Vampires to the Rescue

  My wife and I saw a preview for the new season of American Idol on TV.  In the past, this show has been addled with allegations of clandestine rendezvous between judges and contestants.  Like you've gotta kiss a little butt to get anywhere in the competition.  That is why we thought it was so funny that the three judges this season include a man notorious for his big lips, a woman famous for her voluptuous rump and a man with a brown nose.  Subliminal message anyone?
  But that's not what I'm here to talk about.  I wanted to talk about the vampires in the Nocent books.  In my books, a vampire is still partly human until he kills his first human.  Then he loses his soul and becomes a full vampire.  Now, if you remember, in these stories, the vampires are the good guys.  That being the case, they can't kill anyone, but need to protect people from zombies and other threats.  I've had to come up with some creative ways for them to do this.
  In one scene, I have a person who has just escaped some zombies at a ski resort by getting on the ski lift.  The only problem is that there are more at the top of the mountain waiting to grab him.  A vampire on the ground has a handgun and aims it at the lunch-to-be's leg.  The vampire then puts his palm over the front of the gun and shoots the bullet through his hand and into the person's leg.  In this way, some of the vamp's blood gets into the person's bloodstream, turning him into a vampire.  Of sourse, the newly made vampire's bullet wound heals quickly.  Upon reaching the top, the new vampire can now fend for himself easily against the zombie horde.  Score one for the home team.
  In another scene, a person is swimming in the ocean and there is a shark nearby.  A vampire on shore sees this but is too far away to help personally.  Keep in mind that a shark can smell a single drop of blood up to a mile away.  Knowing this, the vampire cuts his palm and bleeds into the water.  If the shark can smell the blood, that means there's enough there to also have other effects.  The blood enters the person's body through mucous membranes in the mouth, eyes and nose and he is therefore, turned into a vampire himself.  Now, taking on a shark is easy work.  Chalk it up for the good guys, two for two.

Kenn and Damion Varson

  One day when I was in college, a bunch of us student types drove over to Bisbee, Arizona to stay at the Copper Queen Hotel, which is said to be haunted.  On the counter at the front desk was a registry book in which guests could write in and recount their paranormal encounters.  I read a few pages and found a pattern of people seeing ghostly faces in reflections from TV screens, windows, mirrors and metal surfaces.  That fascinated me to no end and I spent the entire night looking at every reflective surface in our hotel room.  Never saw a dang thing.  That's not the point of this blog.
  Weeks later, back in Tucson, some of my college buddies and I rented some vampire movie to watch one night.  I don't remember the title, but in the movie, the vampire tried to conceal the fact that he didn't have a reflection so that he wouldn't be found out by people.  I thought to myself, he wouldn't have a problem if he just stayed at the Copper Queen Hotel.  That is what sparked an idea in my noggin.
  What if that's how a vampire keeps his secret is by using a ghostly reflection as his own to pass off as human?  I had to think up a plausible scenario to explain such an arrangement between a soulless body and a disembodied soul.  So what if two brothers were walking outside one night and were attacked by a vampire? Okay, so far so good.  Let's say one of them is killed and the other one is turned into a vampire himself.  That's how we can have this non-reflection concealment scheme.  Thus were born the characters of Kenn and Damion Varson who are two of the main characters in my first novel.

My Concept of Vampires

  I've read so many vampire books and seen so many movies that I wanted to come up with a unique history and mythos for my vampires.  I mention this because, as you know, the Nocent series revolves around a zombie vs vampire war.  My zombies are unique too, but I'll talk more about them some other time.
  The thing that makes my vampires unique is ectoplasm.  Their flesh is infused with it.  In my stories, ectoplasm is a substance that exists between the spiritual plane and the physical realm, as I mentioned in my blog about time travel.  That is why conventional weapons do not harm vampires.  Bullets pass straight through into the Other Side.  Garlic nullifies the ectoplasmic properties and traps the vampire in our world where it becomes vulnerable to mortal weapons.  Holy water has the opposite effect.  It traps the vampire in the spiritual realm where it can no longer cross over into ours.  Ectoplasm is also photo-sensitive and will dissolve in sunlight.
  The last thing I came up with is that ectoplasm feeds off negative energy.  Fear, anger and hatred will make a vampire stronger.  Faith, hope and love can weaken it.  I'll go into the history of my vampires some other time.  I don't want to go too much into it before you've had a chance to read the stories which will illustrate it.

The Nocent part 2: Advent of the Scathing

  This is it, for those of you who didn't purchase my novel from lulu.com, the entire novel, published chapter by chapter, available free online.  I know this list includes most of you since only seven copies sold.  One I bought.  My dad bought 5 copies to give to various family members.  The last copy was purchased by a Naval officer onboard the USS Wyoming, SSBN 742.  The link to the book is to the right, under Zombie Killer's websites.
  I guess I owe it to you to tell you a bit about the book.  One night, when I was in the barracks on the submarine base in Groton, Connecticut, I came up with an idea for a story where two different races of the same alien species are headed toward Earth in a spacecraft.  Onboard, there is a civil war and every member of both races dies.  When the spacecraft crash lands on Earth, the spirits of both sides possess human beings and continue their civil war here on Earth.  One race is called the Nocent and the people they possess become zombies.  The other race is called the Collective and they manifest as vampires.
  The aliens are from the planet Sypraxia.  They are a species whose bodies are made of liquid.  The Nocent's bodies are controlled by the energy of their minds.  The Collective's bodies are controlled by the energy of their hearts.  That is why you must kill a zombie by destroying its brain and you kill a vampire by destroying its heart.  That's the basic premise of the Nocent series.
  The series starts with part 2, which sets up the zombie/vampire war which is the focus of part 3: Revenant War.  The series is wrapped up in part 4: Dragon's Triangle.  This will be followed by part 1: Dark Betrayals, which will be a collection of short stories expounding on the backgrounds of several of the key players in the series.  I am in the process of writing part 3.  I've decided to publish part 2 online in hopes of gaining some interest in part 3 for when I've finished writing it and seek publication.  I hope you all enjoy it!