I self published The Hunger the same day I put out The Deep Dark Well, and I felt as good about this novel of urban fantasy as I did the hard science fiction work.  Originally titles just Hunger, referring to both the hunger of a vampire and the hunger for drugs of an addict, I found another well known novel at Amazon of the same name and decided to add another word.  In 2005 I original researched fantastic literature while trying to see what would be the area of the genres that would be most likely to sell.  I looked up sales on publisher’s lunch to see what agents were moving.  I found to my surprise that fantasy was outselling science fiction by sixty to forty percent.  Checking on the fantasy, I found that almost seventy percent of fantasy sales were vampire urban fantasy.  So I thought, that’s the one, I’ll write a vampire novel.  Now I didn’t want to do it about clubbing vampires.  You know, the ones that hang around at the club after feeding, drinking and dancing the night away.  Now I like some of these stories.  I just think they are over done.  So I tried to think of the most frightening vampire I could come up with, and came up with, Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  Dracula was one really bad dude.  Strength of twenty men, able to change into bats, rats or wolves, convert to mist to go through small openings, and he had control of the weather.  Add to that he could walk during the day, though he had to be in the coffin at sunup (never was real clear on that part).  And he spread vampirism like a plague.  No special blood transfer or life transfer.  He just put them down and three days later they were back.  So I decided that he would be the template for my vamps.

Lucinda Taylor came from an idea I had gotten from working with and being around drug addicts.  Most of them are normal people, sometimes even very smart people, until the drugs get a hold of them.  Then they live for the drugs and will do just about anything for them.  I had Lucinda start out as a very good person, wife and student.  Then her abusive husband beats her and throws her out of the house, she gets addicted to heroin and ends up whoring.  Her pimp cuts her throat when she attacks him for the drug she needs, and she is left for dead.  Except a vampire comes along and finishes draining her, and three days later she arises as an undead monster under the control of the vampire lord.  She does some despicable things under his tutelage, and then he dies, and she finds herself a free agent.  From then on she only kills who she wants to kill, and makes sure they don’t rise again by taking their heads, burning them, whatever it takes to break the cycle.  And because of her past addiction she has some control over the vampire hunger, allowing her to bypass the innocents that her instincts want her to take.  So she goes after the pimps, drug dealers and crime bosses who treated her like crap when she was alive, going up and down the East Coast to terrorize those who normally rule the night.