About the Series
The Vampires of New England series is set in a universe almost exactly like our own--and the differences may not be the ones that you're assuming. There is more to the (so-called) Real World than most people believe. My fictional universe extends a few of those realities, and I leave it to my readers to decide where the misty boundaries between truth and fiction fall.
This is an open-ended, non-linear series of stories (like The Chronicles of Narnia, although that is the one and only similarity between my books and those of C.S. Lewis). The first three books in the series each introduce one of the three major vampires and their partners or "families." Vampires know very little about why they exist and what makes them the way they are. As the series progresses, the vampires will learn more about their origins, connections, and why they're different from one another in some critical ways.
Although the vampires of New England have witnessed several centuries of history, the stories I tell are set within recent times. Vampires live in the present day, and look forward to the technological and environmental changes of the future with the same doubt and eagerness that all of us do. Some of the changes we anticipate will require some very creative adaptations on the part of vampires, and it remains to be seen if they'll be successful.
About Vampires
The vampires of New England are few in number, scattered and self-sufficient. The eldest of them, Johanna, is about five hundred years old, but she claims no authority over anyone except her own family. Vampires have no underground culture, institutions, hierarchies, creation myths or millenia-old Elders to bow to or rely upon. They are fully integrated into human society, unrecognized for what they are. They have no identifying characteristics to give them away as vampires, and they survive by their own resourcefulness and perseverence. They hold down jobs if they don't have financial assets, and they maneuver their way through the same legal and social obligations that their human neighbors do.
Like the vampires of folklore, the vampires of New England are former human beings who passed through death, but found that their journey brought them back to existence on earth, instead of continuing on as souls the way nearly all other humans do. They are earthbound, but not biological or even physical in the same way that a living creature is. What this means is different for each group of them, and they will gradually piece together the clues and find out why this is.
Like the vampires of folklore, the vampires of New England have no fangs, walk around in full daylight without concern, eat and drink anything they want, and tend to be very enthusiastic about sex. They must drink blood, and they are able to cause any living mammal to start bleeding by touching its skin, which vampires call opening. The injury this causes must be closed or the victim will bleed to death. Each vampire group has a different innate power or skill. They all can blot out their victims' memories when they are in direct contact, but they have no extraordinary mind control or psychic abilities beyond those that living humans can attain. Their victims experience a sort of paralysis when the vampires drink from them, which makes struggling impossible and also eliminates the need for the vampires to subdue their victims by force, or kill them. Vampires have enhanced senses, strength and agility, they're immune to illness and toxins and they heal completely and rapidly. Healing from a major injury takes them several days at least, however--they can't instantly reconstruct themselves.
Being former humans, vampires crave the same physical pleasures and comforts that they did in life. They sleep in beds, not coffins, and they like companionship, including human companionship. They retain compassion and respect for human beings and are at least as principled and socially responsible as they were when alive. They have no special needs except blood--they don't need "native earth" or hallowed ground to sleep in. But vampires are drawn to certain locations from a deep wish for continuity and a connection to those things in life that are slowest to change: the bones and stones of the earth itself. The vampires of New England may wander the globe, but they will always return to their home.
