ASMSG Scifi Fantasy Paranormal Emagazine March 2014 | Page 22

specific way and keeps it consistent
within his world. You know how things
work in that world, which makes it feel
real. I love that! When it’s not good is
when it seems like an author is being lazy
and describing things as magic because
they don’t have the imagination to figure
out a way to make things work any other
way. Then magic becomes just a deus ex
machina that the writer is pulling out of
their ass to solve plot problems for
themselves without doing the work. My
novel also features some sort of magic,
you could say, in the Jiang-shi which are
the Chinese folklore vampires. They have
powers and abilities that normal science
can’t explain, but some of it can still make
sense if you look at quantum physics. Or,
you can believe that they actually have
magic and that’s that. That’s my nod to
the classic mystical vampire that can’t be
explained away.
For the purposes of my novel, I combined
the Jiang-shi idea with that of the “hungry
ghost” that is a staple of Chinese myth. I
explained the creation of the Jiang-shi as a
Hungry Ghost taking up residence in the
dead body and strengthening the po, thus
re-animating the corpse. However, I wanted
the Jiang-shi to have some distinctive
features, so I made them unaffected by
sunlight because my regular Vampyrs are. I
also made them more psychic/ emotional
vampires than blood drinkers, though they
can feed on blood that is strong with their
emotion of choice. I gave them the
traditional weakness to religious items

But, after all that, there was still something
crucial missing: why should a reader give a
damn about any of this? The story in its
final form began to take shape when I
realized that I needed a viewpoint character
to get the reader into this world. Originally,
it was going to be done third person and I
was going to follow all the vampires back
and forth as they schemed and plotted, but
it was all too much. There was nobody for
the audience to really root for.

IIISource: DeviantArt BabsxStock

wielded with faith because of the positive
energy of the faith which clashes with the
negative energies that sustain them.
Naturally, given their origins, I wanted to
make use of Taoist philosophy in their
workings. I forget where I read this, but
there was some Chinese demon or creature
that tried to avoid sleep because their po
was given a taste of their eternal
punishment as they slept. I thought this
was really novel and different, so I
incorporated it into my Jiang-shi as well.
For variety, I also gave them the Kuangshi (which is really just the original
pronunciation of Jiang-shi), which are the
green and white furred monsters of
legend, as servants.

Originally, there was this guy named Avery
who had just been brought in by Caroline
and was kind of her side-kick. However, he
never worked. Nobody I showed the script
to thought the character belonged. I was
going to get rid of him when it occurred to
me that maybe the reason he didn’t work
was because we weren’t seeing things from
his viewpoint. Once I decided to write the
entire book as Avery’s story, everything else
sort of fell into place and the book became
richer and more poignant. Here’s a guy who
is coming into the situation with the same
expectations that the vampire reader has,
along with the same context, and so the
reader hopefully is right there emotionally
with Avery when confronted by these
vampires that don’t act the way we’ve all
been taught that vampires should act.
My name is Brian Patrick McKinley and my
first novel is called Ancient Blood: A Novel
of the Hegemony. I hope you’ll check it
out!

Brian Patrick McKinley on Goodreads
Brian Patrick McKinley on Amazon
Brian Patrick McKinley’s Website

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