Guest Post with Asa Bailey/The Vampire of Highgate Giveaway!

Today we sit down with author Asa Bailey to get a look at the folklore that inspried her new book, The Vampire of Highgate.

AND....one lucky winner will get their own finished copy of the book!

But first...the story behind the story, with Asa Bailey.

Ever since I was a child I have been fascinated with the bizarre the fantastic and of course the dark. When I was introduced to the legend of The Highgate Vampire I was inspired by how it was a modern dark legend, one that had taken hold on the internet and throughout it's life it had used the media to spread itself - like vampirism is - this legend itself is a virus. In the age of the Internet local folk lore can go viral and grow into something that previously was not possible.

I wanted to create a world not just a story, given the chance I had been given, to write a novel I wanted to expand on the mythology of the vampire and add to its world. When I dug deeper into the Highgate Vampire legend and the areas folk lore, I found that the stories of the undead walking in the Highgate area was not something new, in fact it went back further and further in time.

The area around Highgate woods was once a Roman burial ground and is known to be one of London's oldest mass grave sites. The area has inspired stores of ghosts vampires and demons for centuries. It's maybe one of the reasons that Bram Stocker visited it for inspiration for Dracula. I took the legend right back in time, tracing it to it's roots that lead me back to biblical times. Here's why.
With a cast of modern characters charged with digging up the legend of The Highgate Vampire, I wanted to use my creative license to connect the king of the vampires to the blood line of Christ - to create a whole new vampire mythology, to give readers a richer and alternative vampire world. In the World of Highgate the vampire started with Aliza drinking the blood of Jesus, he was given the power of immortality and in these early beginnings Aliza was in fact the leader of a new religion, the Vampires. But as the times passed and the opposed religions of Christianity and Islam rose up the vampires became hidden, down trodden even and this was the turning point in vampire history that sent them along the fork in the road, one towards anger, malice and eventually the evil we see in them today.

Obviously vampires are dark and sexy, but why. This was where my thinking began.

Best

Asa Bailey

http://highgatevampire.com

And now that you know how it all started it's time to win a copy of the book so you can see how it all ends! One lucky winner will get a finished copy of the book. All you have to do is fill out the Rafflecopter form below. This is open internationally!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway