People in my Head: The Characters of Emma CS

This piece is designed to serve a number of purposes. Firstly, it’s a chance for me to play with old (and some less old) characters, dig up old biographies and so on. Secondly, it’s a chance to get a bit of an insight into how I write (except you won’t have to sit in a room full of candles and opium incense listening to Thoushaltnot for hours on end!) Hopefully this will also inspire other writers to play around with new methods, I’m always having a go at something new! Please don’t see this as what I call the writer’s equivalent of the Audrey II (“Read me Seymour!”) but if you like my ideas, do have a poke around in some more of my work, though I appreciate that I’m horrendously verbose. In the mean time, sit back, pour yourself a drink and prepare to meet some of the people who live in my head. They’re just dying to meet you!

All pictures are edited from the author’s own work and copyrighted to her

Characters from “Fangs”

“Fangs”, as regular readers may know, is the closest I have to a magnum opus: the story of a love affair between a human girl and a vampire, think of it as a counter-culture Romeo and Juliet. I’ve been working on it for about ten years now, and it’s changed a fair bit since I started it! So where better to begin than with some of the creatures that inhabit the world of “Fangs”? For more Fangs fun, check out the sample chapter, character specific pictures can be found in each profile (although I often draw Vlad and Angie as a couple, also seen here and here). If the profiles look a little long, feel free to just read the bits about my inspiration, they’re the most interesting bits, I think!

Count Vlad de Lupina

(another, gorier picture of him can be found here while a doll version is here)

Species: vampire

Nationality: Romanian

Age: 260… ish

Home: the partially ruined Castle de Lupina in the forests of the Carpathians

Sexual Orientation/Preferences: Straight, slight tendencies towards masochism

Family: Anastasia and Feodor de Lupina, both dead, murdered by vampire slayers in front of the young Vlad a hundred years ago

Relationships: Previously had a short fling with Necritia Alucard but was pushed into it as her parents thought it would be a good match. Currently cohabiting with Angela Batty, a mortal, spends pretty much all his time with her. Note: though Vlad and Angie are very much in love and clearly desire each other their relationship CANNOT be physical if Angela is to remain human.

Education: Madame Adelaide’s School for the Undead and Magically Inclined

Physical Appearance: When in human form, Vlad is a tall, slim, sinewy figure with jet black hair and piercing green eyes. Like all vampires, Vlad has long fingernails, wolf-like teeth and slightly iridescent skin. Vlad prefers the style of dress he grew up with: loose shirts, brocade trousers and frock coats. He owns a pair of jeans, but he doesn’t like them.

Favourite food/drink: Vlad is old-fashioned and only drinks pure blood, not cocktails. He prefers drunk vegans.

Favourite literature: Hamlet, poems by Shelley, Greek tragedies, anything by Oscar Wilde

Favourite music: organ pieces by Bach, Beethoven, the Rolling Stones, the Doors, the Velvet Underground.

Favourite films: Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Gone with the Wind, Sleuth. Vlad likes most genres of film, but he really hates horror, he’s never sure whether to be hungry or disgusted, although Hellraiser gave him goosebumps…

Copes with trouble by: drinking heavily if in public, viciously self-harming if on his own

My Inspiration: “Fangs” originally started off as a straight parody of the vampire genre, I was reading something and thought “why is there always a swooning virgin and an evil vampire? Why can’t I have a swooning vampire and an evil virgin?” Thus the first version of Vlad was a weak-willed, paranoid coward! When I rewrote the novel a few years back, I decided that this just didn’t work. Why would Angela fall fo this guy? So the new Vlad had to be more complex: a Byronic tortured antihero struggling with his own desires, instead of a weak man hiding from the world through fear, Vlad was now a stronger character tying simply to survive. I also changed his feeding habits: Vlad only kills if he has to, preferring to leave mortals alive to prevent suspicion. His name is a homage to some of my favourite vampire stories, from the legends of Vlad the Impaler to a fun little series I used to read as a child called “Vlad the Drac”, while “Lupina” is a corruption of the Latin “lupus” meaning wolf, since his family goes back to second century AD.

Angela Batty

(I seem to draw Angela a lot, but usually with others, a doll version also sits on my mantelpiece)

Species: Human

Nationality: Romanian

Age: 19 (how’s that for an age gap!)

Home: Previously a small semi-detached house in a village, now living in Vlad’s castle

Sexual Orientation/Preferences: Straight

Family: parents are Boris and Gwendaline Batty, a merchant and a housewife

Relationships: When she was 15 she went out with an American punk boy called Rick, but it didn’t go anywhere. Now with Vlad, she’s not sure whether to stay with him forever or run away very fast!

Education: local schooling in the village, some private studies. Was going to sign up for university in the city, but ended up at the castle instead.

Physical Appearance: Angela is probably best described as curvaceous, she has a perfect hourglass figure, although she used to worry about her weight and stopped eating for a while. She has olive-toned skin, black hair and hazel eyes. She usually wears a lot of eye makeup and goth-style clothing. Since she met Vlad, she wears long sleeves and high collars a lot, just in case.

Favourite food/drink: Anything chocolaty

Favourite literature: Edgar Allen Poe, Interview with the Vampire (ohj the irony), H P Lovecraft, anything really gory and dark

Favourite music: Joy Division, Siouxsie Sioux, Black Sabbath, the Doors, Bauhaus,

Favourite movies: old horror films with Vincent Price or Christopher Lee in, anything with Johnny Depp in it

Copes with trouble by: chewing her lip and trying to rationalise things. If she has to, she can fight back, but she’d usually rather not.

My Inspiration: Angela started off as the antithesis of the usual weak and womanly, screaming horror heroine, but I also didn’t want her to be one of those resourceful “final girl” types. Instead, the original Angela was a bitchy but rather immature girl, bad mannered in an attempt to be feisty. The new incarnation of Angela is more like a typical Goth girl: quiet and thoughtful but perky. I really liked the idea of putting a Goth into a Gothic novel! She’s a girl on the cusp on womanhood in a very strange world. Her name is something I remember from a book I read when I was about 8 or so. “Angela” is a relatively common name in Romania.

Todd de Sang

Species: Vampire

Nationality: half-French, half-German

Age: 254

Home: an apartment in Bucharest

Sexual Orientation/Preferences: Bisexual, will try anything once then forget doing it and try it again.

Family: Katrina Lupus and Anthony de Sang, parents, abandoned Todd at the Academy and went off to tour the world. He’s never heard from them since.

Relationships: Todd goes through partners like normal vampires go through throats. Whenever he breaks up from a long(er) term relationship, he pretends that it’s because he’s not interested in that sex and goes on the rebound. Todd really has a crush on Vlad’s ex, Necritia Alucard, however, but he doesn’t have the nerve to tell her.

Education: Madame Adelaide’s Academy, where he met Vlad.

Physical Appearance: Todd has brown eyes and naturally brown hair, but he often dyes it black or blonde. He also has pierced ears, which is unusual for a vampire since they heal too fast. Todd’s obsession is fashion, he goes through “looks” regularly, he loves mortal street fashion and will try everything from boho chic to visual kei, from goth to grunge, from hip hop to punk rock.

Favourite food/drink: “Special” Bloody Marys, although his current obsession is pretending to be a mortal with a fetish for blood-drinking, meeting mortals on the internet to feed from.

Favourite literature: fashion magazines! Todd is not a great reader.

Favourite music: David Bowie, Madonna, anything that goes with his image

Favourite movies: anything with David Bowie in it, especially Labyrinth and the Man Who Fell Down to Earth. Zoolander makes him laugh like an idiot

Copes with trouble by: changing his image

My Inspiration: Believe it or not, Todd is me! He’s a sneaky little mockery of my own habit of changing my style and giving the resulting “look” a silly name, i.e. post punk pixie, glam noir, steampunk strumpet. I originally wrote Todd as a comic foil for the other, less crazy vampire characters. Todd’s shallow, vain and a little dim, but he’s kind and he cares a lot about his friends. When I rewrote Fangs, I realised I needed a character who actually had proper relationships and contact with the outside world, the others being rather insulated. I love writing scenes with him in, he’s such a loony. Originally he was named “Mort de Sang”, in a rip-off of Terry Pratchett, but I decided that “Todd” would be more fun, being both a real name and the German word for “death”.

Jenny Foxglove

(unfortunately the only picture I ever drew of Jenny got binned and has probably been recycled into toilet paper by now, I’ll add a picture if ever I draw one)

Species: half-mortal, half-demon

Nationality: Romanian

Age: 28

Home: a cottage she inherited from her mother

Sexual Orientation/Preferences: Gay

Family: Her mother, Willow, was a Wiccan who raised a noble-blood incubus accidentally once when casting a spell. The two fell for one another and Jenny was the result. The weirdest thing is that noble-born demons can change their sex as easily as changing their clothes, so Jenny’s dad is occasionally a woman.

Relationships: Jenny is currently cohabiting with her girlfriend of twelve years, Wilhelmina, a Hungarian werewolf. They plan to go abroad and get married some day

Education: Home tutoring

Physical Appearance: Jenny has bright red hair, green eyes and pale skin. She wears flying goggles when travelling on her broom, and usually wears brightly coloured clothing she’d made herself along with a lot of jewellery.

Favourite food/drink: vegetarian curry and green tea

Favourite literature: Tolkien

Favourite music: mostly classic rock and sixties hippy stuff.

Favourite films: Spirited Away, Withnail and I, Girl Interrupted

Copes with trouble by: giving it the right herbs

My Inspiration: Jenny is a relatively minor character, but a fun one. I needed a more down-to-earth, less troubled character and Jenny just burst into my head. She’s a combination of a couple of my best friends and one of my old school teachers. I really like writing her, she’s a no-nonsense sort of woman, completely comfortable with herself, her life and her clients.

Muffy Winters

Species: Human

Nationality: Romanian

Age: 21

Home: a bed-sit

Sexual Orientation/Preferences: straight as a ruler

Family: Her father is Mayor Winters, a big-wig in the village Angela comes from. Her mother is Alice Winters, a mousey little woman dominated by her husband. Muffy’s grandfather on her father’s side was William “Chill” Winters, a former vampire slayer, who recently died of lung cancer.

Relationships: Lots of dating while at school, a couple of flings with co-workers when she was working as a weather girl, slightly longer-term relationship with a guy called Ian.

Physical Appearance: Skinny with mousey blonde hair and pale blue eyes. She likes to wear distressed jeans and trendy tank tops, but she wishes she could afford designer labels.

Favourite food/drink: pizza, Bacardi and coke

Favourite literature: Dan Brown

Favourite music: whatever is in the charts

Favourite films: chick flicks

Copes with trouble by: bitching about it behind its back

My Inspiration: Poor Muffy, I’ve been so mean to her. She started out as a combination of two things: a parody of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a mish-mash of all the girls I didn’t like at school! I’m probably about to lose all credibility as a fantasy-fan, but I always hated Buffy, sure the characters were well designed and some of the monsters were cool, but to me it represented the enemy: it was American, it was popular, it was mainstream, it was full of skinny, pretty people, and the vampires were…well a bit rubbish. Remember that I was a spotty, geeky, lonely kid in England with a fetish for folkloric monsters, Buffy just made me cross! So Muffy appeared as a nasty dig at everything that annoyed me. The new version of her is still a popular girl with an obsession with celebrity, but hopefully she’s a little less one-dimensional. She now has some more psychological motives aside, too, to fit with the mood of the novel.

Before I move on from Fangs, I’d just like to devote a few lines to another mob of characters that I prefer to look at as a group, the Dracula clan, since they’re the best fun to write in the world ever. EVER. In Fangs Count Dracula himself is still alive but has been lying dormant for the past hundred years or so, leaving his ghastly offspring struggling to take the title of viscount and leech off his fame and reputation as one of the oldest vampires Europe. The current Viscount Dracula, a lad named Augustine, is a thoroughly nasty little man who shouldn’t really be viscount at all since he’s an illegitimate child, but never mind. Roughly the same age as Vlad, Necritia and Todd, he’s been using the family fortune to rent villas in Florida and sleep with mortals. The true heir to the Dracula name is his half sister, Sara, a mute with a vicious sense of justice and a penchant for 1920s fashion (and Vlad rather fancies her, but that’s another matter). Linked to them are the Alucards, distant relations of one of the Count’s many illegitimate children. The Alucards are pretty much nouveau riche, desperate for more prestige, they’ve managed to claw their way into the title of “baron” but keep trying to marry their daughter (Necritia, I’ve mentioned her before, but she’s a pretty minor character) off to anyone with money.

Unfinished Novels: Elemental

“Elemental” was an experiment at a new approach to story writing I wrote in between the original and new versions of “Fangs”. Instead of starting with a pretty clear idea of the basic plot, “Elemental” grew out of its characters. The novel itself was a hideous mess of confused ideas and a really terrible plot, but my two main characters still lurk in my subconscious demanding attention, so hat’s off please and welcome to…

Ellie Mental

Species: Human

Nationality: British

Age: 32

Home: anywhere she hangs her hat

Sexual Orientation/ Preferences: Asexual but will do anything if there’s something in it for her.

Family: Unknown, Ellie is an orphan

Relationships: None really. She’ll sleep with someone if they want her to and she has plenty of friends, but romantic attachment has no interest for her

Physical Appearance: Tall, thin and gangly, Ellie is facially deformed; she has no eyelids over her right eye making it bulging and discoloured. She has white hair which she dyes a multitude of colours all at once and likes to wear a patchwork trench coat, battered fedora and very pointy shoes.

Favourite food/drink: Ellie ADORES Bovril, she will drink nothing but.

Favourite literature: superhero comics

Favourite music: she doesn’t really listen to music

Favourite films: superhero films

Copes with trouble by: meeting it head on, whacking it over the head and reading comics at it

My Inspiration: I had started to read comics and it struck me that there are very few deformed female supervillains, while almost all male supervillains have some sort of deformity. The result was Ellie, a deformed criminal who fancied herself as a supervillain. She was so much fun to write because she was utterly insane, but in such a cheerful, accessible way. She was a lunatic, but a lovable one.

The American (real name unknown)

(alas, again my only doodle of him is lost to the recycling plant)

Species; Human

Nationality: American (obviously)

Age: 36

Home: a large apartment in South London

Sexual Orientation/Preferences: Straight

Family: Unknown, probably dead

Relationships: He used to be highly promiscuous until he was told he had AIDS after sleeping with a prostitute. He now will not so much as touch another person, but is completely infatuated with Ellie.

Physical Appearance: Unhealthily thin and pale, the American has reddish brown hair and brown eyes. He always wears a black suit with a black shirt and tie, along with a black fedora and black leather gloves.

Favourite food/drink: doesn’t care as long as it’s sterile.

Favourite literature: film critiques

Favourite music: not really interested

Favourite films: anything and everything. He collects dvds.

Copes with trouble by: sterilising it

My Inspiration: The idea for the American came from a picture I saw in the sleeve notes for the Clash’s classic album “London Calling” of one of the band members, not sure who (if anyone knows, please tell me) dressed in a black suit, wearing a hat and standing in the shadows. His face was obscured by shadow apart from his mouth which was harsh and unsmiling. I still have a copy of that picture on my wall, it’s extraordinary. I wanted to create a character for the man in the picture, and somehow the American came out of that. I’d already established that Ellie was going to be obsessed with comics, so the American became obsessed with film, a way of observing the world without going into it. I knew he had to be a very tragic character, so I had him believe he has AIDS: the American was the head of a drug ring until he “got religion” and decided to pack it in and go straight, but he was then told he had AIDS and the fear of death and divine retribution for his former crimes drove him to a life of isolation. The irony is, we’re never sure if he really does have the disease or not. He’s also absolutely obsessed with Ellie but can’t bear to touch her. Ellie, meanwhile, is utterly oblivious. It was a nice dynamic, but the story just didn’t work. I still think of that picture as “the American” though!

Short Stories

Long time readers will know I occasionally dip into shorter fiction, usually snappy little pieces with twist endings. Most of the characters can’t really be discussed here without giving away the plot, though I will tell you that Clara from “In the Dark” was inspired by a silent movie called “The Man Who Laughs” starring Conrad Veidt, who is one of my heroes. To be honest I very rarely do biographies for the characters in short stories, as I tend to write short stories in the first person, the narrator doesn’t need to know everything about all the other characters, so nor do I, while my narrators are often unreliable enough not to warrant much background. The one exception was Feodor, the narrator and protagonist of The Memoirs of a Hungarian Vampire, but again I can’t go into this much without spoiling the story.

Feodor came about as a result of a lot of research folklore and into “real” vampires, human beings who for whatever reason drink blood. I came across a condition called Erthropoetic Protoporphyria which causes the sufferer’s skin to crack and blister if sunlight hits it. Many researchers use this as a possible “real” source for the vampires of legend, however this is wrong since the sunlight aspect of the legend appears only in the twentieth century after the film “Nosferatu” came out. I liked the idea of someone in the past being treated ridiculously due to such a disease and Feodor grew out of that. I also wanted to try a new sort of style, where the narrator is speaking directly to the reader, not just narrating into the ether, so Feodor’s character began to reflect that too, I deliberately didn’t let him use any condensed words, apostrophes appear only as possessives in the whole story. In a way “Memoirs” was a prototype for the new version of “Fangs”, a combination of a pragmatic view of the restrictions of vampirism and folklore, but with “Memoirs” I deliberately tried to include as many of the “explanations” used by folklorists as possible, while “Fangs” is more supernatural.

Comic Strips

I like drawing, although I’m pretty bad at it, so I sometimes create characters who exist only in comic strips. As with the short story characters these are rarely as well mapped out as characters from novels. My two favourites are really comedy characters and relatively two-dimensional. The first of these was Abnormal Norman a character who grew out of a scribble in the back of a history notebook. Norman is a multiple murderer who lives locked up in a cellar where he’s fed by his sister. Norman’s a creature who turns up when I’m bored and does horrible things to people I don’t like. He’s more fun to draw than a simple scribble should be.

Another comic strip character is Necritia Rattus, who you may recognise from my Halloween costume this year. Critia evolved from a drunken conversation about how great it would be to be a horror hostess on television with a puppet skull. She’s a ghoul with a habit for coming up with bad puns that would make even the Crypt Keeper groan. She lives in an attic somewhere in the south of England with the skull of her ex husband and a collection of film reels. I only ever got around to drawing one strip which isn’t very good, I really must do more with her, she’s such fun to draw.

And that’s all I have for you right now. You might’ve noticed that I’ve included all of the characters from this little vignette, which was entirely deliberate, because otherwise they’ll torture me again.