Author's First Novel Uncovers Secrets, Haunts and Vampires in Quaint Ellicott City

Blood and Sunlight: A Maryland Vampire Story  is bound by history and hauntings.

In this twisted tale by first-time novelist Jamie Wasserman, Ellicott City is the hometown of Melanie, a waitress and college drop out; her father, the local sheriff; and Lucas, Melanie's boyfriend. With plenty of small-town gossip and drama, Wasserman pushes the theme of vampires, fantasy and fairytales made popular by Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series into a harsher reality.

Patch.com columnist Valencia Wood caught up with Wasserman to give his fans a glimpse into the world he created in Blood and Sunlight, published in print and as an ebook by Penumbra Publishing  in August.

Patch: Jamie, thank you for taking time out to tell us about your debut novel. But before we go there, inquiring fans want a snapshot of your life.

Wasserman: Ellicott City has been my home and backyard for 30 years. I was born in Edison, NJ. However, I moved to Maryland (to Calverton) with my family when I was four and then to Columbia when I was six.

I attended Oakland Mills High School where I meet my beautiful wife, Michelle. After the usual high school graduation, I sailed off to college in Fredericksburg, VA. Fredericksburg is very similar to Ellicott City with its incredible history, old and still functional architecture, cobblestone streets and nearby river. I felt very at home there.

I'm 36 years old and recently celebrated my 10-year wedding anniversary. We have two kids—Alex is 6 and in first grade and our daughter Shana will be 4 in December. Our third is in the oven and due in March.

Patch: You're definitely busy these days. A growing family and a debut novel! It sounds like you really love the architecture of the old country and the feel that it brings. Have you lived in other cities or countries with a similar feel?

Wasserman: After school (with an English degree), for lack of anything better to do, I moved to London. I seem to gravitate to old places. I was fortunate to land a job there that let me travel all over the UK and Europe.

When my work visa expired, I returned home and lived in a succession of places, but never far from where I started.

Patch: What motivated you to start writing?

Wasserman: Groupies. I didn't know how to play the guitar so I figured a rock band was out. But seriously, I write because I can't not write. Faulkner said, 'An artist is a creature driven by demons – he usually doesn't know why they chose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why.'  I could try to explain it better than that -- but let's face it, I'm no Faulkner.

Patch: Let's talk about your interest in vampires, moons, the paranormal and what motivated you to write Blood and Sunlight.

Wasserman: Well, it's kinda crazy. While some kids had Star Wars figures growing up, I had Monsters of Hollywood dolls (Frankenstein, Wolfman, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Mummy, etc.)  My favorite was, of course, Dracula. He actually got away with some pretty heinous stuff and he was a snappy dresser, too.

To this day, I love 80's and Hammer horror movies, anything zombie related, and of course, vampire literature. My wife tells me I'm not normal and I'm inclined to believe her. 

The novel began to come to life in 2003 as a screenplay. I used every spare minute and hour reading screenplays. After a few hundred, I convinced myself that I could write one, too. I made a few dozen abortive attempts, then gave up  on the process altogether, but one idea stuck with me.

Patch: It's always that one idea. What happened next?

Wasserman: Well, in this script, I wanted to do something different with the vampire myth—a monumental task considering how many books and movies there had been.

In my telling, the vampires didn't possess any special powers or immortality. They were just sickly, weak creatures that craved and needed blood to survive—more akin to drug addicts than supernatural predators of the night. This was the birth of Blood and Sunlight.

I pitched the idea to my wife, Michelle, who should by all rights be working at a publishing house as an editor -- and she nixed the idea.

The whole idea of a vampire, she said is that he is a special being, something otherworldly, romantic. Something you envy as much as you fear. She's an avid fan of vampire novels and books and knows more about vampires than anyone I know. At this point, I decided to stick with her advice and killed the project altogether.

With raising my children and the demands of the daily grind, I was taken away from writing for a few years. But in 2009, feeling a bit intellectually restless, I decided to write a book, Wiggles. I think this was the final straw.

Patch:  What mindset kept you focused and motivated? How did you come up with the story, the setting and the characters?

Wasserman: I was so determined that I figured, even if I knocked out just a few paragraphs a day, I could be done in a year. I picked up Blood and Sunlight again and decided to give it another shot under my wife's careful eye. I penned the first sentence on Feb. 20, 2009. After more than 13 months, countless drafts, and an obscene amount of arguments with Michelle about which bits had to go, I finished on April 1, 2010.

The setting was easy. Like I said, Ellicott City is my backyard and just like any backyard, it's filled with secrets. Hellhouse. The burned out girl's school. The ghosts of Judge's Bench and the old Courthouse. Main Street, which seems to either flood or catch fire every year. The Victorian churches and stubborn cobblestone. Seven Hills. The dark Patapsco water and the thick wild woods. Those wonderful train tracks and the strange crumbling ruins that cling stubbornly to the rocky hillside.

A creators dream! You can't write a better setting than this. There's a freaking castle here, for gosh sakes! It's truly a magical place with that rare mix of history, religion, tragedy, nature and mysticism. And, it's surrounded by this upscale bedroom community. Talk about intersecting realities. You could write a library of books about this town and not exhaust the possibilities.

If I went into the story blindly, it was not without excellent guides. The characters have been rattling around in my head for some time—I just had to find the right narrative for them. This is their story, or at least the story they demanded be told.

Patch: Do you consider Blood and Sunlight a romance novel?

Wasserman: There's certainly a love story in it. But, I think romance readers looking for a quick fix might be disappointed. Vampires, in recent media have been become sparkly, teen idols given to terrible fits of brooding and self-loathing that teenage girls seem to find irresistible.

But, those aren't the vampires I fell in love with. They were, by their very nature, monsters feeding off the innocent and they almost always got staked in the end of the book or movie. I wanted to get back to that notion a bit. And, so my vampires do some very vampire-like things, but there is no good or bad guy in this book. The lines, like in life, are blurry. Gray as dusk. Some of the wrong people die. Love does, however, triumph in the end. Whether or not you'll want it to by the end of the book is up to the reader to decide.

Patch: Aspiring authors and fans are always curious about published writers' approaches to writing. Can you give us a snapshot?

Wasserman: I would love to say that I have a careful and structured approach to writing. Or, that I take a single, perfect idea and map it out and that every line is scripted ahead of time. But I can't. I tend to chase down ideas into some pretty dark corners of my brain. Sometimes, I come away with gold and sometimes I don't.

Fortunately, my wife is also a very good editor. She kept my book from veering too far off into the ludicrous. The book I completed barely resembles the book I intended to write -- but I'm extremely pleased with the final results.

Next week, read part two of Valencia's interview with Ellicott City writer Jamie Wasserman.