Blood and Voices

It's 1am on Sunday morning. You're wide awake. You can't sleep. Your mind is just too active.

What do you do?

Write a vampire story of course!

Hey it worked for me. After writing the last entry, I had an incredibly creative splurge yesterday afternoon, spurred on by an online conversation with a Facebook friend (big respect to you Mr. L!). While working on 'The Scent' (which is beginning to take a more acceptable form), I got a idea to make a collection of five supernatural stories based on the five senses. I already had sight and smell covered ('Shadow' and 'The Scent') now I needed three others. Then it came to me (in the early hours) that a vampire tale would suit the sense of taste perfectly. And once this was in my mind I couldn't switch it off (and never was the title of this blog more justified). So I crept out of bed (so as not to wake Stu up), fired up the MacBook and committed the story to the hard drive.

Unusually for me, I wrote the story from start to finish in one go - normally I tend to start off with key events and expand out from there. But this one seemed flow naturally, and I found I had pretty much the whole thing written down in less than an hour. It was based on an idea I had many years ago where a young man is visited by his best friend who is now a vampire. This was well before the likes of the Twilight saga or even Interview With The Vampire; I think it was more likely inspired by Tobe Hooper's superior TV movie Salem's Lot which scared me shitless as a child. Those scenes with the children floating outside the window... oh my god!!

I guess what also attracted me at the time was the homoerotic imagery associated with this scenario; to a young gay boy the idea of one man necking another was pretty sexy (and back then I had to envision my own homoerotic images, none being available to me!). That too found it's way into the story, which I wrote first person narrative, from the perspective of the vampire. I haven't gone back to it yet (been pretty much comatose for much of the day) and may find it's a pile of shite that needs completely reworking (or binning). Or maybe 1am in the morning will prove to be my peak creative time. In which case my working life is buggered.

Stu blearily emerged from the bedroom for a slash at about 3am and eyed me suspiciously, feverishly typing in the darkness of his living room. I had to reassure him that was writing fiction, rather than perusing porn or chatting with guys on Gaydar. I'm not sure if he was convinced.

And then, just as I was about to retire, another idea came to me. A while back when I was visiting St Sepulchre's Cemetery in Oxford I had another idea for a short story, which I immediately had to commit to paper. Purchasing a cheap pad and a pen from a local store on Walton Street,  I settled with a coffee in Manos Deli and scribbled some notes. I had no idea where to take it - all I had was a young homeless guy chasing his dog who had bounded into the overgrown cemetery (which actually happened as I was leaving the place - at least I assumed this young man was homeless). But it felt like the start of something.

Then it came to me last night that this could form the basis of a 'hearing' sense story, where the young guy ventures into the cemetery to retrieve his dog only to find it sitting on a fallen tombstone with disembodied voices issuing from it. I was beginning to creep myself out at this point and also it was getting on for four in the morning. So I finally crawled in next to Stu. But even then my mind wouldn't cease it's infernal synaptic exchange of ideas - it was too busy thinking of what to put in this blog entry.

By the way, St Sepulchres is a really lovely little cemetery. Here are some pics I took of it when I visited: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oxoboy/sets/72157626556592729/