Authors Dan Klefstad and Eva Vertrice love vampires — and that doesn’t end with the books they write. They love all things surrounding these creatures of the night, which they discuss in great detail on their podcast “Vamp Chat with Dan & Eva.”
Klefstad and Vertrice spoke with LPM’s Breya Jones about why vampires are so enduring in media, popular depictions of vampires, and what they would add to the vampire literary canon if they could.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Breya Jones: What kinds of things can listeners expect to hear when they hear “Vamp Chat with Dan & Eva?”
Dan Klefstad: We try to keep it under an hour, but within that time frame, we have an A segment where we're going to interview someone. Then for the B segment, I wanted something that was different from fiction, and Eva agreed right away that we should explore the fanged folklore aspect of it. That's what we call it. And then the final segment we just thought, let's have some fun, let's nerd out on either a favorite TV show or film. And we've been having just a huge amount of fun with that as well.
Eva Vertrice: We have a segment bringing in other authors; we like bringing in other people who like it. You know, we're not ashamed to say, “Hey, we love vampires.” We love it. Other people love it. Let's talk about it. Let's not hide the shadows.
BJ: So you’re vampire authors – humans who write about vampires, not vampire novelists. What first drew you to vampires in general?
EV: I've loved them from the get-go, from the time I was very little. I think the very first time I saw one was in the movie “Salem's Lot” by Stephen King. I just remember that was just the creepiest scene for me as a young kid, and it just drew me in. And I love everything about them. I love the fact that they have morphed into so many different iterations through the years. I love that some of them are sparkly, some of them are dark, some of them are handsome, and some of them are not so handsome. And I love the mystique around it.
DK: I started out, you know, as a kid watching Bela Lugosi as Dracula, and then followed by Christopher Lee, and then all the other great Draculas. Also in high school, I started reading some of the books that have now become classics. Eva, you mentioned “Salem's Lot” by Stephen King. I was also very interested in Anne Rice around the time that I was a senior in high school or maybe going to college, and her book “Interview with the Vampire” was, I think, exceptional.
BJ: We know there’s no shortage of vampire portrayals in media. You all have already mentioned quite a few. What do you think it is about vampires that have given them such an enduring place in our society?
DK: From a young kid, when I was watching Dracula, I realized right away that the vampires were always portrayed as stronger than we humans, sexier than we humans, and they just kept going on, living, unless something catastrophic happened, like a stake through the heart, exposure to the sun or whatever, and I just realized that they had all these qualities. If you're a young person with a vivid imagination, wouldn't you want to live forever? Wouldn't you want to be stronger and sexier than everybody else? Of course, you would.
EV: And like I said, they're malleable. I was thinking of “The Lost Boys.” I mean, David and Michael, come on — to have no parents, to be living on your own and have this strength and this devil-may-care attitude, and it's adaptable to every generation. Even in “Twilight,” you know, Stephenie Meyer got a lot of grief for making them sparkly, but I actually applauded her because it was something new. You can take the myths, and you can take the lore, and you can take all of the powers, and you can basically, a la carte, pick and choose what you want in and you can make up some new ones and still have the core monster, still have the core questions. Do I want to be stronger, bigger, sexier, bolder, whatever? And what would I trade to get that?
BJ: You’ve mentioned a couple of times that vampires are just more attractive than humans. So I have to ask: When did vampires become canonically hot?
DK: You see it in “Dracula,” the Bram Stoker 1897 novel. He's not only a menacing, even somewhat demonic, kind of creature, but he has kind of an erotic magnetism to him, which would certainly have been noticed by Victorian readers during that time. And then you see, I guess, some of the iterations in film over the last, you know, over the last several decades.
EV: Now, see, for me, I'm far less intellectual about it. For me, it was the club scene [in] “Fright Night”— Chris Sarandon, I mean, the moment that he had the apple at the beginning, standing on the top of the stairs. I was like, I'm done.
BJ: Something that both of you feature in your novels are powerful female vampires. I think we, as a culture, are used to seeing men as vampires, alluring or forcing women away [from their lives]. What made you want to flip that trope some?
EV: The reason why I chose it is because when you look at the landscape of vampire lore and vampire novels and movies, it is traditionally male, and the females always have that supporting character, the bride, or they're the ones who were turned unwillingly, or they turned because they had to be with their vampire lover.
My character was brutally turned, there was no fantasy, there was no romance, there was nothing around it. But she embraced it, and for 860 years, she's been what she's been, and she's really thrived in doing that. And I just wanted to see that side of it for once.
DK: I too, like Eva, noticed, well, we've got a lot of these alpha male vampires. How many iterations of Dracula do we have in movies and books? I wanted to explore a different aspect of working for a vampire, and it's not just like a Renfield master slave kind of thing.
