In the comments of a previous post, a reader asks, “What gave you the idea to write Girls Wearing Black? What was the inspiration behind it?”
To properly answer that question, I need to mention a short story by David Schickler called The Smoker.
The Smoker was a short story that first appeared in the June 19, 2000 issue of The New Yorker.
The Smoker is about a high school teacher who is in love with one of his students, but won’t admit as much to himself because he knows the relationship is inappropriate. One night, the student’s family invites the teacher to dinner at their house. He goes; hysterics ensue.
Inspired by The Smoker, I set out to write my own ‘guess who’s coming to dinner’ sort of tale.
Here was the setup for my story. A teenage boy goes to a dinner at his girlfriend’s house where he will meet her parents for the first time. At some point during the dinner, he announces the truth of his intentions with the girl. He is a vampire, and he wants to make his girlfriend into one too.
Left just at that, there is potential for a good story, I think. But I wanted to do something unconventional with it.
What if the parents weren’t at all offended at the idea of their daughter becoming a creature of the night? What if they were totally in favor of it?
What if the parents were in favor, but the daughter wasn’t?
What if the parents arranged the whole thing? What if there was a history and tradition in their family of marrying off their daughters to vampires?
Those of you who have read the books can probably imagine how it evolved from there. Lots of drafts, lots of running with the most interesting ideas and characters that came out during the writing. We’re a long way from a single family and a single dinner. Now there is a whole world where the vampires have created institutions to perpetuate their kind, and the humans line up for their shot to become immortal.
