Horror, fantasy and romance

Although Mr Darcy, Vampyre is a paranormal sequel to Pride and Prejudice there are a lot of other influences on the book. They come from a variety of other genres including horror, fantasy and romance, and I thought I'd blog about some of the horror influences today.

I'm not sure if Buffy the Vampire Slayer counts as horror but as regular blog readers know, it was Buffy that first gave me the idea of Darcy as a vampire (read more about it on my brilliant friend Amanda Ashby's blog here)

Other horrror influences are Polidori and Byron (see below) and of course Dracula. Less obvious might be H P Lovecraft, but he definitely influenced certain aspects of the style as a kind of Lovecraftian eeriness seeps into some of the chapters of Mr Darcy, Vampyre.

I didn't realise this when I was writing the book, although I've always adored the language of Lovecraft and the atmosphere he generates, but once I'd written the book it was obvious to me and so I went back and put in a gibbous moon as an homage: gibbous moons often appear in Lovecraft's works.

I love the word gibbous. Like much of Lovecraft's vocabulary, it suggests all sorts of horrible things - it always makes me think of gibbering monsters - but in fact it's perfectly innocent, meaning more than half but less than fully illuminated.

I also tried to include the word squamous, another brilliantly evocative word much used by Lovecraft, but I couldn't fit it into Mr Darcy, Vampyre. It will, however, fit brilliantly into Sense and Sensibilty and Sea Monsters As the author says that he, too , was inspired by Lovecraft, I'm hoping to see it there!