Vampires and Mr Rogers

I believe I've been pretty transparent about the nature of The Thin House, but it never hurts to clarify, especially as we get closer to the release date. So with that in mind I wanted to address the genre of my upcoming book. Based on the summary, and what's been teased so far one could rightly infer that the Thin House contains monsters. However, the presence of monsters and the supernatural is not necessarily indicative of the book being a horror novel. 

Don't get me wrong there are parts of the book that are going to get scary. If I've done my job well, you should certainly shudder at least once or twice. That being said calling the Thin House a horror novel to me is kind of like calling the Twilight Zone a horror show. Obviously anyone who's seen "It's a Good Life" knows terror certainly has it's place there. However, to me the Twilight Zone has always been about people coming into contact with "The Other" in some way or another and how the experience changes them. I respectfully challenge anyone to watch "One For the Angels" or "Nothing in the Dark" and tell me the show's purpose is to frighten. The same is hopefully true with my book. 

To provide an example I wanted to share a little bit about one of the first inhabitants our hero Finn meets in his grandparents strange boarding house. Be warned the faintest, smallest of pseudo spoilers follow *****************************************************************************************************


It's a fun challenge to write an interesting vampire character in a world saturated with vampire-centric books, movies, shows, etc. Mr. Gareth is my attempt. He was born out of the question "As a vampire what would you do faced with essentially an eternity of free time?" For me I've always devoured books, and anytime I go to a library or bookstore I always leave thinking there is so much more I want to be reading. So as I started fleshing out the characters, I came up with the idea of a vampire who does just that-reads absolutely everything. 

Instead of dwelling among cemeteries, blood banks, Gothic castles, or high schools my vampire would be an inhabitant of the world's greatest libraries, and instead of consuming blood (OK maybe he consumes a little blood) he feasts on everything from Herodotus and Dante to Batman comics. He came to play the role of an educator and guardian to Finn. To me the character eventually came to represent the best aspects of teachers and well-educated mentors from my childhood. 

Despite the whole creature of the night thing, Mr. Gareth gradually developed into a very gentle teacher, who ended up having a lot more in common with Mr. Rogers than Dracula. There's something very warming to me about a creature blessed (or cursed depending on your POV) with an unnaturally long life using that time to gain wisdom and in turn do whatever they can to share that wisdom with others. Originally, he wasn't supposed to have a particularly large role, but he grew on me in a big way. 

I hope he does the same for you. I hope he's one of your favorite guests in The Thin House. And I really hope I can get Stephen Root to play him if this ever becomes a tv show. Until next time...