Lust Bites

by Madelynne Ellis et al.

We're trying something new at Lust Bites today, the magic extendy post. Yep, you read that right, it starts off small and grows with stimulation! So hang on to that refresh button and don't be surprised if there's some gnashing of fangs along the way.

Vampires are such a horror (and erotica) genre staple that it's easy to forget that the modern image of the gentleman of the night only dates back a couple of centuries, to a fateful night on the banks of Lake Geneva, Switzerland.


Prior to Dr John Polidori's Byronesque "Vampyre", our fanged fiends were typically uncultured monsters, crawling around graveyards and generally making Nosferatu look like Brad Pitt.


Well today on Lust Bites (see we're even appropriately named) we're celebrating our favourite Vamps. The ladies will be along during the day to introduce you to their personal favourites. I'm expecting a certain Angel to sneak his way in there amongst the Draculas and Lestats, along with a few less obvious surprises, and of course we'd love you all to share you're own favourite vampires, be they from literature, stage or screen.

Anyway, to start us all off, I offer you my personal Vampire favourite, this is Alex (aka Julian Sands in Tale of a Vampire), doing what Vampires do best. As for why I love him, well you only have to look here and here to know that I like them bad, angst-ridden and bloody.

Janine Ashbless says: Well, watch me throw down the glove! I'm the voice of dissent today, because vampires do nothing for me. I mean - I am happy with them as predators, or as vehicles for introducing dominance and/or a little necrophilia to an erotic story; it's when the author wants to use them as characters that my eyes glaze over. Why? This is epitomised by a montage scene in Interview with a Vampire where years pass over New Orleans. In these centuries human beings with their pitiful short lives have created beautiful art and architecture, established complex societies and communities, turned swampland into a thriving city. What have the vampires, with their eternal youth and their physical superiority and their accumulated experience, achieved? Well, they've killed some people and drunk absinthe. And one of them plays the piano a bit. Boring, boring bastards.

Having said that ... I do have a soft spot (and you can guess where) for Dracula in Dracula 2000 (or Dracula 2001 in Europe because the film got there later). He's a mean predator, he's Gerard Butler and he has a backstory so clever that I smote my head and shrieked "Why didn't I think of that?!"

Olivia Knight says: Whereas I love vampires because they're supercilious, arrogant, knowing, cultured, and effeminate. It's not always what one wants in a man, but they're top of the "what I look for in a vampire" list. The blood-letting is an unfortunate side-effect for me; the eternal rage and worldweary ennui of perpetual youth is delicious. They come with the added advantage that, being nearly immortal, they probably know more than me, and being a jumped-up supercilious arrogant little know-it-all myself, I appreciate occasionally being trumped. Mostly, though, Lestat's goth-rock and intensity are what catch in my throat. (Nothing to do with the narrow planes and sharp angles of his face at all)
One more thought - the moment of blood-exchange (preferably without the actual dead-body bit afterwards), the feeling what someone else feels, gaining access to their heads - closer than sex, more heated than mind-reading, complete and perfect union: yes, please.

Portia Da Costa - me like Frank Langella as Dracula. :) Suave.Seductive.Romantic.Mass Murderer - the Count who never flashed his fangs.

Madelynne Ellis back again. Darn I couldn't resist coming back for some more. Here's a snippet from my tale, Lust for Blood, in Love on the Dark Side. Because, you know Lucius is one of my favourites.

And he advances.

Perversely, he's prettier now than he was on the edge of the dance floor. It's an ethereal, otherworldly sort of beauty, frighteningly cold, and horribly arousing. A montage of images enters my mind from somewhere outside: licking the blood from his face, smearing it across his chest, him going down on me while I bleed. I can see his tongue delving between my pussy lips, and somehow that seems horribly wrong.

There's a girl dying, right now, because of him.

My sensible self fights its way through the fog in my brain, yelling: "Run! Run! You stupid bitch." But I don't run. I'm numbed. I just shuffle backward until I hit the sinks, which dig into my back, cold and impossibly real.

"What are you doing to me? Don't come any closer!"

My fist tightens around my phone and I wish for the nineties and something a bit heavier. This slender silver shell won't cause more than a slight bruise before it snaps.

"What am I doing to you?" His voice is in my head. His eyebrow asks the question. "I'm not the one with these fantasies."

Alison Tyler says: I can’t think what my first vampire movie was. I’m sort of afraid to admit that it might have been Once Bitten! But I am definitely a fan—in fiction and film, porn and prose. Kiefer is one of my favorites, but I think that Bowie will win the prize for me this time.



By Kate Pearce
I don't really get the whole vampire visual, probably because I'm a wussy and hate the sight and smell of blood. But, I do occasionally like to read vampire romances and two series really impressed me this year from J R Ward and Lynn Viehl. They are both quite different, Ward being more like an addiction while Viehl's are more gruesome and bone cracking.


Apologies for the Amazon tags but I'm rushing a bit here!

Deanna Ashford - I just go for sexy, brooding reformed vampires like Angel and Henry Fitzroy in Blood Ties. I find the fact that they are in some way trying to atone for past actions highly compelling.

Kristina Lloyd says: OK, so I realise David Beckham isn't actually a vampire, and that he doesn't look much like one either. However, he does look like my vampire, Billy, from my novella, The Vampire's Heart. There was a moment on Lust Bites back in January when Mat posted a pic of Becks looking mean and dirty in his army gear. I fell in love, right there and then, and you all saw me do it. And you can see it again right here! I was plotting my vampire novella at the time and I'd already invented Billy - a muscled vamp, blond mohawk, army gear, yum-fucking-yum. And there was Becks on our blog, my lead vampire come to life! Months later, and the novella's about to be published - next Thursday in the UK and January 1st in the US - in a volume called Lust Bites! Ain't life strange? Next week, I'll be here with Portia and Mathilde to tell you more about the book. Did I just do Becks and a shameless plug in one paragraph? I think I peaked.

Teresa Noelle Roberts:
I have mixed feelings about vampires, I have to admit. When I think about the genre too much, I get irked. They're so damn angsty and so many of them shallow, stuck in perennial adolescence despite their great age. You're five hundred years old and hanging out in a nightclub, Mr. Vamp. What's with that?

That said, I can't help picking up vampire-themed books, even if a lot of them don't end up being keepers. What's the fascination? Well, beside the obvious fact that vampires always seem to be preternaturally attractive and often kinky, it's the notion of defeating death.

I started reading Anne Rice back in the 80s with my best friend Gregg, who was gay. I honestly don't know if the books would have fascinated us so much if we hadn't secretly wanted some sexy supernatural force to offer us an escape clause from the mortality that was bearing down on so many of our friends. (Alas, Lestat didn't appear to whisk Gregg away before AIDS did, but I've had the occasional dream in which he appears as an aimable, bookish vampire. He once told me that, gifted with eternal life, he'd spend a lot of it catching up on his reading.)

Oh, wait a minute, this was supposed to be cheerful and sexy, right? I'll throw in a vote for one of my favorite vampires being Jean-Claude from Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series. The flashy clothes and the "ma petite" get annoying, to be sure, but I love the fact that he's not, overall, filled with angst about being a vampire. He regrets things he's done in his long life, he's haunted by past experiences, but overall, he thinks being a vampire is pretty damn neat. Plus, he's a very incubus-like vampire; he gets more from the feeding if his "donor" is turned on, which sounds good to me.

Dayle Dermatis (aka 1/2 Sophie Mouette and Sarah Dale) checking in!

I don't go for angst. I don't go for brooding. But I do go for cheeky bad
boys, and that's why I love Spike:

by Olivia Knight

I’m an atheist, not a pagan, but as Pratchett points out there are advantages to belief: “When you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it’s nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong-minded atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, ‘Oh, random-fluctuations-in-the-space-time-continuum!’ or ‘Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch!’” So I’m an atheist with a creativity altar, a well-used deck of tarot cards, a shelf of occult books, and a wealth of Wiccan info – mostly thanks to writing The Ten Visions. What I can’t believe, I can write.

Paganisim or Wicca (I won’t go into the denominational differences) are all about the rhythms of nature – which sounds as floaty as a wannabe-witch dress, until you realise how much counting it involves. (Sex also involves counting, and not just the good old one-two – at least, not if you’re trying to trick nature by taking the prize and not paying your due.) Planning my heroine’s life around moon phases, the name of the moon, the sun sign, the sunrise and sunset times, her own cycle, the Esbats, and of course the Oxford terms, not to mention the Qabbalic chapters, quickly became as complex as organising the Prime Minister’s diary:

“No, I’m afraid Ms Kirkson won’t be able to have sex on the 17th – yes, it’s in Netzach with a waxing Snow moon, but new moon energy is still dominant, she has her period, and the Scorpio energy is too negative… how about the 1st, under Saggitarius? It’s a full moon, so I’ll have to squeeze you in with any ghostly visitors…”

Sarah quickly learns how events are governed.

She felt sick, stubbed out the cigarette on the chilled, pocked stone next to her feet, and immediately lit another. When had she seen Jo?
She’d met him when she was walking back from dinner with her supervisor. She’d felt an odd urge for a cigarette, and asked him for one. She’d wanted one because her supervisor’s rudeness had upset her. Well, his rudeness and his attractiveness, to be honest, but the attractiveness didn’t count because she’d been ovulating. It had been dark – no, not quite dark; she remembered the clouds whipping past the full moon, a ghostly galleon indeed.
She’d seen him the night of the All Soul’s party; he’d persuaded her to run away from the party and convinced her that she’d been talking to the devil, just because she’d been horny enough to find an old man sexy. They had dashed home in the bright moonlight. He said she’d been fed a lust potion. She’d counted afterwards, and realised she’d just been ovulating; the lust potion was nonsense.
She’d been ovulating. She ovulated with the full moon. She hadn’t wanted sex last night; something in her body had felt calm, quiet, and safe; something in her had said wait. Wait until you’re fertile. When was full moon?

Welcome to the Wheel of the Year. Paganism means patience. The year is carved into the twelve sun signs of the Zodiac and the thirteen moons. Each month’s moon has its own name and energies and the full moon is the Sabbat. (One month gets two full moons – so the second is the Blue Moon, as in “once in a…”) The eight Esbats are the major festivals: two solstices, two equinoxes, and four other special occasions: Ostara (Easter), Beltane (May Day), Lammas (31 July, still celebrated with corn sheaves in many churches) and of course Samhain – Halloween, Feast of the Dead, All Souls, call it what you will.

Most of the Esbats are what we politely call “fertility rites”, from the Imbolc planting of seeds (phner phner) through the Ostara eggs & bunnies (nudge nudge) to Beltane’s giant phallus round which the merry maidens dance, all the way to the Lammas fairs and tumbling in haystacks. Not so Samhain.

The only pagan festival to hold tight to its occult origins, it’s not a time for sex or magic – it’s the beginning of the time which is not a time. The Ten Visions has ritual sex scenes and Samhain scenes, but not the two in combination: that would be dark magic and the good Wiccan Sarah (an’ it harm none, do what ye will) doesn’t do that. (Her professor, on the other hand…)

Samhain is the day that Jo accuses Sarah of being a witch, after the eerie Halloween party in the graveyard of St Mary's. As sensible as her author, she doesn’t believe him.

She shook her head in disbelief. ‘This is the twenty-first century. No-one believes in witches. They don’t exist. Well, some silly little pagan-wannabes do, but they get it all wrong, I’ve read the manuscripts and they haven’t and –’
‘What do the manuscripts say, then?’
‘Witches joined covens – they were invited in, by female relatives or close friends – and the devil appeared, a local devil usually, and they all drank and danced around widdershins and naked, and sometimes the devil had sex with them. Every evidence suggests he was just a man from a nearby region, in a mask.’
‘Evidence taken down in witch trials?’ asked Jo, pointedly.
‘That’s the only written evidence, yes, –’
‘And what does your knowledge of Church doctrine, and interrogation methods, and manuscript-making, tell you about these manuscripts?’
‘That they’re unreliable!’ Sarah snapped. ‘That it was confessions taken from tortured prisoners, stupid ordinary women terrified of the Church’s power!’
‘So the devil really did come and sleep with them?’
‘The devil doesn’t exist,’ began Sarah.
‘Then would it surprise you to learn that earlier tonight you sat next to him, drank with him, and considered having sex with him?’

Thus begins the time which is no time, the dark hinterlands of the year. From Samhain to Yule, the wheel doesn’t turn. The veil is thin. The world lies dead, and the dead walk. This is where we now stand poised in the Wheel of the Year and here’s a snapshot of the wheel’s energies…

At Samhain, light candles for the dead, set food out for them, leave honey and cakes for the fey, and leave windows open on both sides for the roaming souls to enter and leave freely. Better that than that they rattle the panes and rush down the chimney flus. Leave a candle burning all night. We’re under the Blood Moon, making vivid the cycle between life and death, hunter and hunted. It reached its zenith on 26 October and is now waning – the only spells to perform are for cleansing and banishment; rather learn and meditate. The sun in Scorpio is also suited to study – its smouldering, dark and ruthless energy peels back mysteries. Its sexual pleasure is intense and ruthless. Today is ruled by Mars but Samhain, on Wednesday, will be ruled by Mercury – the messenger, the trickster, the ancient Alchemical tease. For the next fifty-one days, the rhythms of life recede and the world belongs to the others – until Yule.

She lay, drained and sated, feeling the warm weight of his body upon her, staring dreamily at the uneven ceiling above her. She thought of the stars and planets spinning beyond them, unimaginable distances away but really there, held in orbit by gravity, imposing their strange forces as they swung past.
‘The ritual said for seven days…’ she murmured quietly into his ear. Her voice was soft, half-lost in thought. ‘In two days time we move from Sagittarius to Capricorn… Fire to Earth…’ she added. ‘And it’ll be Yule, and we can marry for a year and a day…’
His warm arms clasped her close to him.

by Mr Madelynne Ellis

Blame the ancient Egyptians. They invented cosmetics. Without them, you might all have natural, healthy complexions, unspoilt by foundation, and your eyes would be open and clear, enhanced only by what nature gave you. But where’s the fun in that?

More specifically, blame Cleopatra, one of history’s greatest vamps and serial monogamists (and a legendary fellatrix, according to some accounts). Having married her own brothers, Caesar and then Mark Anthony, as well as notched up an alleged 1000 lovers, she’s left an indelible mark on history and inspired a legion of goth chicks and neo-pagan priestesses. But her legend wouldn’t have endured without a few very special women.

The first official vamp was the silent screen goddess Theda Bara. It was her nickname, and the studio encouraged the image of spooky seductress for all it was worth. If a woman is called a vamp, it’s a comparison to her, the lover and destroyer of men. Unsurprisingly her most famous role was as Cleopatra, although sadly only still images remain. In interviews she alluded to mysticism and witchcraft, and became a powerful archetype of dark female sexuality. Her studio hinted that her name was an anagram of “Arab Death”, but the truth was a little more mundane. Born Theodosia Goodman, she’d never even been to Egypt. But like all vamps, the fantasy overshadows the reality.

A more recently famous Cleopatra, with a similar appetite for husbands if not fellatio, came in the form of Elizabeth Taylor. And boy did she look fine in eyeliner. I should admit at this point that I’ve got a thing for eyeliner and mascara, the darker the better. I can’t tell you how it started – maybe Dusty Springfield had something to do with it, or some inadvertent youthful exposure to seventies porn.

I can tell you how it developed. Heavy eye make-up carries certain, ah, spooky connotations, which is why I offered to write about it. Halloween (or Samhain) should celebrate and address all those dark aspects of the human psyche – movie monsters or half-remembered pagan myths, it’s all the same. And every aspiring vamp should know that make-up can bring out the goddess in you. Anyway, back to the story… by the fifties the iconography of the vamp had been reabsorbed by horror in the form of Vampira,

and given a comic twist by both Morticia Addams and Lily Munster. Throughout the seventies, Hammer wasn’t the only studio to realise that sex and horror go together very well. Barbara Steele starred in a string of Italian horror movies, and mesmerised audiences with her anime eyes.

So what the hell was so sexy about them? What makes so many men sit up and beg at the idea of a little necrophilia? The vampire was already well established as an erotic figure. If sex is a meaningful exchange of bodily fluids that creates life, then the vampire is an exchange of bodily fluids that negates life, or creates anti-life. No wonder it become such a staple of the gothic movement. I always preferred Le Fanu’s earlier Carmilla to Dracula, but maybe that’s a guy thing.

Maybe we need to analyse this. You may love or hate Sigmund Freud, but remember he gave you the word libido, and a whole language of sexuality. He proposed that there’s an opposite force to the life instinct, a death instinct called thanatos. Simply put, humans seek the simplicity and negation of death, or unbeing. AKA Nirvana. We like the idea of it so much that we personify it as various caped, cowled and skeletal figures. Or if you’re a poet drunk on laudanum, you sexualise it.

“Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold :
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Then along came Siouxsie, and everything changed… With the invention of punk and later goth, everyone could look like a vampire or a witch, and Theda Bara’s legacy became public domain. Heavy eye shadow became a manifesto, or statement of intent – one way or another, I’ll suck you dry. You know you want it.

I’m out of time, and there’s still so much to cover. Any suggestions for other archetypal vamps/femmes fatale? Ever vamped it up yourself? What was the effect?

“and I leave you as a souvenir the dark, fanged rose that I plucked from between my thighs…”

Angela Carter, The Lady of the House of Love

Mr Madelynne Ellis