Things That Are Destroying Jane Greene’s Undead Social Life Before It Can Even Begin:
1) A twelve-year-old brother who’s convinced she’s a zombie.
2) Parents who are begging her to turn them into vampires.
3) The pet goldfish she accidentally turns instead.
4) Weird superpowers that let her rip the heads off of every other vampire she meets. (Sounds cool, but it doesn’t win you many friends.)
5) A pyschotic vampire creator who’s using her to carry out a plan for world domination.
And finally:
6) A seriously ripped vampire hunter who either wants to stake her or make out with her. Not sure which.
Being an undead, eternally pasty fifteen-year-old isn’t quite the sexy, brooding, angst-fest Jane always imagined....
Helen Keeble’s riotous debut novel combines the humor of Vladimir Tod with Ally Carter’s spot-on teen voice. With a one-of-a-kind vampire mythology and an irresistibly relatable undead heroine, this uproarious page-turner will leave readers bloodthirsty for more.
Three Things Vampires Don't Want You To Know
Guest Post by Helen Keeble
Vampires aren't real. If they were, they couldn't stay hidden for long, right?
Thanks to the endless books, films, and TV shows filled with vampiric lore, we
all know how to recognise a bloodsucker. And we all know their weaknesses -
sunlight, beheading, fire, stakes, athletic teenage girls, holy water, garlic…
Or maybe that's just what the vampires want you to think are their
weaknesses.
Delve a little deeper into traditional vampiric folklore, and there are a lot of
weird things that don't appear in our modern vampire fiction. Things that
maybe the vampires want to keep quiet…
1) They're just like unicorns
No, not because vampires are also beautiful and sparkly. Because, like
unicorns, vampires are terrified of virgins. In fact, while unicorns are
irresistibly drawn to virgins, according to Romanian folklore virgins are
irresistibly drawn to vampires.
Actually, this is true in a lot of paranormal romances too, now that I come to
think of it.
Anyway, all you have to do is stick a virgin on a white (or possibly black -
sources vary) horse, and they'll be able to lead you straight to the grave of the
nearest vampire. And if you use a woman older than 25, she’ll even be able to
kill the vampire for you as well. Just get her to whip the vampire's grave with a
hazel twig, and the bloodsucker will never be able to rise again.
Basically, older female virgins are homing missiles of mass vampire
destruction. No wonder literature is full of vampires desperately trying to
romance young girls. They have to neutralize them!
2) They float
"Big deal," I hear you say, rolling your eyes. "Ducks float. Boats float. What's
so special about vampires floating?"
Because, according to our friend Romanian folklore again, vampires always
float. They literally can't sink.
Folklore boringly suggests using this trait to determine if someone is a
vampire by tossing them in a river, but just think of the many other uses for this peculiar property...
"This is the captain speaking. Unfortunately we have hit an iceberg and water
is now pouring through the hull, but there is no need to be alarmed! The
vampires strapped under the Titanic's hull make this ship literally unsinkable.
While we repair the hole, please enjoy complimentary cocktails on the aft
deck, and ignore the muffled screams of the tormented undead underneath
your feet."
Vampires would definitely want to keep this one quiet. No bloodsucker wants
to spend eternity stuffed under an airplane chair as an emergency floatation
device.
3) You're probably always carrying the means to defeat one
Check your pockets or purse. Got some spare change? Maybe a half-eaten
packet of breath mints? A tissue?
Congratulations! You can stop a charging vampire in his tracks.
All you have to do is fling a handful of small objects at him, and he'll be
compelled to stop in order to count them all. No, really. The technical term
for this behaviour is arithmomania, and it crops up everywhere in vampire
folklore, all around the globe. Poland, Romania, China, India, pretty much
everywhere has legends about obsessive-compulsive vampires. Though
curiously, it seems to have fallen out of favour in modern vampire fiction.
Apart, of course, from one famous case:
There you go. Incontrovertible proof that Sesame Street is written by vampire
hunters, who are determined to make sure children everywhere know
vampires' real weakness.
And now you do too.
P.S. Yes, I really do use one of these pieces of vampire folklore in my novel
FANG GIRL. And no, I'm not going to tell you which one…
Helen Keeble is not, and never has been, a vampire. She has however been a teenager. She grew up partly in America and partly in England, which has left her with an unidentifiable accent and a fondness for peanut butter crackers washed down with a nice cup of tea. She now lives in West Sussex, England, with her husband, daughter, two cats, and a variable number of fish. To the best of her knowledge, none of the fish are undead.
Her first novel, a YA vampire comedy called FANG GIRL, is out 11th Sept 2012, from HarperTeen.
She also has another YA paranormal comedy novel (provisionally titled NO ANGEL) scheduled for Sept 2013.
Giveaway
This giveaway is international and ends Tuesday, December 25.
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