Why I write 3

I thought today I would write about some of the ideas behind my vampire novels, death being number one.

Hardly a day passes where I don't think of the possibility of death. Sickness and illness usually will provide you with some warning of an impending doom. Accidents and being murdered provide very little if any warning.

For most of us, thank you very much, being murdered is probably our least fear when it comes to us dying. Accidents can kill us at any age, with car accidents probably the number one cause of accidental death. Illness can also come at any age but the odds increase as we age.

One thing is certain, sooner or later we will all die.

You know the expression, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life." This is meant to be uplifting and to offer hope. But it is just as true that the day you die is also the first day of the rest of your life.

I mention this not to trouble you but to ask you to think about how important death is to life. Every day you live, you cause things to die so you may live. Oh but I'm a vegetarian, you might say. Still, the plants must die for you to eat. Trees must be cut to make room for houses, farms and roads. As long as you live, you will cause death. You might say, in a poetic mood, Death and Life must be partners for there to be the Dance of Life.

These ideas are the ideas which dance in my head when I write about my vampires. Yes they do kill, but they kill for the same reasons humans kill. They kill to live.

My idea that if there were vampires, they would be created by God, is not so far fetched when you think of all things in creation created by God to cause people to die. Just think of all the plants, animals and microbes created by God that can cause a human to die.

Why might God want to create so many ways for people to die? I think the answer is shockingly simple. This is a finite world of limited resources and God loves to create what is fresh and new. Without death, there would not be room for the new. The Earth would become a museum. Life would become stagnate.

Writing vampire fiction gives me the chance to play with these ideas and see where they might lead.