About My Work

Inspirations

Dreams, memories, images from films, notes of music, dust on a fireplace mantel, stained and fading photographs, the endless, indifferent stars–all these shape and define me. As a child, my favorite book was Thomasina; as an adolescent my other favorite was Dracula. I love animals, vampires, the supernatural, mythology, the arts, the surreal, the mystical, the sublimely unexplained

Having always felt a kinship to cats, dogs, and their wild relatives, I often envy them their beauty, power, gracefulness, and sensory awareness. They, like vampires, represent what humans lack.

We, as humans, have lost many of our instincts, our blood summoning. Only possessing the most rudimentary of fangs and claws, we go through life not knowing the intensity of a world beyond the capacity of language. Our senses, like our teeth, are blunted. In my dreams I know that animal-vampire ecstasy, but when I awaken, the daylight shrivels the eidetic images. They die, like worms on parched pavement, and I thirst for the darkness always beyond my grasp.

My interest in vampires and the supernatural began when I was about 13 and saw “Dark Shadows” on TV. From that point on I became fascinated with depictions of vampires in literature, films, myths, and art. Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla, and Anne Rice’s Lestat, Louis, and Claudia helped to shape my perception of vampires as seductive, enigmatic, sensual, charismatic, and dangerously enthralling beings. Although I have been writing poetry, fiction, and essays since childhood, I didn’t write about vampires until I began creating a series of Web pages analyzing the TV series”Port Charles” and its vampire character Caleb Morley (portrayed by Michael Easton). I then began incorporating vampires in my fiction, using them as a way of expressing my feelings about death, spirituality, creativity, animals, and human existence. Vampires, to me, represent a synthesis of human, animal, and the divine. They are muses, bringing visions, dreams, and nightmares from mythic realms. They haunt, torment, and inspire, awakening the libido, the senses, and the imagination.

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Writings by Alison Armstrong