Priest Forces My Hand
The first hint of trouble came from a friend who had read and liked my vampire novels. He sent an e-mail with a link to the website of the movie, Priest, and asked me if it sounded familiar. The tone of the e-mail indicated he already knew the answer.
Three of the main components of that movie trailer are in my novel: walled cities, vampire armies and warrior priests. Aside from that my novel is very different, but I know people will draw parallels between the two.
I admit vampire armies is not that original an idea. I mean, if you make two vampires and they make two vampires and so on it’s pretty obvious that eventually humans will have to wall off their cities and fight swarms of vampires.
As for my protagonist belonging to a quasi-religious order–well priests have been fighting demons for centuries, and Hollywood has exploited that idea many times.
So I had to decide: slink away with my Priest-like vampire novel or go for it. Then it occurred to me that this is a marketing dream. When people ask what my novel is about, I can say that it’s Priest meets the Battle for Helms Deep from Lord of the Rings.
Okay, some of you won’t have a clue what I’m talking about, but the fans who would buy this type of novel will know exactly what I mean.
I can’t wait to see Priest, because I’m pretty sure that the movie’s high-tech take on vampire fighting is very different from my post-apocalyptic novel, where gunpowder is so scarce that people carry swords and cross bows as supplementary weapons, and gasoline engines are a thing of the distant past.
I’m also betting that I have the better story, but I’m judging the trailer so that may not be fair.
So here’s the plan: run my novel to my editor (God help me) and hire a cover artist. This novel has already been through several readers, so hopefully Fogel won’t totally gut me. By the release date of Priest, May 13th, I intend to launch my novel on Amazon.
It’s going to be a tight deadline, especially since the Toronto Marathon is on May 15th and I’m training five evenings a week, but it’s exciting.