Like The Flowers of St. Aloysius, Hell-Knights was also partly inspired by a very specific sequence that I ended up leaning heavily on for mental fuel. In this instance, instead of a scene in a movie, it was a music video that made use of one of my favorite tracks* from one of my favorite CDs.
The idea of a vampire exorcism inside a church turned into an itch I needed to scratch, and since I no longer published with a press by then, I finally realized I could do whatever I wanted with the scattered bits of story ideas that demanded to be wrangled into a complete book.
My preference for vampires has always been -- and always will be -- influenced by folklore and not modern takes by Hollywood and contemporary writers like Anne Rice. To me they'll always be reanimated corpses that need to be destroyed in order for their bodies and even souls to find rest. The only time I wrote something more modern in the approach to vampire fiction was Desmond and Garrick, which I also meant to write in the vein of Georgian satirists. But I'll talk more about that book when the time comes.
So, yeah -- not only traditional vampire lore, but also the sense of entrapment in an AU version of Venice, hence the heavy-handedness of Catholic iconography. But y'all should expect that from me, really. There's no going around my Catholic past.
And speaking of Catholic iconography, Hell-Knights is chock-full of metaphor and symbolism with the use of names. I was very specific about them when I worked on the book. The churches of St. Agnes and St. Raphael, representing purity for the former and healing for the latter, but with the plague of vampires infesting Decima, the purity of St. Agnes has been tainted. St. Raphael offers healing in the latter half of the book.
St. Michael (the warrior angel) is Michele, and St. Gabriel (the messenger angel) is Gabriel, the visiting Englishman. I can't say more about those two characters' roles in the book, but they are their namesakes within the context of the book. And lastly, the Parcae (the Fates) also figure largely in the book: Nona, Decima, and Morta. Again, those names pop up for specific reasons in the story.
Hell-Knights is one of two e-books currently on sale for 50% off throughout April. You can get your copies from Smashwords or Kobo, and for other stores, go to the book's Books2Read page for a list.
* the video actually uses three tracks, the primary one being "Night of the Wolf" with snippets of two other tracks worked in (the intro before the main song and the whispered "You belong to us" in the middle of the exorcism)
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