about it. And because I didn’t know much about these mythical immortal creatures, I had to call a good friend of mine who is an avid reader of fantasy and sci-fi and ask her a ton of questions. From what she told me I developed my own ideas and then  incorporated them into my story.

    Journals of the Undead