When discussing panel possibilities at LibertyCon, I kind threw a bunch of ideas into the ether.
Apparently, one of them got picked up.
So, of course, I'm moderating.
If It’s One thing That I Hate – All the Damn Vampires!
From the dread to the dark to the sexy to the sparkly - our fascination with the bloodsucking undead as an archetypal being is firmly ingrained in our culture. Declan Finn moderates.
With five people on the panel (not counting myself) this is going to be interesting. The 60 minute panels are closer to 50 or 55 minutes. I figure I may not have time for more than six or seven questions.
1) Let's go down the panel and have all of our panelists introduce themselves. If you could touch a little bit on your vampire "cred," that would be great.
2) There are so many varieties of vampires out there it's almost hard to keep track. There are the supernatural vampires -- be they Bram Stoker's "zombies with fangs," as his great grand nephew Dacre Stoke put it, the vampire courts of Jim Butcher, Larry Correia's, or even Sherrilyn Kenyon and Laurell K Hamilton. Then there are the superpredators -- the Atlantian nanotechnology of Lyndsay Sands, the vampires of Blade, or even, dare I say it, vampires that sparkle. What is your own, particular spin on vampires and vampirism? Supernatural or super predator? And why did you decide to go that way?
3) What is your favorite vampire story, or vampire type, that was not created by you? What was it about the particular spin that you enjoyed?
4) In all of the vampire media that you've been exposed to, what do you find is the worst execution of vampires? Please try to avoid any answers that involve the word "sparkling."
5) What are your thoughts on totally secularizing vampires that are supernatural? Where they have all the powers and abilities of the original Dracula, and yet have no relationship with crosses?
Even at one minute per person and per question, that's at least 25 minutes... thirty if I add a comment or two. This doesn't even count questions from the audience.
Though, the last two times I’ve moderated a vampire panel, no one on the panel wrote anything to do with vampires. So we’ll see what will happen.
If you have a question you want to ask any of these guys, let me know, and I'll see what I can squeeze in.
Meanwhile, if you're interested, have a glance at my own version of vampires with the Dragon award nominated series Love at First Bite.
Considering my vampires are rotting, demon haunted corpses, you could not pay me to be in that room.
"As you see them, are vampires ever on the Side Of Good, or capable of redemption? Or are they at best anti-heroes and horrors?"