The main purpose of the annual Women in Horror Month is to recognize the achievements and contributions of women in the genre, to raise them from the obscurity to which history has so habitually relegated them in all their endeavors.
My contribution to this year’s effort is to highlight the sub-genre of horror I favor the most – urban fantasy.
And in this first post, stories from the 1980s – 2000s revolving specifically around vampires. These are some of the earliest stories which featured vampires as something other than monstrous killers.
Their writers also happen to be the writers who’ve wielded the strongest influence on my own storytelling – and the majority of them are women.
In the 1990s, a movie hit the theaters that changed my perception of the horror genre. And when I read the book, Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, it opened my eyes to a side of horror which fascinated rather than terrified me. Always an avid reader, I quickly embraced its more subtle assault on my senses.
I wasn’t the only one affected by Rice’s work. The vampire genre exploded in that decade, and there was no shortage of titles on bookstore and library shelves. Modern twists and viewpoints freshened the legend, bringing endless variety to what had been a stagnant theme.
Though I enjoyed works like Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula and George R. R. Martin’s Fevre Dream, it was the vampire fiction written by women that impressed me the most. Several left their mark upon me, and their books still cling to my walls.
Nancy A. Collins‘ Sonja Blue series, beginning with Sunglasses After Dark, features a female vampire—the first I encountered—as she kicks ass on a continual barrage of supernatural bad guys.
In Nancy Baker’s Kiss of the Vampire (aka The Night Inside), a young woman kidnapped as fodder for an imprisoned vampire negotiates a risky bargain with him in order for them both to escape.
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s Saint-Germain collection focuses less on the blood-drinking and more on the immortality of her vampire as he moves through time in a series which could easily double as historical fantasy.
My favorite is Elaine Bergstrom’s Austra series. Starting with Shattered Glass, the stories followed an extended family of vampires whose unique traits set them apart from any others I’ve come across.
A discussion of 1990s vampire fiction wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Laurel K. Hamilton‘s Anita Blake series and Tanya Huff‘s Victoria Nelson series (later made into the TV show Blood Ties).
More recently, I discovered several other women writers whose stories have etched themselves into my brain.
The first is Octavia Butler, known more for her edgy science fiction and fantasy. Her 2005 story Fledgling, about a child vampire, delivers a brilliant twist to the legend.
The other is Suzy McKee Charnas and her 1980 Nebula-winning novella, The Unicorn Tapestry (from The Vampire Tapestry). Her character Weyland haunted me for weeks after reading it.
If you haven’t heard of these writers or read their stories, I highly recommend you check them out. There are some real gems here, and no examination of the urban fantasy genre would be complete without them.
In my next post, we’ll look at the urban fantasy writers from the last fifteen years, many of whom are still at the top of the bestsellers’ lists today.
And if you have any favorite authors in this genre, please be sure to list them in the comments!
~RM~
