Vampires Were Never Meant to Be Romantic
For most of their history, vampires were not love stories.
They were warnings.
Stories told in low voices about something that moved through villages in the night. Something that changed people. Something that didn’t belong to the natural order of things.
They weren’t misunderstood.
They were feared.
Somewhere along the way, that changed.
The vampire softened. Became familiar. Became safe.
A figure of longing instead of dread.
And maybe that says more about us than it does about the myth itself.
Because the original idea—the one buried underneath centuries of retelling—was never meant to comfort.
It was meant to unsettle.
When I began writing NAMTAR: The Night Plague, I kept coming back to that earlier version.
Not the romantic figure.
Not the tragic immortal.
But the question underneath it all:
What if the myth wasn’t symbolic?
What if it was a misinterpretation of something real?
In Namtar, vampires aren’t supernatural.
They are engineered.
Not creatures of magic, but the result of knowledge pushed too far—of evolution shaped with intent instead of allowed to unfold.
Something designed.
Something that spreads.
Something that doesn’t ask for permission.
And that changes everything.
Because if a monster is created, it can be traced.
If it can be traced, it has an origin.
And if it has an origin…
it means someone made the choice to bring it into the world.
That’s where the story begins.
Not with fear of the unknown—
but with the consequences of what we were willing to create.
In Umbra, Lucis.
In shadow, light.
— C. D. Jones