Yesterday’s post gave a background to Eric Wilson’s Jerusalem Undead series, Field of Blood and Haunt of Jackals. Today I want to highlight what people are saying about Wilson’s books in particular and vampires in Christian fiction in general.
I’ve posted a couple of times on the topic of vampires in Christian fiction (by this term I mean fiction produced by the CBA, which focuses on the evangelical Christian market for the most part). There was some good discussion in the comments, so don’t miss those.
Anytime you want a lively discussion on issues in Christian fiction, don’t forget to look to Mike Duran, who caused a little stir with his Novel Journey post, “What’s More Dangerous, Amish Heroines or Christian Vampires?” Again, don’t miss out on a stirring debate in the comments. Don’t forget about his classic “The Good Vampire” post either. He considers the possibility of “Stoker’s Dracula as Christian Fiction.” Finally, he discusses his take on “Christian Horror,” which would certainly involve vampires (and it mentions Mr. Wilson).
For a different perspective, I ran across the site VampChix, where apparently they are fans of shortening and misspelling words. Or perhaps they are females who like vampires. In any case, they interview Eric Wilson himself, which is interesting to see him explain his series to a “non-Christian” audience.
There’s many other posts I could find if I had the time. I know there’s a few other books with a Christian outlook to hit this subject, such as Never Ceese or Shade. I hope I’ve provided some food for thought here. I’d be interested in other people’s thoughts on the issue of Christian fiction and vampires, or if you know of other links worth investigating. Tomorrow I plan my review of Haunt of Jackals. See you there.
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Thanks for the links! I wish I had time to read them all, but as I don’t, I’ll content myself with a few. Thanks for taking this tour beyond the book itself to address the wider concerns of genre :).
Great review so far, Jason! I pointed people to your post since I haven’t read the book yet.
Never Ceese is not published by a CBA affiliated publisher. Its success is due to the fact that it is written for the general market audience of Christians that CBA distanced themselves from in 1950 (that and it’s a good story. 🙂
It’s a cross-over all right, but from general market to CBA market. My work is nothing like the work put out by CBA publishers. Those publishers wouldn’t take my stories. Said their audience didn’t want to read them. So it’s really inaccurate to mention Never Ceese or Forever Richard in conjunction with CBA affiliated titles such as Shade. You can of course but it’s like comparing apples and oranges. 🙂
The CBA market doesn’t recognize me or my publisher which of course makes sense since we don’t serve that market or pay to be affiliated. 🙂
Thanks for the mention though. That always rocks!
Sue,
Glad to have you comment here again. Note I didn’t call your books “CBA”. I wouldn’t call it inaccurate the way I worded things. Even though your publisher isn’t affiliated with the CBA, I would still say your books were a kind of forerunner for works like Eric Wilson or the new book “Thirsty” (which I just found out about, and would be interested in reading).
Thanks as always for stopping by.