“The Philosophical Vampire” – Preface

I happened on tomorrow’s post during a lunch break this week. Intending to raise my creativity from the grave in the midst of a hectic workday, I carried my exercise book to the library and flipped to what I thought was a blank page. Instead, I found the bulk of a conversation with Julian Scott-Tyler, a sort of preternatural episode of Philosophy Quest in which he smashes the myth of the brooding vampire to smithereenies. This is amusing because when I first met him, he was the quintessential brooding blood hunter, the conflicted hero prone to bouts of romantic drama, at war with what he was and the one who had made him. Great fun at the time. Nicole was writing a poetic cycle called Eros American and almost every poem within it reminded me of Jules—dark, glittering, savagely beautiful, crazy sexy, and absolutely ruthless in possession of his prey.

He still has those qualities. Perhaps his most admirable trait, however, is his flexibility. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating that he fits as easily into the modern world as he did in the Victorian age or seventeenth century Europe. This flexibility has saved his sanity in ways that elude many of his kind—and many of mine, too. I have also noticed that he looks over my shoulder when I’m reading Anne Rice, as if he’s comparing himself to Lestat and chuckling softly under his breath—at who, which or what, I am unsure and he is not saying.

Or he wasn’t.

This conversation resulted from the recent resurgence of the Rice vampires, most notably during Lestat’s ardent lamentation of what terrible fate must await his lost and aching soul. I’d be reading merrily along and suddenly Jules would cough or snort or sigh in my ear. Fed up, I finally dared him to tell me what the heck he was thinking because a major difference between Lestat and my Julian is that Julian thinks. He acts when he must, but he’s no James Bond. He reads and he ponders—and he’s come up with a fair argument for getting out of this estate with his soul intact.

Enjoy.