Paranormal Romance #2

The Living and the Undead

Welcome! This is the second article in a series on paranormal romance (my favorite genre to write). Today we’re looking at a modern romance classic: vampires and humans. So let’s light some blood-red candles and get started.

Paranormal Romance #1: The Living and the Dead: Ghosts and Humans

What’s your (blood) type?

Your standard vampire comes with a few stock traits: ageless immortality, a need for blood, heightened strength and speed, an aversion to sunlight and religious items, and of course, otherworldly beauty. But you can modify these tropes however you like. In the real world, lovers come in all shapes and sizes. Perhaps instead of increased speed, your vampires have mojo for music. Maybe they get moonburns instead of sunburns, and feed on something other than blood—maybe you have a vampire who’s even allergic to blood! And it’s up to you how alien you want your vampire to be. Do they blend in well with humans or do they give everybody a sudden urge fill their pockets with garlic? Do they try to blend in well with humans or do they turn into a mist to escape social situations? And remember, you don’t even have to have the standard origin story: your vampire doesn’t even have to be undead.

(Check out some unusual vampires that might make good characters.)

A dark, brooding presence

Vampires also tend to have a stock personality, which can be summed up as angst. It must surely be difficult to be immortal and watch your friends die of old age and to be ostracized by society for feeding on humans (even consensually). But really, vampires could be anybody, including those with naturally sunny, upbeat personalities. A vampire could be a travel blogger, using their immortality to see the world. Maybe they’re a paleontologist because it makes them feel young to work with creatures far older than themselves. Maybe they just want to develop a super-strong sunscreen so they can go surfing when all the hot chicks (gender neutral) are at the beach, or discover a blood substitute so they can be an astronaut who doesn’t need to snack on their space station buddies.

Source of life

Now onto the other side of the relationship: standard character tropes for humans in a vampire romance include beautiful and naive virgins, vampire hunters (naturally), and a personal favorite of mine, reincarnated former lovers. Historians are another common choice, as in my gay vampire romance Tollense. But again, anybody could presumably fall in love with a vampire, from a theoretical physicist to a theme park tour guide. Your human character could believe vampires are fictional, or have been raised with forbidden occult knowledge of the undead. Because this is a romance, your human will eventually choose to be in a relationship with a vampire, but it might take them a while to get there. And even if they discover they have an unexpected creepy creature kink, their family or society in general might be against it. And there’s also that pesky immortality thing. (More on that below.)

A bloody good romance

Arguably the most important mechanic of a vampire/human romance is blood. The human in this relationship is not just a lover, but a source of food. Which can be really hot and/or really weird. Often in vampire stories, blood-drinking is a highly sexualized experience, and usually emotional as well. There are all sorts of fun ways to get to the blood drinking stage of the story. Common favorites include an incognito injured vampire who needs blood to survive but won’t take it without permission, a vampire who doesn’t often drink human blood but finds their love interest bloody distracting (pun intended), or a smitten vampire who finally gets up the courage to tell their crush the truth about themselves. You could have humans who sell their blood to vampires, whether bottled or from the source, and vampires with favorite blood types. And then there’s vampire blood, which might give humans immortality and/or turn them into vampires. Which brings us to our final topic:

Death is only the beginning

Many vampire romances end with the mortal becoming immortal, either as a vampire or a human somehow protected from age and death (we should be so lucky). A more angsty ending has the human eventually die of old age. If the human does choose vampirism, some stories posit that two vampires can’t feed on each other’s blood, so their relationship has to change. That can be good or bad—maybe they’re both honestly over the lover-as-food thing, or they might just buy a bigger bed and invite a friendly human or two. Human characters who want to become vampires often have a yearning that immortality can satisfy, like travel, study, mastery of a musical instrument, or just an adventurous spirit. The kind of person who can promise forever and really mean it. And if that’s not romantic, what is?

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