Authors put the bite on vampires and their ways

We’ve all heard enough about vampires recently.

Everyone knows they look like frumpy old ladies, overjoyed that an aging population means they fit in nowadays. Or that they keep humans penned up as food, and having sex with a human is tantamount to bestiality. Or that when a vampire slayer starts killing them off, they go right to the police.

Wait, this isn’t sounding too much like Twilight or True Blood — but they’re some of the ideas introduced in the new Canadian anthology Evolve, edited by Nancy Kilpatrick.

The Montreal-based Kilpatrick is no stranger to the genre, having written numerous dark fantasy and horror novels herself. She previously edited the erotic vampire collection Love Bites, and co-edited Edge’s horror anthology Tesseracts 13.

Tesseracts 13 was the first horror title published by Edge, a predominantly sci-fi and fantasy publisher in Calgary. The success of that book prompted this new all-vampire anthology.

Canadians don’t spook the same way Americans do

It’s always interesting to talk to writers about their craft, but it’s just as interesting to talk to editors — who are far less often interviewed about what goes into making a good book. So it was with great pleasure a few years ago that I talked to Nancy Kilpatrick and David Morrell, who put together the first horror anthology in the venerable Tesseracts series.