Can Fiction Be Fictionalized?

Lamia, flesh-eating vampire

I know vampires fly because I saw them fly in True Blood. My vampires fly and they do it without turning into a bat. They don't need to turn into bats, that was Stoker.

If fiction writers want their vampires to eat an occasional bit of pate (they might be at a posh party) they have them do it. They do require blood however, but there is an herb, Wolfbane, mixed with Mistletoe (yeah, I know)! which can stave off their need for blood. How do I know this? I know it because I have written it that way in some of my fiction. I can do what I like because it's fiction.

If I show depraved monstrous vampires partaking of flesh I can do that too! Why shouldn't I?

If vampires can live in urban communities, in backwoods little Southern towns, in the present as well as the past--they can also go to high school or not. They can be anything the writer wants them to be.

There is no Gospel According to Vampires. If there is I haven't seen it. Thus there are no dictates as to what vampires must do--the writer is free to use his or her imagination. That's why writing is considered to be creative.

By the way, the Lamia ate flesh and drank blood. In ancient Greek mythology, Lamia was a beautiful queen of Libya who became a child-eating demon. Aristophanes claimed her name derived from the Greek word for gullet which referred to her habit of devouring children, not nanny material at all!

If a genre is not infused with new ideas it becomes stale in my opinion. I have written about vampires every which way. I have them as Gothic, romanticized blood-sucking creatures, as tortured beings and as monstrous flesh eaters. I've depicted them as feral monsters caught in the wilds of Transylvania by hunters who supply Victorian freak shows. Press link to read excerpt about this from Justine: Into the Blood.

The day that there is a government dictate telling me how vampires must be depicted I will write only for myself.

Fiction is fiction. We world-build, we put different spins on established monsters because we seek to entertain as writers, readers want that they have told me they do.

I have in mind another series which is going to be quite different but there again, I am, I assume, permitted to use my imagination and if I want a bad-ass Tinkerbelle type to drink blood and spit acid at people she doesn't like I will have her do that.

In the meantime, whatever you're reading or writing, I hope you enjoy it. As for me, I'm going to keep creating fiction in the belief that it is fiction. I'm going to do it because fiction is fiction and not factual. It is the stuff of dreams and if you write horror as I do, it's the stuff of nightmares!  BOO!