Only days until Ravenous is released!
Have you pre-ordered your advanced copy at the special price yet?
As we count down the days, some of the contributors wanted to share some further insight into their stories and tempt you with a peek.
Today Wendy Nickel, writer of “We’ll Always Have Rome,” gives us her wish list of movies she’d like to see vampires in.
7 Classic Movies to Remake… With Vampires
As you may have guessed by the title, “We’ll Always Have Rome,” my story in the Ravenous anthology, was inspired by the classic Casablanca, a tale of star-crossed lovers amid World War II. Coming up with a romance story concept was a challenge for me — most of my stories are heavier on dragons and time travel than on flirting and kissing — but I happened to watch Casablanca that week, and the love triangle between the characters played by Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid seemed like a great place to start.
Other writers have mixed classic tales and the paranormal with works like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, to name a few. But here, I’d like to stick with classic movies, and present to you my list of the top classic movies that would make rather… entertaining vampire tales.
Psycho
We’ve all seen that shower scene where the killer slashes a knife at his unsuspecting victim, but how much creepier would it be if it was fangs digging into her neck instead? Viewers would spend the whole time wondering: Is Norman Bates’ mother still alive? Or Undead?
Rear Window
This is the story of a man who’s laid up with a broken leg, a window with a view, and absolutely no other way to spend his time than spying on his neighbors and wondering what they’re up to. But his diversion turns to danger when he suspects that he may have witnessed a murder. Already, the story messes with your mind; imagine how much more so if the “murderer” is a vampire!
12 Angry Men
A twelve-man jury debates the verdict of a murder trial. Would Juror #8 still remain a holdout if the defendant was accused of vampirism, rather than stabbing? Would he have still been able to chip away at their reasons for their “guilty” votes as easily?
Rebecca
Hitchcock’s adaptation of the Daphne du Maurier already has the fixings of a good vampire movie: eerie atmosphere, a vast old house, and the mysterious death of Mr. de Winter’s first wife, Rebecca. The only question is who’s the vampire: Rebecca, who even in death, never seems far from Manderley? Or the enigmatic Mr. de Winter himself, whose secrets won’t grant him peace?
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
Why do those seven brothers not have wives already? Why do they live so far from civilization? Obviously, because they’re vampires. And when their gentlemanly charms fail to entrap their victims, they kidnap them and take them to their lair instead.
My Fair Lady
Which is more impressive: Henry Higgins convincing high society that a cockney flower girl is one of them? Or convincing humans that a bloodsucking vampire is one of them? The scene at the horse race where Eliza slips into her old ways would be much more dramatic in the latter.
Citizen Kane
I’ll admit, this movie isn’t one of my favorites. But perhaps Kane’s rags-to-riches story would be more compelling if the journalists’ search for “Rosebud” led them down a dark path into the tycoon’s hidden history of vampirism.
What other movies could use a vampire reboot? Tell me in the comments!
(All photos under Creative Commons CC0 from pixabay.com)
Excerpt From “We’ll Always Have Rome”
“See, that’s what I like about you. You have no loyalties but to yourself. No friends, no family, no connections to muddle things up or give away your secrets. That’s why you and me, we’re going to make it through this thing, just like we have before when society tries to shut out our kind.”
About the Author
Wendy Nikel is a speculative fiction author with a degree in elementary education, a fondness for road trips, and a terrible habit of forgetting where she’s left her cup of tea. Her short fiction has been published by Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Daily Science Fiction, Nature: Futures, and elsewhere. Her time travel novella, The Continuum, is forthcoming from World Weaver Press in spring 2018. For more info, visit wendynikel.com. Also find her on Facebook and Twitter.
Dark. Brooding. Tortured. Sexy.
Vampires are a mystery, morphing through history from maligned villains to sparkling saviors and back again. They can be the ultimate bad boys, the supreme seductresses, or the evil monsters. They fascinate and repel us at the same time. What other creature can steal into your bedroom in the depths of the night to stalk or protect? What other ancient being is so accessible yet so powerful? What other enigma is desired as much as feared?
Cross the threshold into a world of insatiable heroes and voracious heroines. RAVENOUS explores saucy, sexy, and sweet tales: of forbidden vampire/vampire hunter love, vampire threesomes in space, kink as only a vampire could enjoy it… and so much more.
