The Why

Before I begin, my author picture(s) is (are) complete and so the paperback version is now being reviewed one last time before actual publication. It will take a few days for the last proof copy to arrive and then it can be loosed upon unsuspecting readers. I still technically beat GRRM's fifth book to publication if you count the e-book. I'll just keep telling myself that.

I got to thinking the other day about why I wrote what I did. A lot of authors, especially new authors, are on a paranormal romance and young adult vampire fiction kick. The thing of it is, I didn't write this thing to follow trend and try to exploit what may be currently selling in the stores. As you may or may not know, I wrote T7H during the month of November 2010 for a contest (if it can be called that) entitled 'National Novel Writing Month' otherwise known as NaNoWriMo. Out of the dozen or so ideas I have milling around the noggin, I chose the psychic vampire story because I just assumed it was my weakest plot, to be quite honest. I figured, "Hey. If it turns out like hell at the end, there's no big loss since its the one of the ideas that probably isn't going anywhere anyway."

See, I've always been a fan of vampire fiction and so naturally one of my works would have to be as such. Some of my favorite pieces from my youth included Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Stephen King's Salem's Lot, Popsy and The Night Flyer, Vampire Hunter D, and Blood: The Last Vampire, and so on and so forth. It is simply unfortunate for me that my drive to begin writing fell in the same era where vampirism has become bastardized.

I also chose to write in a simplistic and youthful tone in order to try to reach a broader audience. I don't mean that for the sake of marketability, but rather as a means to do my part in getting more people to start reading more often or even at all. I was about half way through Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead the other night and I realized that, despite the fact that the book is indisputably well-written, it would probably be exceedingly dull for the casual reader. Paragraphs and pages upon pages worth of narration can make a reader feel like bashing their head against a wall if they aren't completely dedicated to the story.

When writing T7H, I skipped the elaborations of character and scene description in favor of dialogue because, quite frankly, I personally find dialogue more entertaining as a reader and more natural as a writer. Everyone always has their own interpretations of what things and people look like as they read, so why not let them do what comes natural and create the world as each person might imagine it? Why define everything so concretely when the world can be much more alive and believable when left to each reader's own creativity? That was my thought anyway.

I was also quite inebriated during the entire writing of the book, so that might have something to do with it as well, I guess.