(This post was shared on my Patreon a few months ago. You can help support me on my Patreon here, for as little as $2 a month! I post all the good stuff there first.)
(One of my favorite things is interviewing my characters. It’s a little like talking to myself, but in different voices. Being a writer is weird. I couldn’t get my character from In the Dark, Sebastian, to show up to anything like this, so please enjoy this interview with Ian, also from In the Dark.)
Melody Taylor: Hi, Ian, first of all I’d like to thank you for being here. Why don’t you tell everyone who you are and what you do?
Ian the Vampire: Hi, thanks for having me. I’m Ian, and I am a vampire. Oh, and a painter.
MT: Awesome, what do you paint?
ITV: A lot of surrealist stuff, it can kind of stray into impressionism some days, and I try to keep the images very realistic, even if they don’t actually exist or are doing something unusual. A lot of very dream-like, symbolic imagery makes its way onto my canvases.
MT: And where can people see your work?
ITV: I have a few shows coming up, you can follow me on Facebook or on my website.
MT: Nice. How does being a vampire come through in your painting? Does it show up in your art a lot, or do you keep the two things separate?
ITV: That’s kind of like asking if your humanity shows up in your writing. How could it not? Art — any kind of art — is about communicating something to your audience, whether they get it or not, whether you convey it well or not. Even if they take it and make it mean something entirely different than what you meant, you try to say something about yourself or the world or your experience of it. What could you possibly want to tell people that doesn’t have to do with who or what you are? Whether what you’re trying to say is funny or serious or angry or wistful, all of that relates to you and what you experience and trying to share that with someone else through color or shapes or movement or words. Of course it comes through in my art.
MT: Sure, I get what you’re saying there. So how does being a vampire come through in your art? Do humans misread it, do you think? Or interpret what they see as something they can understand?
ITV: Hm. It can be hard to say what anyone gets out of any art. And I think a lot of what I put into my paintings is stuff that anyone can understand on some level. It’s not so much that humans misread it, as they get what they can get or want to get out of it. Art is about emotion, thinking about emotion, and trying to express or evoke an emotion. My emotions as a vampire don’t feel different, I just feel differently about certain things. People can still pick up and relate to my emotions from my work. And that’s all any artist can ask.
MT: Good points. When you say you feel differently about certain things, but your emotions still feel the same, what exactly do you mean? How does being a vampire differ from being human in how you feel?
ITV: I guess I feel more angry more often? Which sounds terrible, but I think it has to do with the whole territorial thing. I personally enjoy meeting new people and even new vampires, but the idea of a strange vampire showing up in Seattle make me very uneasy. I’m willing to listen to them and get to know them, but my first reaction to thinking about that is defensive and angry. Like, get out. This is my town. You can only stay if I like you. Or someone I don’t trust approaching my sister or my girlfriend. I’ve always been the sort of person who will stand up to someone, but now — I’m more likely to swing than ask too many questions. Threats raise my hackles in a way they wouldn’t have before. And faster.
MT: Interesting. Have any other emotions changed for you? Or, rather, situations where as a human you would feel one thing, but as a vampire, you feel something else?
ITV: Mm, feeding. Craving, really. Feeding as a vampire is all rolled up into one ball of several things, so when I say I’m hungry, that’s really simplistic. What I mean is I’m hungry, and also thirsty, and also tired, but sort of short of breath, almost, and also unbearably horny. Blood is all of those things for me now, and needing it is needing all of that. Feeding is getting a fix for all of those basic bodily necessities. And the combination of those things really intensifies the need. I could ignore being hungry or thirsty or horny for a while, but all together they get very distracting, and knowing that one hit will solve all of them makes it even harder to think through. Vampires can go a little crazy with blood lust, but I think anyone would with all of those needs pushing in on them all at once like that.
MT: (nervous) Are you hungry now?
ITV: (smiles) I made sure to get a bite before we started.
MT: (fidgeting slightly) How does all of that work with your partner, Monique? You don’t only feed from her?
ITV: I don’t. One person alone would never be able to feed a hungry vampire, not permanently, and she takes blood from me, too. It’s more of an exchange between us than truly feeding. It’s satisfying in a lot of ways, but in the end, I’m left still hungry.
MT: So I understand you’re polyamorous?
ITV: I am, Monique is not.
MT: That seems a bit of a double-standard.
ITV: It’s Monique’s choice. I have to feed from multiple people. Feeding from one repeatedly would eventually kill them. For Monique, the blood I can give her is enough. And I can go get more from anyone. She can’t go get more vampire blood from just anywhere. So it just makes sense for me to be poly and her, not.
MT: That doesn’t seem like much of a choice. More like a biological necessity.
ITV: I mean, it is that. But I’ve offered to turn Monique. She doesn’t want that — at least not now. All of my partners know about her. That’s just ethical. She’s my girlfriend, my lover, my partner. They are friends, people I care about, but I don’t go home to any of them at the end of the night. And of course she knows about them. I’ve offered to have Monique join me — us — when my feeding partners are interested. She doesn’t want to. That’s fine with me. Having her there would be amazing, but she has no interest, so I go enjoy myself and come home to her.
MT: Forgive my saying so, but that seems like a lot of sex.
ITV: (smiles)
MT: (fidgets) How’s your relationship with Amanda?
ITV: Oh, complicated, as always. Most nights I want to wring her neck, and she’s not shy about telling me the same. She doesn’t take her own safety seriously enough, but I know she feels the same about me. I love her to pieces and I’m going to kill her. I think she’d tell you the same thing about me — except maybe without the love part.
MT: You don’t think she loves you?
ITV: Oh, I know she does. It’s hard to pick up most nights, though. We bicker a lot, but neither of us is going anywhere. I don’t know what I’d do without her.
MT: Do you regret changing her?
ITV: That’s complicated, too. My gut response is no, of course I don’t. But . . . I know she didn’t ask me to. She didn’t want to be a vampire. Now that she’s here, she gets frustrated sometimes. Overall she’s adapted well, and she seems happy most nights. Still, the transition was hard for her, and I did that. I forced her into being here with me, into being something she didn’t know existed and probably wouldn’t have chosen if she did.
MT: Is that hard for you?
ITV: It is. Not harder than losing her would have been.
MT: And how are things with Sebastian?
ITV: I adore him. It’s been so satisfying to see him come out of his shell and grow into more of a person. And he’s such a badass besides. Like some blood-thirsty Shaolin monk or something. Peace and love, and when that’s not possible, end the problem quickly and efficiently. He’s terrifying, but also my favorite.
MT: Any designs on getting into bed with him? He’s pretty hot.
ITV: Ew, no! Good god, that’d be like kissing my brother. You’re not wrong about how hot he is, but he’s my hot big brother. Never mind the age difference. Monique and I aren’t that far apart as vampires see things. Sebastian and I — he’s a lot older than me. It would be like a 90-year-old hopping into bed with his college-age sister. No. No way, no how.
MT: Even if —
ITV: NO.
MT: Okay. So last question then, what do you plan to be for next Halloween?
ITV: (Laughing) I hadn’t thought about it at all. I suppose you want a clever answer, but I usually just dress as something sexy — you know, sexy cat, sexy nurse, sexy bat — and hit the clubs. It’s such a good time to catch a bite. I have fun with it, but I keep it simple. I hope I didn’t disappoint you!