Inanna Arthen is the author of The Vampires of New England series and founder of By Light Unseen Media, a publishing company specializing in vampire fiction and nonfiction. She's also a regular contributor to Blogcritics Magazine. An expert in vampire folklore, Arthen is here today to talk about her series, her new press, vampires, and their endless appeal through history since the release of Bram Stoker's Dracula. She also shares with us the titles of some of her favorite vampire books and movies.
Thanks for this interview, Inanna. When did your fascination with vampires begin?
When I was eleven, back in the 1960s. I vividly recall the very first vampire movie I ever saw, The Brides of Dracula, on TV during the afternoon. (My mother was not home at the time.) In the sixth grade, I decided to dress as a vampire for Halloween, and I designed my own costume. Rather than the stereotype caped, Goth or sexy look, I worked up a costume from stained, ragged sheets, like a tattered shroud, latex fangs that I made with one of those "plastigoop" molding kits and a blood-smeared face. I have absolutely no memory of where I got this impression of a vampire as a ghoulish revenant, but it was a rather effective costume.
In 1968 I joined the teeming hordes of Baby Boomers who watched Dark Shadows every day, but I was already mad for vampires, so it didn't start with Barnabas Collins. That same year I began collecting vampire fiction and anthologies, read Dracula in one sitting and discovered Montague Summers' seminal compilation of vampire folklore, The Vampire In Europe. My passion for vampires has only intensified in the years since then. When I was in high school, one friend and I coined the word, "vampiromaniac" to describe ourselves. "Vampirophile" wasn't strong enough.
Tell us about your New England Vampire series. Why did you choose New England as the setting? Is it because you're from there? What is it about small New England towns and horror stories?
The Vampires of New England series was born when I decided to link together three sets of characters I'd created for different stories in progress and connect their narratives and history into one fictional universe. All the stories were based in New England primarily because it's where I live and it's a region that I'm familiar with. The characters will wander quite a bit as the series goes on, but they'll always come back home. More information about the series is on my author website, http://inannaarthen.com.
There's an obvious advantage for a writer to set stories in locations that you know well, and can easily research and fact-check because you're right there. I was born in Springfield, Vermont, and I've lived all but ten years of my life in New England. I plan to retire in Maine. I've always had a deep love for this region. After all, it's my native earth.
New England has a convenient combination of characteristics as a setting for horror stories. It has a long and deep history, more like Europe than most of the United States. It's not empty and remote like a wilderness area, but it's not too densely populated to be mysterious. Many people automatically associate New England with witchcraft and the paranormal, because of Salem. Some of the best known horror writers, from H.P. Lovecraft to Stephen King, set many of their stories in New England because they lived here. I think New England is often associated with a pleasant, genteel facade that hides a lurking dark side, and that is a classic pattern in horror fiction. Other regions of the United States don't carry that association. If you think of places like Chicago or New York or New Orleans, the dark side is right out in the open.
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