I started writing Vampires in the Temple in a very dark stage in my life, in 2010, after my daughter’s stillbirth and the long suicidal depression that followed, but before I made the decision to try to believe in God again that ultimately led to me writing The Bishop’s Wife and having the national bestselling success that followed. I admit that I was angry at the church and I used a character, Jack Hardy, who was also angry at the church to tell the story. But the novel is a retelling of sorts of what I came to see as the “myth” of Mormon history. I’d done retellings before: Mira, Mirror is an odd retelling of Snow White, about the mirror’s history and final quest to be human again, and The Princess and the Hound is a feminist retelling of The Beauty and the Beast. But this was a retelling for grownups and it comes with grownup language. I’d never dared to use curse words in fiction before, and certainly not with the vigor that Jack Hardy used them. His non-Mormon voice gave me license to write about Mormons more irreverently than I ever had before.
Jack Hardy’s world is an alternate history of Mormonism—with vampires.
There had been vampires here in the Salt Lake valley when Brigham Young and the pioneers first arrived, but they’d been corralled onto the island after the Vampire War. They’re not humans who have died and come back to life. They’re homo vampirus, related to us on the same family tree as Neanderthals, a relic of evolution that had died out around other inland salt lakes centuries ago according to the archeologists. The ones here survived for reasons still being studied. They look human, but shorter. Flatter faces. Longer arms. Faster, more feral. Can’t speak, for some reason. Something to do with the brain.
When I wrote this, I’d been relistening to Jim Butcher’s marvelously fun paranormal series about Harry Dresden, The Dresden Files, read on audio by James Marsters, who played Spike in Buffy/Angel and who does accents amazingly well. Butcher’s series is set in Chicago and the city becomes a character. I wanted to know why no one had written a great detective series set in Utah, but I knew the answer as soon as I asked it—because you couldn’t possibly write about Salt Lake City unless you understood Mormonism. And those who are insiders to Mormonism are unlikely to write about it for a national audience, because it would be seen as a betrayal of sorts to the loyalty required by church members. But I’d lost that sense of loyalty, though I hadn’t lost the fondness for everything Mormon from the kitchy stuff sold at Deseret Book to the stories we tell about our past. I wanted to use all of that, plus spice it up with vampires. And werewolves. And, if we get to the later books in the series, you’ll find immortals, as well. Because how can you do Mormonism without immortality?
In the end, Vampires in the Temple allowed me to exorcise a lot of the demons in my head. I wasn’t sure who in the world would publish it, but I did initially send it to my current editor, Juliet Grames at Soho Press. She reminded me that Soho only publishes contemporary fiction and hinted that she’d be really interested to see what I might write with a female protagonist—it took me a couple of years to figure out how to do that and send it to her. But Vampires in the Temple was my first attempt at telling a slant version of Mormonism with all the rules changed, allowing myself the creative freedom to offend people, take the kinds of chances that I wasn’t sure I was comfortable with, and tell a plain fun story with Mormons as the backdrop—and sometimes as the butt of the joke.
There are half vampire, half human children imprisoned in the tunnels under Temple Square, a secret conspiracy of higher level Mormons rather like modern-day Danites who are determined to use the vampires and their children for their own purposes, a prophecy about a vampire Messiah by Brigham Young’s sister Ella, protestors on Temple Square who throw blood and accuse Mormons of killing babies on the temple altars during General Conference, a genealogy chart that shows Alvin Smith is still alive and a werewolf, and well, a lot of other things. If I could think of something that seemed likely to get me in trouble with your average Mormon, I threw it into this book. Later on, writing the sequels, I made sure the new prophet of the alternate history Mormon church wrote a policy to excommunicate all vampires and half-vampires from the church, which causes a terrible hue and cry. Delicious deviance, that is this book and this series.
I don’t know if the audience for this book is any more than my editor, Michael Austin, and about three other people, but if you pick it up, I don’t think your reaction will be boredom. My vampires drink blood because they need the minerals, not because they’re resurrected humans who feed on the life force of others. There’s no turning anyone into a vampire who isn’t born one, but obviously, vampires are just a reminder of what humanity is, at base. They’re not really a different species, though no one wants to admit that. They’re a metaphor for the ways in which we other people who are different, something Mormons surely do better than anyone else. I’m delighted to have a chance at last to share this book with readers out there who dare to transgress the lines around Mormonism that have been drawn by other people. I believe this is the kind of book that might be openly popular in about a hundred years, and may end up with me on a list somewhere, though I don’t have any idea who else might be on that list, since I really think no one has written anything like this before. I once had a friend ask me if I was ever worried that my ideas were unoriginal. I thought about it for a moment, and then laughed. Nope. People may tell me my writing is commercial or pedestrian, but I tell a rip-roaring story and one that no one else would ever think to tell, even if I start with ingredients you think you’ve seen before.
Featured photo: Chris McClanahan at Flickr