The vampire has come in and out of fashion a number of times since the creature first appeared in print. There are people who are more politically savvy and perhaps socio-economically astute than me who might draw some parallels with time frames where we’ve seen the vampire and others where we haven’t. My wild guess is that the vampire appears when there’s some sort of tension in society as a whole, something going on that leaves the average person not as relaxed as he/she wants to be. The vampire is a way to focus that tension on something that is Out There, but not the real issues. Psychologically speaking, a displacement. This can be personal or global. I think Twilight does a good job of capturing teen angst, which is why the books and movies are so popular with young people for the last while, and I see this as an example of finding a kind of metaphor in the vampire for what you’re going through. Also, I think the vampire represents decadence. In the novel Dracula and the other early novels and stories in English, and also in the first movies, what you see is this larger-than-life upper class vampire. Anne Rice’s Lestat fits the bill, as does Chelsea Quinn Yarbor’s Count St. Germain--both are elitist beings who live the dream life, the life most people dream about which comes with wealth, power and frequently notoriety. Vampires can have more than 15 minutes of fame.

We know that vampires have always viewed themselves as better than us mere mortals. They are our predators, we, a species with, we think, no predators. That alone gives them superiority.

But vampires now dwell in our current world, an inclusive venue. And we have invited them in as equals, to be part of society. This parallels a lot of what’s been happening in the world over the last couple of decades. The vampire is just another race or religion or culture. True Blood shows this very well. The vampire is the outsider we’ve invited to join us. Whether we can live together remains to be seen. As we evolve, the vampire also evolves. We’ll see where this goes. That was the major challenge I put to the writers in Evolve: You see where the vampire has come from, and what we have now. Speculate! What will this undead being be like in 5 years, 10, 100?

There are a couple of uniquely Canadian aspects to Evolve: This is the first all-Canadian, all-vampire anthology ever. There have been two vampire anthos in Canada that I know of, mostly composed of reprinted stories from the 1800s and early 1900s with maybe one original and modern story tossed in. Evolve is a first all-original. It’s never been done. Also, Canada is particularly well situated, with a foot in literature from the US and the other foot imbedded in European literature, both English and French. But Canada has its own literature, its own style. I think writers in this country take the best of both worlds, and in fact the best from the whole world. Canadian writers are well educated and well read, which means they know what they’re doing with words. Canada, being a bilingual country--regardless of whether or not an Anglophone speaks fluent French or a francophone speaks any English--there is still contact and exposure with the other on a daily basis, from two languages on cereal boxes and highway signs to television and radio stations. More than one language tends to expand consciousness. This seeps into writing. For me, Canadian writers approach their craft with a kind of seriousness, an intention about the art of writing, which is not to say all the writing is ‘serious’. But it does mean most writing in Canada is thoughtful. Writers here, I have noticed, have a firm grasp of the elements of writing and storytelling, especially regarding short fiction, such aspects as well-developed characters, strong plot and the idea that a story has to be satisfying as it delves into the reader and evokes a response.

I did not grow up in Canada so I still see all this as an outsider, which often brings a clearer and more critical eye to a subject. I believe the quality of writing in Canada is high, especially in the horror genre and in the vampire sub-genre. Readers only need read Evolve and they’ll understand what I mean. And I think readers who are unfamiliar with vampire fiction will be favorably impressed; these stories have almost a literary quality to them. They are intelligent and well-crafted. Evolve is not young adult, not Twilight, but it should appeal to Twilight readers/movie goers who are, after all, growing older.

The Old Undead, as you so cleverly put it, are the ones that came from the grave. If you check out old myths and legends, vampires really were resuscitated corpses, smelly, dirty, not pretty, and violent. They usually returned for the wife and kids and parents, almost a revenge motif. By the time the vampire reached the literary world with Dracula; Varney the Vampire; Carmilla and the short story “The Vampyre”, this being had developed a façade that hid these less-than-wholesome aspects and it’s via the façade that they mesmerized victims. It’s as if vampires really looked like the vampire in Murnau’s silent film Nosferatu, but wore the sophisticated face and cape of Bela Lugosi or later, Christopher Lee. I think with Anne Rice, Chelsea Quinn Yarbor and Fred Saberhagen--all three of whom published the first book in their vampire series about 1976--you get none of the corpse quality. And since the 1940s, we rarely see that hideous half-rotted being of the past. I would image that’s because we’re not used to seeing corpses. Funerals are not what they once were.

The New Undead are just like you and me. Of course, there is that little thing about drinking blood! But we wouldn’t necessarily recognize a vampire today because they blend so well with our society. And, due to a longer life, they know how to play societal games pretty well. This means they don’t need to mesmerize us anymore like cheap side-show mystics. Now, they just play us. We are manipulated by beings that can resemble bad boyfriends/girlfriends. And because they are attractive and sexy now and the façade of the past has morphed, what had been subliminal eroticism has turned into blatant erotica. And given our ‘global village’ of today, the vampire can go anywhere. He/she is not so interested in incestuously-tied victims, but more open to strangers, the world.

But weather the vampire wears a human mask or is just made astonishingly beautiful and appealing by the change, for us mortals it all amounts to pretty much the same thing. They look good. They are seductive. We fall for them. And most of the time it’s disastrous.

I love Sandra Kasturi’s poetry, always have. I’ve wanted to find a way to include one of her poems in something I’ve been part of and Evolve gave me that chance. She wrote the poem for the anthology.

As a kid, the first book I read on my own, meaning, the first I took out of the library on the school’s visit to the public library, was The Little Witch. It had a huge impact on me. The story is about a girl whose mother is a bad witch, but the girl is a good witch. I thought this book was some obscure thing I’d found in childhood but, on a whim, I looked it up a few years ago and discovered that the book has a huge fan following of people who read it as a child. It was in print for 40 years, so probably two generations of kids read this book. The author, Anna Elizabeth Bennett, only wrote one children’s book and a collection of poetry.

I think combining that book with the old b&w horror movies I watched on TV and the horror comics I read as a kid, all of it oriented me the way I’ve gone as a writer. My favorite supernatural creature has always been the vampire, consequently I’ve written a lot of vampire stories and novels. Evolve is the second vampire anthology I’ve edited. Some of my recent vampire stories are: “Bitches of the Night” in Blood Lite; “Traditions in Future Perfect” in The Bitten Word; “Vampire Anonymous” in Vampires: Dracula and the Undead Legions; “The Vechi Barbat” in By Blood We Live.

Of course! I think writers have to mine their own depths, as the saying goes. Writing is not an easy task, and it’s certainly not as financially rewarding as a regular job, so if you don’t love it, why do it?

One of the benefits of writing is being able to pull from within you whatever is there and work with that and, because it’s from within, it’s fascinating to the writer who is finding a way to explore this psychic prize by crafting it. Not everything in the psyche is pleasant but it can all be viewed at least a bit and worked with to some extent. Writing is like looking in a mirror. This doesn’t mean that a story is what the writer experienced exactly. Usually, it’s some element, a house he/she lived in--like the farm I lived in outside Napanee for nearly a year which is the farm house in my story “Root Cellar” (published in a variety of anthologies, including, The Vampire Stories of Nancy Kilpatrick). Or an emotion, for instance my feeling of getting older and how differently I view teenagers, which is what started me writing “Traditions in Future Perfect” (in The Bitten Word).

Writing has to first fascinate and engage the writer before it will mean anything to anyone else. And what’s more fascinating than oneself?

Oh, I like living dangerously. I think I’d go out with Eric on True Blood!

If you mean what I do in my spare time, well, I wish I had more spare time in which to tinker!

Besides writing, I teach writing courses on the internet for a college and I mentor for a university. But apart from all that, I love to travel and do as much of it as I can. My partner and I are relatively focused when we travel on specific interests: crypts, cemeteries, ossuaries, mummies and danse macabre artwork are on the list. He does photos and I use the experiences and information in my fiction and have also written non-fiction pieces about some of it. We try to do at least one big trip a year. This March it was the UK for three weeks. With only a day left before we had to get to the World Horror Convention in Brighton to launch Evolve, we found out about two little-known bone crypts in England. There are plenty of ossuaries in Europe but the UK and especially England are not big on such places. Like two lunatics, we rearranged everything and traveled great distances in 36 hours to visit each of these bone crypts. During the three weeks, we also zigzagged over the UK to see 4 of the 5 remaining danse macabre artwork panels. It’s crazy but completely revitalizing.

First, you need to visit Montreal! There’s no place quite like Montreal.

There is a gothic subculture here, not as large and active as when I first moved to Montreal about a dozen years ago, but Goth, like vampires, ebbs and flows. Toronto had a larger gothic culture and probably still does. Both cities had vampire undergrounds in the old days, with the Vampire Sex Club in Toronto and the Vampire Bar in Montreal, the World of Darkness role-playing games, and vampire fetishism, but all this goes back ten to fifteen ago. If there’s a vampyre underground in Montreal, it’s gone further underground and I’m not aware of it. However, there is a Vampire Ball coming up in Montreal, Sunday, September 5th. Its part of a huge fetish weekend. And there’s a Victorian picnic this summer, which blends Goth and vampires, usually held in Parc Lafontaine, central Montreal.

I’ve read a LOT about vampires. I have a library of maybe 2000 books, most fiction. I’ve read most of the old mythologies which seem to permeate almost every culture in the world. I like to think I’ve seen every vampire movie, but I may be overestimating a tad. Having had access to all this information allows me to see what’s been done so that I can figure out what hasn’t been done. For any writer, reading is the key. Rather than making a writer imitative, reading actually allows one to break new ground. Besides, there are (supposedly) only 36 plots extant in all of literature so no one is writing a new plot. What makes the plot fresh is bringing to it your own approach, your unique take on the events transpiring and how you can twist and turn them to create something imaginative, entertaining and, hopefully, unpredictable.

Over the last 24 months I’ve been out of town 24 times, written a short story a month, taught courses and edited two anthologies, Tesseracts Thirteen with David Morrell, and Evolve. I’m now committed to writing another bunch of stories, I will be editing another anthology and I have a graphic novel coming out (yes, vampire!) in August. I’m still teaching courses online and mentoring. As well, I already have four trips planned for this year. I desperately need time to work on a novel because I’ve begun three and want to finish at least one of them. I’m taking May to focus on novel writing almost exclusively so that I can move one of these books along. Naturally, I need more than one month, but it’s a start and I find when I’m really into something, I make time. The massage therapist who pounds my computer neck and stiff back muscles until I again resemble a human being can attest to that.

I own a Dracula Punching Bag.

I always give the same advice. Persevere. This is a tough business. You need to keep writing and keep sending out work and eventually, if you persist, something will happen. And you’ll also get better as you go. Rejection is normal in this realm. A lot of rejection. You can’t let yourself be frightened away by a rejection letter or two or twenty. You need to toughen up without becoming hard, and you’ve got to keep going.