Interview With The Vampire Series Quotes

Back in 2010, I introduced fairies and fantasy creatures as having silver blood in Bitter Frost and then Silver Frost. This silver blood is what makes them fey versus human or any other creatures. Now in Ring of Ice when there is a convergence of the fey and the dark ones (vampires), you the resemblance between these two race of creatures, which is the next Frost books. After the film release of Bitter Frost of course!

Although I loved horror, I wasn’t writing horror then. And sometime between elementary school and graduate school, my characters had transformed from young Black characters on fantastic and futuristic adventures to white characters having quiet epiphanies. I had wonderful writing teachers in college, but somehow with all of that exposure to “canon,” I had lost track of my own voice and was imitating writers whose stories were nothing like the ones hidden in my heart. I was a young Black woman raised by two civil rights activists—attorney John Due and Patricia Stephens Due—and I had grown up in the newly integrated suburbs of Miami-Dade County. I had never seen my life reflected in fiction; I felt like an imposter when I tried to write Black rural or city characters. I often wish I had discovered the writing of Octavia E. Butler sooner, but I had not. Representation matters. Without the work of other authors writing in a similar vein, I had lost sight of myself entirely. Then I discovered Mama Day by Gloria Naylor—finally, a book by a highly respected Black woman writer with metaphysical themes! Mama Day helped nudge me past my fear that I could not be a respected writer, especially as a Black writer, if I wrote about the supernatural. During this time, I also interviewed Anne Rice for my newspaper, since she was scheduled to appear at the Miami Book Fair International. I read one of the novels in her Vampire Chronicles series to prepare, and I also found an article about her in a highly respected magazine suggesting that she was wasting her talents writing about vampires. My worst fear realized! During that telephone interview, I asked Rice how she responded to criticism like this and then listened carefully for her answer—not for my readers, but for me. Rice actually laughed. “That used to bother me,” she said, “but my books are taught in universities.” Then she explained that by writing about the supernatural, she was liberated to discuss big themes like life, death, and love. Touché. Between Hurricane Andrew, Mama Day, and Anne Rice’s (unwitting) advice, I wrote The Between in nine months, looking past my own fears as a writer to follow my true passions. My protagonist, Hilton James, is a Black man who lives in the suburbs. His family reminded me of my own.

Welcome to the Hellmouth. An emotionally safe place to be? No way. Because on the lot, and in the interviews, and through the day-to-day encounters we had with the cast and crew, we came to understand the dedication everyone connected with Buffy brings to their craft. They talked about having to spar with their agents over accepting positions at Buffy (“the vampire what? Are you nuts?”). They shared with us the painful truth that when the twenty-minute presentation of Buffy was shown to “the suits” around town, no one wanted it. It was passed over. It was not picked up. And then, finally, twelve episodes were ordered so that Buffy could serve as a mid-season replacement series. Hardly a sign of enthusiasm or confidence. It was the critics who found Buffy first, and then the fans. And it was a huge, diverse audience of fans: horror devotees, teenagers, Boomers—anyone who watched the show and realized this wasn't just about icky things that go bump in the night. This was a show about the heart…by people who were pouring their hearts and souls into it. A shared vision.