Thirsty
Thirsty was my first published novel.
When I was twenty-three or so, I had a series of nightmares about vampires. In the most striking of these, I was floating invisibly through a church parish hall. There was a reception or a church dinner. Everyone was eating casseroles. A little girl said to her father, “Can I have some more?” He corrected her: “May I have some more.” And at that moment, I realized that the meat in the casseroles they were eating was human flesh.
When I woke up, I was kind of struck by this dream. Mainly because it proved that I was a grammar snob even when asleep.
For several weeks, I had a lot of these vampire dreams. They all seemed to be about trying to remain moral when one is inducted into a predatory world. I decided to put together a story in which a boy becomes a vampire, stage by stage, and has to fight to retain his humanity.
Unfortunately, I missed the national vampire craze. The book came out ten years too early. And instead of being a passionate tale of vampiric eroticism, it’s about a vampire who’s completely romantically incompetent.
Oh well. They say to write what you know.