It is October. And Halloween is coming. And you want to have some monsters in your Urban Fantasy. And you want one race to be vampires. Go for it. As long as you put in some sort of twist. But the myth isn’t overdone. We have a fascination with it. Take that fascination and play with it.
So you are writing an urban fantasy but you don’t want the vampires you have added to seem stereotypical. Well, I have some recommendations for that!
- Make them glitter like finely crushed diamonds in the light. Wait, no, that one is taken already. Make them blue.
- Make the vampire the good guy and the vampire hunter a crazy vampire racist
- Make then all sexy and avoid mentioning the pain of the bite of the possible blood spillage. Like I am talking total sex addicts here. Blood is orgasmic.
- Turns out they are not at all allergic to garlic… but pepper. So they have to be extremely careful about any food. But also use bear mace in their face will cause it to melt like wax. They can, however, eat food because they are mutated humans not undead
- Okay, they are totally undead. They smell undeady. They look rather like a corpse left out in the sun for too long. But… they are the good guys. And shapeshifters are the raging monsters that need to be controlled. Unfortunately, society it utterly fooled and completely racist to the rather ugly, smelly, vampires.
- Turns out they have no problems with the sun at all. They love the sun. Most of them try to tan the bleached out skin they have. And it turns out at night there is the problem. Where they all go batshit crazy.
- Turns out all along they were not immortal. They die at about one hundred but look young the whole time. This leads to a mad race to be turned to not age. Which leads to massive overpopulation. And the rest of the humans being used as cattle.
- Turns out they don’t actually need blood to live. They just need it to get high or drunk since they metabolize too fast for anything to work. So they feed on those on drugs and/or drunk.
- Make them super angsty. Ooops that was done already too.
- How about make them, I don’t know, like a monster. With distorted vicious features hunting unsuspecting victims and leaving their bodies to rot where they lay.
To tell you the truth I play around with vampires all the time. I have a few urban fantasies. And I like to change it up. And other creatures. I think it is really fun to take a myth or story or legend and just give it a real turnabout. Why not?
I like the idea of monsters living quite normal lives and humans are the vicious murderers. Because, hell, we all know humans in groups just cannot stand things different than themselves and must be dicks about it.
Anyway, play around with myths and stories. Some people do not like it when you have a vampire race… and you call them Burhusts, or Suaisug or Sparkebutts. But whatever, man, whatever. Call them what you want. I have a non-published book, that is not urban fantasy, that has a version of vampire it in. So who cares, eh?
Just remember:
- For every good there is, there is also bad. Like humans. We are good. We are evil. All of us. But, yeah, some way, way more dickish than others. So vampires or shapeshifters of fairies all have to have traits that are good and are bad.
- Remember these are myths based on certain things in history. You need not stick to the typical story, which with vampires has evolved over time. Hell, you can look at the old myths and go with some of them in your story. Why not? It is fascinating.
- You can make them monsters. You don’t have to make them human-like at all.
- Do not be afraid to just toss it up with your monsters or angst-filled creatures. Take a look at some mythology dictionaries and do a little research and there you go… a new creature in the world. Hell don’t even have vampires or shapeshifters at all. Have several other unique ones.
- And just have fun with it, man.
- And someone, please, for the love that is holy write a vampire spoof. I would read the effing hell out of that.
- Also, add diversity. Vampires of different genders, sexualities, and races.