Charles O'Keefe, The Newfoundland Vampire, Guest Post!

Author Charles O’Keefe "The Newfoundland Vampire"

Hello Vampire Review readers! :)

First off, I wanted to thank blog owner, Tami Jackson, for the opportunity to talk about my book, it’s much appreciated. [Tami responds: You are so welcome Charles. It's a real privilege to have you visit! I trust my readers will thoroughly enjoy this very well-written, fun and lighthearted post.]

So you’re wondering who I am. Well my name is Charles O’Keefe and I live in a rather isolated, quiet placed called Newfoundland with my wife and two cats. So naturally, when I finally got my act together and wrote a book, I called it “The Newfoundland Vampire.”

Oh, and also since I’m something of an ego-maniac, I based the main character, "Joseph," very heavily upon myself and made the setting of the novel for primarily where I live. (Might as well stick with what you know, I figure.)

Also (perhaps more importantly) I’m a huge geek, I was president of a Star Trek fan club many years ago, I play Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), many types of board games and even have a Star Trek tattoo.  As such, Joseph (the main character) wears his geekiness on his sleeve for most of the book

While writing such adventures, my thought was: "Who wants to read about another Edward Cullen? Or even Spike? Why not introduce my readers to someone with Angel’s conscience and Sheldon’s love of all things geeky?"

So that's what I did. I had a great deal of fun figuring out how a shy, studious and geeky guy (if he suddenly became a vampire) might behave and/or respond? Sure. At first he’d be freaked-out and maybe even angry, but after a while? Then he’d realize it was pretty damn cool, being un-dead.
My other idea was that just because you became a vampire - it wouldn’t mean your personality would change very much. Sure you’d have to drink blood and brush shoulders with evil vampires on occasion but at least, for a few years, you’d still want to hang out with your human friends. So I had some fun with a vampire playing games like "Risk" all-the-while wondering what his cat’s blood tasted like. He also saw blood move through veins of his friends and had to exercise self-control to hold back his desire or else tear someone’s throat out.

For me, D&D has always been a great escape from reality. So if you or I were a vampire, we'd want to escape into an imaginary world more than ever. Immortality is a heavy burden, after all, and this supernatural world would lay heavily upon our minds. Plus who wouldn’t want to show off a sword-wielding, hot redhead vampire-girlfriend to his friends? While writing my book, I even discovered that my favorite session of D&D paralleled some events in thebook quite nicely.
 
I think geek culture has become very popular and more people than ever have come to embrace it. As I see it, there are three kinds of geeks: hard core, causal and closet ones. I think any one of them will enjoy what I’ve done with Joseph and with vampires. Thanks for reading and I look forwardto hearing from all of you J.

LINKS TO CONTACT THIS AUTHOR AND/OR LEARN MORE ABOUT HIM:
Website: charlesokeefe.com
Other resources to buy his book
Contact Charles directly via email