Twilight And The Real Vampire

Young adult vampire romance. What’s not to like?

If you’re one of the three people who haven’t heard the news, the novel Twilight is about to leap onto the big screen. Written by Stephenie Meyer, Twilight is a novel about vampires, love and adolescent angst that jumped to the top of bestseller lists everywhere. The opening of the film version is the event of the decade for millions of fans, young and old.

You might wonder what this rage in vampire fiction does to avowed real vampires such as me. I’ve found it results in a barrage of e-mails asking questions about real vampires and how real vampires compare to Edward Cullen and friends in Twilight.

I mean, I get it. Dracula was first published in 1897 and has never been out of print—an unheard of feat in the publishing world. Something in the vampire archetype—the outsider, the rogue, the hypersensitivity—appeals to human beings on a very deep and visceral level.

Is the vampire archetype anything like a real vampire? That depends on the vampire. I represent a certain swath of the real vampire community that embraces certain ideas of what the real vampire is or is not. This swath does not include the entire community as one monolithic whole.

I say this to qualify what I offer as being one set of answers that are the answers from my point of view. You may find another real vampire thinking differently, and this is to be hoped for is such a diverse community. I can only speak from my own experience, and that’s what I intend to do here.