The biggest similarity between my vampire novel and the vampire movie Priest is the concept of a religious order that has trained specifically to fight vampires.
The use of monks to fight enemies of a religion is not new, of course, as anyone who has read The Monks of War could tell you. In fact, my sister gave me that book after I had first described my novel to her, and its one of the reasons my protagonist is referred to as a crusader.
Other than the religious order, Priest is very different from my novel. The vampires are another species and would fit into the movie Alien easily, but not so much into Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
The whole setting is also very different from our Earth. It’s meant to be either an alternate history or another planet–take your pick, and the Catholic Church is Big Brother.
In fact, the whole society is an Orwellian dystopia set after environmental degradation and nuclear war, very different from the leafy green of my post-industrial, post-apocalyptic world.
I’d still like to capitalize on the movie’s marketing campaign, but I’m reluctant now to tell people that my novel is just like Priest. Firstly because it’s not accurate, and secondly because now that I’ve seen the movie, I’m not sure that will send people flocking out to buy similar stories.
The movie is more like an expensive TV pilot, with a lot of Matrix-like big freeze shots and the anti-gravity stunts that have become the norm of Hollywood sci-fi action.
I’ve finished going through Fogel’s edit of my novel (it was brutal) and my proof-reader and I are making a last pass. With luck I’ll launch Monday, over a week late, but Priest isn’t going to make or break this novel.