Journals of the Undead

Tag: vampire story

  • 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.

  • 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