It
seems that the world has gone mad for vampires recently, with teenage girls
swooning in their droves over the ‘sparkly’ characters from the Twilight series,
and television producers rushing to cash in on the sexy, sharp-fanged craze.
But true horror fans are bemoaning the loss of hardcore, blood-sucking
monsters, as Reggie Jones, author of Division of the Damned explains.
“I
like my vampires ripping out throats and leaving terror in their wake. Not
wafting about handsomely” Jones confides with a grin. “The original Dracula,
for instance – or ‘Dracul’ was a real person – Vlad the Impalor. Vlad’s
preference for punishing his enemies was to impale them on a spike – entering the
body through the rectum and leaving it by the mouth. The corpses – often in
their thousands – would then be left as a warning to others. Whilst it’s
unlikely that he was drinking people’s blood, I think we can safely say that he
wasn’t the kind of glow-in-the-dark-matinee-idol that vampires are being
depicted as these days!”
Jones
knows his onions – or garlic in this case. He started writing Division of the
Damned three years ago and recently signed a publishing contract with a San
Fransisco based publishing house, Taylor Street Publishing.
“I
think they were excited to discover a vampire book that was a horror story and
not a romance” Jones muses. “In Division of the Damned, we have vampires,
Romania and the Nazis. It’s definitely not a book for little girls.”
Does
Jones think the ‘sparkly vampire craze’ is coming to an end?
“I
don’t know. There has always been something sexy about vampires, probably
because of the legacy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula – but there is definitely a
place in literature and film for the more hard-line, evil vampires. There was
nothing sexy about the creatures in Quentin Tarantino’s Dusk till Dawn, was
there? No, I’m sure Twilight will live on in the hearts of its fans, but there’s
definitely room for a new breed of nastier vampire to come forward” Jones
laughs.
As for us at Kings of Kindle, we think it's high time vampires stopped flirting with teenage girls and started gnawing on necks again. Division of the Damned is a well-paced, gory romp through Nazi controlled Eastern Europe and we think it's definately worth a spot on your e-reader.
Robert
Pattison had better watch out – it sounds like old-fashioned vampires are once
again sharpening their fangs...
Division
of the Damned by Reggie Jones is available now, from Amazon.
Charlotte Castle, 29th May 2012
