Live By the Pen, Die By the Pen

Did you know vampires are fascinated by counting? Or that plants such as hawthorn or a branch of wild rose will repel them? I didn’t either, but as part of researching vampires for my novel, I learned quite a few things I didn’t know before. Something else I didn’t know was that Dracula wasn’t the first novel written about vampires; just the most famous.

There were vampire-like creatures as far back as ancient Greece and in areas as far-flung as India and South America. There seems to be some dispute about where they originated, which isn’t surprising. For instance, the website The Vampire’s Vault says they came from the Far East, while the website Vampires Among Us cites ancient Persia as the origin.