Vampires & Blight Rain

The vampires in "The Night the Vampires Came" are the same vampires that are in "Darkly Devoted." The only difference is that "Darkly Devoted" is a paranormal romance, and "The Night the Vampires Came" is horror.

It's funny, for many years, as I wrote "Darkly Devoted," my readers never understood that the Dark Waters was turning people into vampires and not the act of being bitten or having a blood transfusion. I stated this over and over, and very few people understood that my vampires were different. I decided to write a book where I clarified this principle on the first page.

The idea for "The Night the Vampires Came" came from a dream I had while I was writing "Darkly Devoted." I suppose I see the world in a certain way. Sometimes it's hard for me to write romance because my mind just naturally leans toward horror.

While writing about Remin in "Darkly Devoted," I had a nightmare one night that the Black Waters was falling from the skies. I was trapped on a bus and couldn't convince the bus driver to move. I ran around the bus screaming that we would all die if we didn't move.

In a way, I'm grateful for that dream. I think in writing "Night the Vampires Came," people finally started to understand that my vampires were different.

As for the idea that people became vampires through Dark Waters, I really can't say where that idea came from. I've told myself stories about Manna City for so long that I don't remember where that idea originated.

Amusingly, I think I gave Blake in "Darkly Devoted" my irrational fear of vampires. Funny story, you give a male character a fear of vampires, and the readers cheer for him as he learns to harness his fears. You give a female character a fear of vampires, and people call her stupid for not falling into the arms of every vampire that glances at her twice.

A lot of vampire writers probably had some fear of vampires as a child. I remember growing up, for some reason, I was absolutely terrified of vampires. I used to sleep with garlic under my pillow, and I was certain my stuffed animals with their beady eyes turned into vampires at night. It didn't help that my playroom was in the attic, and I had to climb up this small narrow stairwell to get there. The lighting wasn't the greatest at night, and it was hard to get out of there quickly.

I wanted my characters to confront their fear during the course of this series. I've struggled constantly to write about this journey in Vivienne, but for some reason, few people ever took her fear seriously. I'm constantly defending why she's afraid and why she can't just go running to Blake, who can make everything okay again.

When I gave this fear to Blake, suddenly, it was accepted as a real issue. His fear is an acceptable motivating factor to propel the story forward. No one ever comments on Blake's POV and says, "Well, maybe if he just went to his mom or Vivienne, they'll make all his problems go away."

It's funny because later in the series when he's afraid, he sometimes reaches out to her in his imagination.

I think out of all the emotions of human existence, I enjoy writing about fear the most. I enjoy writing about fear because it's the emotion I feel the most. I love writing about all the ways humans try to delude themselves out of fear, but my favorite thing to do as a writer is to force the character to face their fears and to see that it is really as bad as they thought it was.

It's fear that motivates his character to do everything that he does. In "Darkly Devoted," he makes his fortune and becomes a vampire because he's afraid she won't love him without both of those things. In the end of that part of the series, he drives her away because he's terrified she won't love him for who he is underneath it all. He's scared to share his work with her, and he's even more scared that she can't love a man who isn't effortlessly charismatic and handsome like Julian.

As for Ailith, she's a lot like Vivienne in a way, except her story is set in a different culture, and there are more scientific elements than fantasy elements within it. I think in "The Night the Vampires Came," the cultural aspects of it add to the fear. It's like the English version of "The Grudge," where the protagonists are trapped in Japan. They are not only haunted by a ghost, but they are forced to navigate a foreign culture to defeat it. In "The Night the Vampires Came," not only is Ailith a character of a different background than some of the readers, but she also forces the reader to empathize with her fear in that she's forced to navigate a demon attack while living in a society that doesn't accept her.

My favorite part of writing "Night the Vampires Came" was all the philosophical discourse on death and the afterlife. I think this was an element I wasn't able to bring into "Darkly Devoted." I'm sure if I tried, the readers would say, "But who cares about death? Tell us more about the vampire billionaire." I mean, that's fine, but I have to say, my very favorite part about writing Blake's POV in the context of "The Night the Vampires Came" instead of "Darkly Devoted" is that I finally got to delve into his fear of death. In this book, he's constantly reminded of his mortality because he's getting old and his body is getting weak. I don't have to pretend he's a hot, ripped bodybuilder with ten-pack abs anymore. I remember rolling my eyes as I wrote Julian reflecting on how tall Blake was in "Darkly Wed," and the answer was, "The tallest goddamn guy in human existence without having Marfan's Syndrome." That's fine because, from Julian's POV, Blake is impossibly tall and intimidating.

Is it the truth? Hardly.

In "Night the Vampires Came," he's just an average old man with no abs. I absolutely loved how he appeared in Ailith's eyes. He's just an average man, and it's okay that from Vivienne's POV, he's still a perfect man with a perfect body. But, from the POV of everyone else, he's just an ordinary man. I think it makes "Darkly Devoted" even better because, in a way, he's beautiful and perfect because you're reading the book through her eyes.

I loved writing about Ailith's relationship with Holly as well. Neither of them is the "most beautiful girl in existence without being aware of their beauty." Holly is athletic and tough as nails, and that's a trait I don't often see in books about Asian women.

Going back to my vampires, when I was a child, my mother had a poster of Chinese pop stars hanging in the stairwell to the attic. I was always certain those beautiful women with their ever-smiling faces and dead eyes turned into vampires at night. If I went to the attic after dark, they'll jump down from the pages of that Chinese supermarket calendar and sink their teeth into my neck.

I think this is why in "Popstar & Me," there are portions where Sara talks about acupuncture and the deadly wetness of the humidity of the Shanghai air. The story suddenly starts to veer into "The Night the Vampires Came."

I think at that part, I had to slap myself and tell myself, "Okay, get a hold of yourself! This is a teen romance! There are no vampires in this one!"

I'm sure Sara and Fang are super relieved they were saved from an attack by vampires because of genre limitations.

A lot of being a writer or an artist is seeing the world in a certain way that is different from everyone else. I would love to see romance and billionaires eager to rescue me into a life of luxury everywhere I looked, but unfortunately, I was cursed to see monsters.

It's funny because as the events unfolded back during the COVID lockdown, my readers would post on my message board things like, "hey, we see what's happening in NYC. We can't wait to see how this inspires you to destroy Manna City in a later book."

That is a message that is near and dear to my heart. I guess I finally felt seen that my primary emotion is fear. Yes, I take things that would make other people just a little scared, and I blow them up on an epic scale.

And yes, dear reader, I will destroy Manna City soon enough.

But that funny story aside, I honestly wish I were better at writing about sexy, aggressive, hot-headed men. It's tough because, personally, I have never loved a man such as that. It makes me terrified that the reader will come and point out that I'm an imposter. I'm pretending to write about feelings I've never felt about people whose company I wouldn't be able to stand in real life.

Oftentimes, I think to myself in this business of writing, "what I wouldn't give to be able to see the world like that." Anyone who can do that is truly gifted.

However, sometimes we have to accept our own gifts no matter how weird they are.

That is who I am; after a while, you have to write about what you truly feel. Of course, there's always the fear of being different and that people won't like what they see. But that's art. It's about the courage to say something that hasn't been said before.

It's funny because I wrote "The Night the Vampires Came" and "Fake It All The Way" simultaneously. Sometimes I would write one chapter of each book on the same day. I think I knew back when I was writing these books that I was writing one very weird book and one very mainstream book. I guess "Night the Vampires Came" was my therapy book so that I could pour all my tropey romance, holiday cheer, and happy endings into "Fake It All The Way."

If you asked me back then how I thought each other these books would perform, I would say, "I think 'Vampires Came' would get ten views max, and 'Fake It All The Way' would define my career as a writer."

I guess "Vampires Came" is my "Picture of Dorian Gray." I needed to leave my darkness there to channel my light into "Fake It All The Way."

I don't think I could ever have expected that it would be "Vampires Came" that would define my career. It would be the book that would land me my agent, and it would be the book that made me truly believe that I may have a future in writing.

It shows that sometimes there's still room in this world to be yourself.

I'm so very happy that this book has found a viewership here. It really shows me that sometimes (as they say in Mulan), it's okay to be true to yourself.