Blood Fetish, Shame, And Necrophilia

Or the unique problems of writing "horror romance", in the American publishing industry. Especially if rather than horror, your work ends up being labelled as Literary:

I wrote Anna-Marie With Her Shotgun, at a point when I was still discovering my own sexuality, although it bares no resemblance to that of the book (thankfully). But it's curious how American culture is changing with the times, and things that were previously considered unfilmable are not adapted not just for adults, but for the Young Adult market as well. You'll find books like Warm Bodies (something I am still more curious than I was, then when Twilight came out). Its curious why Warm Bodies wasn't unfilmable.

In the context of my own work, it is about a girl with a mysterious illness, known informally as the "vampire gene", as suppose to vampire being a mark of the non dead. She works as part of the "French-American Guillotine Family" similar in nature to a modern female version of Charles Henry Sanson. (You should check out the Manga Innocent by the way, it's amazing.)

She falls in love with a girl whom murdered her two brothers and her father, for reasons best left to the imagination unless you actually read it. Anna-Marie, Hemato-Tomato's girlfriend, is reincarnated from the 1830s in France, (think how Dracula is loosely based on Vlad The Impaler), and commits the murders again. But this time, she's not acquitted, but rather is actually guillotined do to changing cultural values in executing minors in the United States.

The setting (time line) is suppose to be reminiscent of Occupy Wall Street New York, however the actual location is my own home city of Chattanooga, that has a fairly sizeable French embassy. Except that it's 2019 rather than then in the early 2010s. And Marine La Pen won the election, and restarted the French empire.

In writing it, it kind of gave me a temporary mental breakdown. I must thank Serge Benanti for bringing to light an obscure historical case mainly known in France, that served as the inspiration for my "Vampire's bride."

Everyone pretty much knows the Lizzie Borden case, but I'm not sure how many people know of this specific case: https://unknownmisandry.blogspot.com/2016/02/anne-marie-boeglin-17-year-old-serial.html

I really wish more people knew about this case, and wrote about it. It's every bit as fascinating as Lizzie Borden, and other cases about girls whom murder as children.

One of my fears in writing it, was whether it would be unpublishable in the United States, or worse completely unfilmable. But given the nature of book like Warm Bodies, I guess I'm in better company than I was expecting.

I’m hoping my next #splattertopia will be a lot easier to write.