Why am I afraid to call him a Vampire?

What do you refer to him as in the text?

If you don't use vampire in the book, then don't use it in the query. If you do, then the agent will have all kinds of expectations based on today's market and understanding of the word.

If you've successfully written an entire book that doesn't say the V word, why not write the query that way?

Because I agree, the second I see the V word I think to myself 'omg, ANOTHER one'

I agree with the previous comments... don't mentiond that he's a vampire. I suggest you organize your query much like you do your story... show who he is through what he does. Dont tell what he is.

PGK said:

... he's not even a Stoker lover-scorned-Dracula.

What he is is a beast, a monster, a destroyer of life. He's the "new" original father of all vampires.

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I'm 3/4s of the way through Dracula. I haven't seen any lover-scorned stuff yet. To me he's a beast, a monster, a destroy of life.

But as far as your work, I agree with what the others have said. If the word vampire isn't used in the story then don't use the word in your query.

PGK said:

Damn you Smeyer for what you have done! <--Though to be fair, it's not only her fault.

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No, its her fault. I like the idea of NOT marketing the book as a V book, and not mentioning it at all. Say he has a thirst for blood, that phrase is also used for murderers. You could also mention, 'transformation' 'into a blood thirsty monster' or something...

I dunno, but I'm interested in seeing your query!

PGK said:

That's exactly what I fear.

In the book I don't call him the V word but I don't sidestep around the issue either. At first he's just a mysterious figure. As his story unfolds (for the MC and reader alike) we see him go from mortal to V by describing the events that occurred. Several V mythos are brought into play (the thirst for blood, the sun --which does not make him sparkle, twinkle, or shine) but again the MC just refers to him by name (and in some cases by his nickname or title). But there was honestly no need within the story for the V word to come up. It's not like I wrote a scene and said "oh, I better not mention it" it just happened that way.

The problem is, however, all that showing with no mention of it makes it hard to equally show it in the query. If I write it so that I mention he has a "thirst for blood," the agent might automatically think Vampire anyway (which is good because that's what he is, but bad because of how they have been humiliated as of late).

It's hard for me explain, as I tend to be a wordy kind of fellow, but the V word wouldn't even be in his vocabulary because of his circumstance. He hasn't been roaming the world freely, drinking blood for a few millennia. So the word Vampire to him would be as foreign as James Bond.

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Here's a question for you:

What is it that you're writing? The couple of sentences for the query letter? Why would you have to use the word? I mean, you've got to give the main conflict. Hero is called upon to save Town from the unknown murderer killing them, one by one. No need to delineate what the thing is. It's supposed to be a teaser to get them to read the synopsis.

Now, in the synopsis, you can handle it by revealing the clues as the Hero discovers them to the final defeat. Still no reason to cut corners and use the word "vampire" and defuse all the work you did.

This is marketing, not writing. Stop being the writer and start thinking like a PR guy. That's what query and synopsis and all that are really all about.

Stop thinking synopsis and start thinking TV Guide.

For instance, my present (though unfinished) MIP would have the query paragraph of something along the line of:

Have you ever wondered what would happen if the legendary king returned only to be killed on the eve of battle? This is what happens in Crimson Warrior when King Rhoald is magically assassinated before fighting off an invasion to his country. This leaves his eternal friend no option than to unleash the most fearsome magic known to buy them a little time to save their country.

So, do you want to read the book?

It's a tease, like a back blurb. This is the main conflict of the book, but hinting that there is much more beyond and included in it. It's all marketing.

But please note, I didn't have to say what the "most fearsome" magic was to make it interesting. I didn't have to say how the king was killed. I didn't have to name the countries or anything else.

Hi PGK-- I'm in the same boat as you. My WIP is about vampires without ever mentioning the word. (Rest assured; they're different from yours.) I'm about to pull out my Montague Summers' The Vampire in Europe and The Vampire: Its Kith and Kin to see if he can help me out.

I know where you're coming from. I finished a 90k vampire novel a while ago then followed up with a painstaking month of re-writing my query. Throughout the book (and the short stories that followed) the only time I used the word vampire was in conversation; when a character in the story was referring to them verbally. I think that only happened a couple times during a scene where an older vampire was training a younger one. I was pleased with this as it followed the "show, don't tell" rule pretty well.

Then came query time and I had to explain what my story was about. There was really nothing else I could call them without misrepresenting the book. I couldn't just call them nocturnal hunters, immortal predators or anything else similar. Generic terms like that could be a lot of things and if I had phrased it that way, I could have ended up with one annoyed agent when they find out it's a story about vampires. I just had to bite the bullet and call them what they were so I ended up using the V word in the query.

Basically how I think it's going to be received is that yes, many people will say "ugh, another vampire story" and toss it aside but there are many that won't. Most agents will evaluate it based on the merits of the story and I've found that there's even a small segment of the agent population that is actively looking for more vampire fiction. Even though my vampires don't fall into the molds of those that came before, I hope they'll enjoy my take on them enough to want to pick up the book anyway. It's worked well so far. I've already gotten three requests for a partial in the two weeks since I sent out the last batch of queries.

The point I'm getting at in my roundabout way is that I don't think leaving out the V word will do you any favors. There have been enough variations on the vampire theme over the years that "vampire" doesn't necessarily mean x, y and z anymore. You, me and Ruth2 have all written a vampire story but I bet if we jotted down a point form list of how vampires operate in our respective universes, they'd have very little in common beyond "nocturnal blood drinking predator". I think most agents are smart enough to realize that.

Besides, there's always a market for vampires. Always has been and always will be. It may wax and wane over time but a clever agent knows that there are still hundreds of thousands of readers hungry for quality vampire fiction so I don't think you're hurting yourself at all by using the V word. The ones that sneer at it don't have an understanding of the vampire market and aren't the right agent for you anyway.

PGK said:

I just finished a major rewrite of my WIP (technically still a WIP because of some minor editing I'm planning) and as I'm gearing up for the query process I realized something important: I have never referred to the Antagonist as a Vampire. But that's what he is.

He's meant to be a polar opposite to the vamps of late. He's not a Smeyer's sparkling lover-boy, he's not a Stephen King afraid-of-a-crucifix and knock-on-your-window-and-ask-for-permission-to-enter-your-house vamp, he's not an Anne Rice feel-bad-for-me-while-I-weep-because-I'm-a-vampire vamp, he's not even a Stoker lover-scorned-Dracula.

What he is is a beast, a monster, a destroyer of life. He's the "new" original father of all vampires. I keep many of the customary rules (and never mention others --like silver, garlic, or mirrors) but he is a dead/undead blood drinker based soundly on vampire lore.

Yet I've never called him a vampire in the story, and I'm still hesitant to do so in the query. But I have to in the latter because I can't call him something vague like a monster or a thousand-year-old evil bad guy. I'm afraid, though, that if I do I will be squeezing him into a box he doesn't belong in.

Sorry, this isn't really a question or a rant, just a lucid thought I'm hoping will spark a conversation that can help guide me.

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He sounds like the vampire in Stephen King's Night Flyer story.

I can see your character not calling himself a vampire, but it's hard to imagine no one else calling him that. He is a vampire, and everyone on earth would probably use this word to describe him.

If you can pull it off without calling him a vampire, it sounds like it's better for the experience.

PGK said:

True, but hardly anyone else knows about him. The MC discovers him trapped/imprisoned in a remote location that people never go to. The MC also keeps his existence secret for various reasons that would take me too much time to explain. Only one other person knows about him and warns the MC that he's evil, but that "other person" is less concerned about the fact that he's a vampire since he only want's to warn the MC that he's bad bad bad.

I've never read the "Night Flyer," I might look into that.

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The Night Flyer and Popsy. Read them both. In my paperback copy (why yes, I do have more than one, thank you.) of Nightmares and Dreamscapes, Mr. King kind of hints that the vampires in both stories are one and the same. And both short stories are in Nightmares and Dreamscapes. It's actually my favorite collection of King short stories. Some of his best stories in there: Chattery Teeth... Dolan's Cadillac... The Moving Finger... Suffer the Little Children...The Ten O'clock People.... man. You really should just get it and read it. Best short story collection he's had. Though Just After Sunset is damn good too. And Skeleton Crew... Everything's Eventual...

I could go on and on. But I won't. I won't.

I won't.

My advice? Don't get hung up on SMeyer. It's new, it's teenaged, and it's probably going to be brief. If you're really concerned about romantic vampires, worry more about the paranormal romance genre that boasts Anne Rice, Laurell K Hamilton and Charlaine Harris. And, let's face it, if you're subbing to horror agents rather than romance they'll figure out the difference. Which means you're up against Stoker and Polidori, or myths. Myths include vampire pumpkins (left out after Christmas for twelve days, after which they start rolling around and growling - personally, I call trapped rat). Personally? For serious horror I'd avoid bringing up the mythology if I could really help it.

One of my favourite Vampire stories, the name of which I can't remember (raven? cuckoo?), avoided the word vampire until near the very end; however, it never attempted to persuade the reader the evil was anything other. Depends on what kinds of horror it is, I guess. If the characters exist in the modern world, they know what a vampire is and the minute blood gets sucked from an artery they're going to start throwing the word around, even if just in jest. If they don't, then it's not a strictly contemporary world. They've never heard of Bela Lugosi or seen Buffy or encountered a TwiMom.

Whatever you do, avoid kitchy mispellings, mythological names that don't quite fit (the antiquities geek in me has yet to forgive the misuse of lamia), and bad euphemisms. Which is more important to the plot? That he sucks blood? Or that he's an immortal killer? If the fact he's a vampire isn't as important as the fact he kills people, then don't use the word.

I use vampire in my novel and query letter. I prefer to call my MC what he is.

If you are subbing to horror agents,don't worry about SMeyer comparisons. You're looking for an entirely different audience and they understand that.

Word about Stephen King. I FLOVE both of those stories.

I suspect because of V-word overload.

Personally, and I love them so much, but at the minute I'm so sick of Vampires that the mention of one will make me put a book down.