Stefan Petrucha on BLOOD PROPHESY, Vampires, and Barnabas Collins

I've admired Stefan Petrucha's writing for many years-- Petrucha is able to seamlessly weave stories that contemplate pop culture and deep thought together, such as in the first example I saw of his work, a legendary run of the X-Files comics. Petrucha is one of those writers who can take any assignment and hit it out of the park.

Anyway-- so I was thrilled to see that not only does Petrucha have a new vampire novel, Blood Prophecy, about a Puritan vampire trying to shed the curse, but he also has a new blog post (and book giveaway!) over at Fangtastic.

In this post, Petrucha neatly explores the vampire myth and hones in on Dark Shadows as a key moment in the evolution of all vampire literature.

Barnabas was different. Rather than a soulless metaphor for disease and/or sex, he had a soul, and thanks to it, whined constantly. To be fair, Count Dracula, in Stoker’s novel, expresses sadness at not having seen the sun for a real long time, and there may be other precursors, but I’m convinced that it’s in Barnabas the notion of vampire as someone trapped reaches fruition. (The idea may seem a bit alien to fans of the 21st century glitter-vamps who sort-of don’t like the bloodlust thing and still attend high school. These days, more often than not, the punishment aspect of vampirism has been diluted to the point of meaninglessness.)

Read the rest here.