LORD RUTHVEN’S LEGACY By Cassandra Pierce

Last weekend, my friend Rachael and I went on a book-hunting safari at two of the larger chain bookstores, which happily are less than a mile apart in our area. In each of them, we observed the same pattern: at one end were the scary vampire books, with creepy titles and covers that could give anyone nightmares. On the opposite side were the romance novels, featuring handsome guys whose piercing eyes and thick dark hair might inspire a different, and much more pleasing, kind of dream.

The covers of these books reflect the (probable) culmination of a literary trend that’s been in progress since 1819. The original sexy vampire was modeled on none other than Lord Byron,              whose personal physician John Polidori created Lord Ruthven for his story “The Vampyre.” Though he didn’t sparkle or pretend to be a high school student, Ruthven was a great hit with the fictional ladies of his Regency social circle. Unfortunately, those who fell under his spell (which included the story’s male protagonist) tended to end up dead.

In this respect, Ruthven would not have made an acceptable romance hero; the required happy ending could never come to pass. I suspect it is the Ruthven model people are thinking of (whether they know the character’s name or not) when they complain that today’s romantic vampire leads have become, in the words of another friend of mine, “emasculated.” Personally, I don’t find anything intrinsically “masculine” about killing, and alpha males seem to be plentiful enough in the vampire dating pool.

On the other hand, I do like a vampire hero with a bit of a sinister streak. No modern heroine would put up with Ruthven or Dracula as a mate (though apparently Bela Lugosi was deluged with fan mail from smitten women when Dracula was released in 1931), but as a reader I’ve become bored with novels in which the vampire hero is sweet, gentle, morally beyond reproach, and just all-around perfect. Vampires become indistinguishable from superheroes without a dark side and maybe a regrettable secret or two. I’ve never seen a romance featuring a caped crusader (though I don’t discount the possibility of someone trying one eventually)—to me, it seems that a story like that wouldn’t provide enough internal conflict or tension to make the novel interesting.

Romance is all about internal conflict and not external action, and maybe that’s the real difference between the traditional “horror story” featuring vampires and softer tales of vampires in love. It’s up to the fanged dreamboat in question to choose the right path, even when his base nature screams out for him to do otherwise. In my opinion, that’s about as appealingly masculine as a hero can get.

Cassandra Pierce’s vampire e-romance, HEIRS TO DARKISLE, is currently available from Siren-Bookstrand: http://www.sirenpublishing.com/cassandrapierce/

Readers can also visit her website at www.cassandrapierce.com and check her out on Facebook!