peeps
FIRST THINGS FIRST: Peeps comes out September 8, 2005. Unlike the books in the Uglies and Midnighters trilogies, Peeps is one of a kind. (Click here to pre-order from Amazon.)
Some days
you wake up, and you just have to write a vampire novel.
I know, I know, there is no shortage of vampire novels already out there.
If you search Amazon for "vampire" you get 2,616 books to choose
from. There are opera-loving
vampires, horny
vampires, southern
vampires, emotional
vampires, bondage-loving
vampires, and (of course) Canadian
vampires who solve crimes.
Maybe there are too many vampire novels, I thought. But that was part
of the challenge, to see if I could do something that felt new and interesting,
while still being full of bitey goodness. (Unsurprising confession: I
am a Buffy fan.) So the book had to be original, but also icky,
scary, funny, tragic, and (ahem) not sucky.
Besides getting a new take on the sunlight-impaired, my other big concern
was that my vampires should actually make some sense as far as science
goes. So I started doing some vampire research, reading a bunch of books
about rats,
parasites,
bites
and stings, and biology.
After consuming all there was to know on these subjects, I came up with
the four important features that any vampire novel (of mine) had to include:
natural selection,
sexual attraction,
parasitic infection,
and Elvis memorabilia.
Okay, I can't tell you much more without giving the whole thing away.
But I'm very happy with the results. And the cover is certainly cool.
When September 8 arrives, you'll all have the opportunity to see if I've
succeeded or not. But at some point between now and then, I'll be posting
an excerpt on this site. Watch the blog
for details.