Author Theresa Meyers Shares her Vampire Book Research

How far will a writer go in researching for a vampire book? That’s the question posed in today’s post by author Theresa Meyers, whose newest vampire romance story is on sale now from Silhouette Nocturne Bites. Read on to learn more about how her journey into catacombs inspired A Vampire’s Mistress….

by Theresa Meyers, author of A Vampire’s Mistress (Silhouette Nocturne Bites, April 2010)

Writers do a lot of odd things to help them create a fictional world. And when it comes to vampires, that’s doubly true. Here’s the truth, I can handle my own blood just fine, but it completely creeps me out when I see other people’s blood. I don’t know why, it just gives me the willies. Given that, you might wonder how on earth a writer who creates stories about vampires does any research. I tend to research other things that don’t involve blood. That helps.

The research for my book A Vampire’s Mistress actually happened back in 2005 when I traveled from Seattle to Sicily to visit family. As part of our tour of the island we scoured the steps of Tourmina, we trekked to see the amazing mosaics in the historic ruins of the Roman Villa del Casale, a summer getaway from the third to fourth century B.C. that features bikini clad women (yes, they had bikinis and if you don’t believe me there’s a picture on my website I took at the bottom of the bio page).  We took a tour of the Duomo in Palermo, and we traveled through the famed catacombs that lie beneath the Capuchin Monastery filled with mummies and the remains from as far back as the 1600’s.

Now you might think a catacomb full of thousands of bodies is creepy. You’d be right. It is. But it’s also fascinating enough to make it a prime tourist destination. There’s a section filled with virgins clothed in their unused wedding finery of various centuries. More macabre is the children’s section, and in particular a little girl so well preserved she looks like a baby doll, down to her fine eyelashes and the pink satin bow in her brown curls. There are skeletons in frock coats and gloves and monks in cassocks. All in all hardly a place where you’d think to set a romance.

But my writer’s brain found it all so fascinating I couldn’t help but think of what would happen if you were being chased through the catacombs. Who would be chasing you and why? And that’s how A Vampire’s Mistress started.

I blended that with the whole world I’m creating around the vampires I write just for Nocturne. Next year you’ll get to meet the Cascade Clan out of Seattle (which involved a trip to the Seattle Underground which tours the remains of Seattle before they elevated the city streets almost two stories in the late 1800s. Humm, I seem to be noticing a trend.)

So how far will a writer go in researching for a vampire book? I might be willing to walk among the dead, but I seriously doubt I’d consider watching anyone who could down a pint of A positive. I hope you’ll check out A Vampire’s Mistress and let me know if you think I did the Capuchin catacombs beneath Palermo justice.