Off the top of my head, and in no particular order:
- Salem’s Lot, by Stephen King
- Anno Dracula, by Kim Newman
- The Blood Opera trilogy (Dark Dance, Personal Darkness, Darkness I), by Tanith Lee
- The Blood Wine sequence (A Taste of Blood Wine, A Dance in Blood Velvet, The Dark Blood of Poppies, The Dark Arts of Blood), by Freda Warrington
- The Delicate Dependency, by Michael Talbot (the recently-published edition from Valancourt Books has a foreword by me!)
- Fevre Dream, by George R. R. Martin
- Lost Souls, by Poppy Z. Brite
- Midnight Blue: the Sonja Blue Collection, by Nancy Collins
- Still Life, by Michael Montoure
And, if you want super-sweet gothy YA vampires, the Vampire Kisses series by Ellen Schreiber are adorable.
-Sunshine by Robin McKinley
-The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
-From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury
-Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black (where’s its cult following? because its really damn good for a vampire novel, lacking the over-sentimental-yet-emotionally-devoid clatter of a lot of YA books but not having the same levels of bitter cynicism that adult vampire novels have)
Tag Archives: vc adjacent
Do you have any book recommendations?
That is a very … broad question. What sort of books are you looking for?
However, some books I always recommend, in no particular order:
- Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury.
- The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman.
- The Bloody Chamber, by Angela Carter.
- The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson.
- Anything and everything you can find by Terry Pratchett, but especially the Discworld books about the Witches.
- The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern.
- Dracula, by Bram Stoker
- The “original” three of The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice (Interview With the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned).
Just out of curiosity, is there any books you recommend that have a similar humorous/ dark tone as VC?
Hey! Book reccs! Always a good topic.
It’s tough for me to answer bc I think it depends on every individual reader’s sense of humor,… even within “humorous/ dark tone as VC” there is a range*. So I can’t say definitively that these reccs are in line with what you’re looking for necessarily, but you can use this list as a starting point.
*Lestat dancing w/ Claudia’s mom’s corpse: Some ppl find this moment dark and hilarious and other ppl think it’s just disgusting, so… there is a range. Personally I find it pretty amusing.
(There are some duplicates on this list, sorry about that, but I wanted to list them by recc’er.) (And I added ** next to those that @gothiccharmschool just recc’d in two recent posts which I will reblog momentarily for you.)
In no special order:
- (Okay this is the first one bc it IS special, and the closest to the humor of VC I’ve seen in awhile) This is a mockumentary/movie but it sneaks onto the top of the list bc it is just SO good, courtesy of @theamazingdrunk for reminding me in a comment on an older rec post: WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS
- **Salem’s Lot – Stephen King, personally, I find several Stephen King books to be darkly humorous, this one is a good one. I find humor in the Shining and Firestarter, too, but less so.
- Vittorio – don’t forget Vittorio. Not sure if you read this one. It’s also by Anne Rice and technically not a VC book, he has a different origin story and is not part of the VC vampire group.
- Some short stories – @soyonscruels posted: those who dream only by night: the gothic short stories rec list – Not full-length books but still, short stories are good! There are 20 short stories listed, writers include @neil-gaiman, Roald Dahl, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, each of whom I’ve found to have some level of humor along w/ dark tones.
- More E. A. Poe is offered up here, from @keep-calm-and-heta-oni, which includes little capsules about each.
- @consultingcupcake said: “I really love the Cirque du Freak series, and **Lost Souls by Poppy Z Brite. Both have teenage protagonists
- @fantasticfelicityfox said: The Historian is very good
- @stitcheskitty said: Sookie Stackhouse novels
- @riverofwhispers said: Carmilla is good
Anita Blake and Sookie Stackhouse books, but only the early ones.
the Rachel Morgan series but again starts out good gets weird later and it’s not about vampires so much as there are vampires in it. - @bluestockingcouture said: ‘The Angel’s Cut’, sequel to ‘The Vintner’s Luck’, is very atmospheric and well worth reading. Not quite as moving and intense, but there are some excellent new characters.
- @sanguinivora said: Also, as to voice: IWTV opens in the late 1700’s/early 1800’s. Don’t know about either a southern American or French hinterlands-with-a-gloss-of-Parisian dialect, but for the grammar and vocabulary, one cannot go too far wrong looking to the novels of Jane Austen and Patrick O’Brian.
- @dragontrainerdaenerys said: I just read Fevre Dream, George R.R Martin’s own vampire novel, and while I didn’t liked much his vampire mythology the main characters are charming! Besides, it’s set on the late 18XX and goes on the Mississipi River, so it has similar scenarios to IWTV!
- @baroquebat said: Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, while futuristic, has a loooot of lovely gothic set pieces in the anime movie, plus its just gorgeous and has the rare treat of having a dhampir lead!
@annabellioncourt’s Recs, and these are mostly her descriptions, too, compiled from other recc posts:
- The Bloody Chamber And Other Stories – Angela Carter
- Carmilla – Bunch of adaptations of this.
- A Taste of Blood Wine – Freda Warrinton, for romance and decadence.
- **Blood Opera Sequence (or “Trilogy”?) – Tanith Lee’s vampire series was out when Lestat was playing rockstar
- Historian – Elizabeth Kostova, for its worldliness
- **Fevre Dream (yes its spelled fevre) by George R. R. Martin (yes, its THAT Martin, and his take on vampires is Very Good.)
- Sunshine by Robin McKinley
- **The Delicate Dependency by Michael Talbot, also for romance and decadence. (the recently-published edition from Valancourt Books has a foreword by @gothiccharmschool!)
- The Hunger by Whitley Scriber
- **Dracula – Bram Stoker, for its stereotype-setting content
- Lord Ruthven – Byronic vampire, Lestat doesn’t catch the irony of John Polidori’s mockery of the foppish, arrogant, and well…Lord-Byron-y vampire
>>>>Moar recs from @annabellioncourt under Spooky Book Recommendations
>>>>Moar recs from @gothiccharmschool: here, here, and in her #vampire books and #vampire novels tags.
>>>>My #VC adjacent recs tag
Anyone is welcome to reblog/comment on this with other VC-adjacent book recs!
@hyperbeeb (<– is very well-read and took one for the team to read Blood Vivicanti!), @gothiccharmschool, @fyeahgothicromance, @thebibliosphere, (@annabellioncourt, too, but you are technically off the hook as I’ve already posted your recs!), got any recs for books w/ similar humorous/ dark tone as VC?
If you love to write, just keep doing it. Keep writing. If you feel skeptical about your ability, keep writing. If you get stuck, take a little break, read, get to know yourself, collaborate with others, then keep writing.
Keep writing.
Eventually you’ll look back at some of the first things you wrote, then to what you can write now, and you’ll be astounded by your growth. Be in awe that you grew, because growing is so rarely easy, then write and grow some more.
Hell, if we’re gonna talk about bringing back old-timey styles for men, why stop at the 1900s? Let’s bring back fucking dandyism – I’m talking makeup, plucked eyebrows, immaculate curls, brightly coloured fabrics, waxed moustaches like architectural edifices if you can pull one off, dudes all swanning around in tight corsets so as not to disrupt the smoothly tapering lines of their frock coats, the whole nine yards. I mean, why not?
Deleting all comments because only in this site you will find people throwing shit at a 17 year old boy who has voluntarily fed 80’000 people by starting his own business because he has a very particular idea lf masculinity which happens to threat only people with paper feelings.
His business has a line of ‘SheCans’ with names like ‘Unstoppable’, ‘Awesome’, ‘Fearless’ and ‘Beautiful’.
Anyone who is bitter about this kid’s business needs to step back and reevaluate their life.Well done kid! Your doing something good for the world!
Ooooh campfire scented! That soubds amaze uwu
That is awesome!
the only reason your art looks awful to you is because you had an image in your head and the art you created doesnt match it
other people have no image, so when presented with the art you created, they’re usually pretty impressed, because wow you made that out of nothing!! its so cool!!
so next time you want to judge your own art badly try to remember that you’re comparing it to the perfect picture you had in your head as opposed to recognizing that hey u made a thing out of nothing how cool is that
An additional note
Reblog = when you hit that little reblog arrow that posts a copy of the original post to your own blog with links back to me. I get notices when you do and when people reblog it from you and if anyone leaves additional comments.
Repost = when you download the image(s), either from tumblr or elsewhere, and then upload them in a fresh post. I get no notifications at all and it’s more difficult for people to find my blog should they have something to say about the art or want to see more.
I would never ask anyone not to reblog my art. You can do that all you want. That’s what tumblr’s built for and if I didn’t like it I would not be here.
However, reposting is rude as it removes the original creator from the process, credit or no. It’s also unnecessary in my case since all my art is already on tumblr.
I know a lot of people simply don’t understand the difference, or they think tumblr is like a photobucket where they can just upload anything they like. I never want anyone to feel discouraged for a simple mistake or misunderstanding. However, there are some people who do it just to get notes, or in malicious ways where they want to insult the art or take credit for it, so this is why I don’t allow it.
Reblog if you’re ok with AU’s
I only accept anon hate through a ouija board and in outdated English
T O T H I N E O W N S E L F G E T F U C K T
I-want-my-IWTV 