Why vampires rule

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Novelist Justin Cronin is fascinated by vampires, so much so that he's writing a trilogy about them. But his writing is not the romantic type - instead he is bent on making them a plausible beast with scientific reasons for its reaction to garlic, and the need to stake one through the heart to kill it dead.

Today Kerri Miller interviewed him on Midmorning about the first book in the trilogy, The Passage. During the conversation Cronin explained why vampires are simply cooler than other monsters, especially as a literary device.

We have four basic monster stories that we come back to again and again: We've got Frankenstein, we've got the werewolf, we've got the zombie and we've got the vampire.And I think the Vampire figure wins - it's the most interesting, it has the best details, I think it has the most plasticity as a story if you're going to use it as a metaphor for whatever's on your mind. I mean werewolves are great but the one message of the werewolf story is that men are dogs, which we all know, so it feels a little obvious. But the vampire story is full of all kinds of interesting little bits and it's very easy to maneuver the pieces and to make it fit a pressing anxiety of the moment.

You can listen to the whole interview by clicking on the link below:

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