Still Undead After All These Years

When I was a teenager, I was really into vampires-- Anne Rice novels, Poppy Z. Brite's Lost Souls, VHS copies of Dark Shadows, etc. I even once wrote a story for my freshman history class about an immortal waif "contemplating her contemplation." We were studying the Romantics. And you can stop laughing now.

Then I got over it.

It wasn't until a year or two ago that I rekindled my love of the undead. I started watching Trinity Blood and the "Never Land" episode gave me the creeps, so I kept watching it (and started reading the light novels too). Then I got hooked on Blood Plus (and, of course, the original Blood), which I absolutely adore. Seriously, if I had time, I would probably write Saya and Haji fan fiction.

And then someone suggested that I read Twilight, so I am. Through that I found out about a whole slew of YA vampire titles (both actual books and manga), which I am now in the process of acquiring and reading. In some roundabout way, this all leads up to me dragging Carlos to Huntington Beach so that we could go to a Barnes & Nobel in the middle of one of those non-mall malls for the Pitch Black Book Tour. The tour featured Nancy A. Collins (Vamps), Claudia Gray (Evernight) and Ellen Schreiber (Vampire Kisses).

About five minutes into the event, I realized that the audience for vampire fiction is pretty much the same as it was back when I was geeking out over Lost Souls.  

Most of the crowd was under 18 and female. In fact, the only boys I saw looked like they didn't particularly want to be there. The girls traveled in small teams and more or less looked the same. It was, primarily, a sea of black-- black sweatshirts, black tattered skirts, black shoes with shiny silver buckles. Their hair was either dyed black/something Manic Panic or was left its unfortunately natural shade of mouse brown and their lips were painted a dark, scabby shade of red that I'm almost certain was the same Revlon Blackberry lipstick that was the coolest thing ever in 1992. Within every mini-pack, there is one normal, you know, the friend that's been around for so long that everyone overlooks the fact that she wears neutral colors. Either some things never change or there's a serious '90s revival heading our way.