Journals of the Undead

Tag: vampire stories

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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