Lillah Lawson is the author of the highly regarded Dead Rockstar Series. THE WOLFDEN, the second installment in the series, is coming to bookshelves everywhere February 22, 2022! Take a dive into the thought behind the series, and get some exclusive insight from the author herself in this deep dive into the inspirations behind her work and as she dissects that link between cultural mythos and theology.
Many have explored the relationship between vampires and Christianity – scratch the surface of any well-written piece of vampire fiction, from Dracula to The Vampire Chronicles, from Salem’s Lotto Twilight, and you’ll find no shortage of vampiric characters bemoaning the fact that they are damned by God, drinking blood as an act of sacrament, and drawing parallels between themselves and angels (fallen or otherwise). And fans have been drinking it up, as it were, for centuries.
For my part, I’ve been devouring vampire fiction since the tender age of 12, when I first picked up Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire from my local Target with my weekly allowance. Wide-eyed, I sat down to thumb through the first few pages, and found myself transfixed, immediately drawn into a world that was somehow medieval and distinctly modern at the same time, immeasurably beautiful and grotesque all at once, full of characters who are savage and ruthless, depressed and dastardly. Thus began a love affair that has lasted decades, one that I would be remiss not to touch upon, since at the time of this writing, the world has only started coming to terms with the death of our beloved Queen of Darkness, Anne Rice.
If I may talk personally for a moment, I find it really hard to express just how much Anne Rice has meant to me, not only as a reader, but a writer, too. Without her, I’m not sure I would have chosen this as my career, and I owe her a debt of deepest gratitude.
I don’t exaggerate when I say that some of my most core memories include Anne Rice. I’ve mentioned buying her book as a pre-teen – I poured over that book in a weekend and then watched the movie, in awe, completely overwhelmed by the exquisite world-building and the epic beauty of her deeply flawed characters, who bemoaned their pain while relishing in their opulence. At 17, I lay in a hospital bed with a life-threatening blood disorder; my mother brought me Anne’s latest, Vittorio the Vampire, which I read while receiving a blood transfusion (ironic, no?). At 21, I brought the epic tale of the vampire Marius, Blood and Gold, on the plane to New Zealand, where I’d live for the next five years. It was only my second time traveling abroad, and I knew Anne’s words would comfort me on a nervous plane ride. I read Blackwood Farm while sitting on a beach in the Coromandel Peninsula, and the book that followed, Blood Canticle, accompanied me on my journey back home to the United States. When Anne announced, after a ten-year hiatus, that she was finally releasing another Vampire Chronicles book, I waited in a long line to buy myself and my aunt a signed copy of Prince Lestat, which I gave her for Christmas that year. It is one of my most treasured possessions. It’s hard to imagine never seeing her friendly “Greetings, people of the page” on social media again—that in itself feels like a loss.
Catch up with Stormy Spooner as she navigates her newfound powers and the sudden confusion from being ghosted by her babe of a reanimated boyfriend, Phillip Deville. With mysterious disappearances and confrontation with her past looming, Stormy must decide her path forward...and risk losing everything in the process.