My Fair Vampire started off as a piece for the AW Sunday night flash fiction Challenge in which we’re given 90 minutes from the reveal of the prompt word(s) to compose a story.  The lengths usually hover around the 1000 words mark.

I entered the first 250 words in a blog contest and won!   People seemed to like the characters as did I so I decided to expand upon Dori’s story and write a full novel about her.  I finished the first draft on 7/31/10.

Blog Contest Entry:
My Fair Vampire (working title)

Dammit, he’d gotten away. They always got away. I sucked at this. I wish someone would just stake me already. I dropped heavily onto the park bench and contemplated yet another night pilfering from the blood bank.

My sire was the worst. I really don’t know why he bothered, why he hadn’t just killed me instead of leaving me this way. The last time I’d had fresh blood, he’d caught it for me then scolded me saying, “Dori, remember, use the element of surprise until you’ve mastered the art of persuasion and for God’s sake don’t let them see your canines. No wonder they sense something’s up and give you the slip.”

“Maybe if you spent a little more time training me, Donovan, instead of getting off with your harem, I wouldn’t be such a disappointment,” I grumbled to myself as I clapped my tennis shoes together. The mud fell to the ground in giant clumps. Donovan hated my athletic footwear.

“Maybe if you tried dressing a little sexier, you could lure better,” he’d said at the end of his last lecture.

“I lured you didn’t I,” I’d muttered before launching into my usual defense. “Screw you, Donovan. A girl’s gotta have proper footwear to sprint after prey if she’s not got the physical goods.”

He’d glared at me then stalked off, his long black coat cutting a wide fluttering swath behind him. I had to get Mr. GQ for a sire when I was so NOT Ms. Cosmopolitan.

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So that was a wee bit from a paranormal romance I’ve just started. Actually, it was an AW Flash Fiction challenge piece that I’ve decided to novelize. I can hear the groans already…”Not another vampire novel!” This one is about a love story between an inept vampire, Dori, and an equally inept vampire hunter, Jude. Add a Pygmalion-esque love triangle with the heroine’s sire, Donovan, with some do or die vampire bureaucracy and deception and that’s where this puppy is going…for now…I think.

You can read more about Dori in a journal I’ve created for her to share her backstory and other pieces about her that won’t be in the novel.

Now for some multi-media inspiration. I claim no authorship for any of the clips below.  I went looking for the music primarily.  The artists and tunes are contained within the clips as is the YouTube publisher:

For Dori–
I love this 80′s Blancmange remake of an ABBA tune, “The Day Before You Came”

To understand this next tune’s significance, you need to know that Dori is not all vampire and has some rather unique…aerial abilities…think Sangre de Cristo mountains of Santa Fe, first flight.  The audio quality on this video isn’t that great but my first YouTube video got pulled and I didn’t want a video from Narnia or from Japanese Anime.  The photos in this one, however, were perfect, and according to the clip’s creator are from the southwestern US, though not NM but close enough.

For Dori and Donovan–

For Jude–

For Donovan– (I put this on my birthing tape for my first child…almost fourteen years ago…sigh…  I thought this song and video combination captured Donovan’s sense of loss of the sun as well as his pull for Dori.  The photographs are lovely.  Kudos to the artist who made the YouTube video.)

The visual on this one is not much to watch but I couldn’t find the tune on Playlist.com.  Hubby and I used to two-step at Midnight Rodeo to this song.  I used that club in the novel and of course Albuquerque and Santa Fe are the settings of the novel: