A Change of Heart is set in a standard Urban fantasy milieu where vampires rule in the shadows and humans are largely unaware of their existence apart from a few who are in the know – either because they serve the vampires or are actively trying to destroy them.
The central tale of this novel follows the story of Gabriel, a geeky university student who gets caught up in the hidden supernatural world when he is bitten by Lucas, a vampire Royal. You follow the changes that occur to him as he transforms – improved strength and speed, better night sight and all the other benefits of immortal blood, including a psychic link to a ‘dark beauty’ who is actually Lucas’s sister, also a powerful vampire. How he copes with this and how it affects his day to day life makes an interesting story, albeit one rather tropetastic with themes that have already been explored to death in other settings, including Peter Parker in Spider-Man (with the compulsory ‘weedy hero beats up the bullies’ scene in there for good measure). This thread is entertaining despite being heavy on the cliché – basic geek wish fulfilment stuff – and would make the basis of a strong novel by itself.
However, that strong story is somewhat swamped in the rest of the novel which is overambitious in its attempt to encompass the entirety of the world building. There are chapters and chapters in which many PoV characters weigh in, most of them with very little to actually contribute. Each of the main vampire characters, many more minor vampires, some of the human servants of the vampires, each of Gabriel’s friends, several of the modernised Knightly order of Vampire hunters and many other characters all get a shot in the spotlight and most of them waste it without actually progressing any of the plot. Some of these sections are very short – a paragraph or two – and if those chapters had been removed I do not think anyone would have noticed. At most, this needed four characters in the spotlight (Gabriel, his mortal love interest, the ‘dark beauty’ and the leader of the vampires) and could have done very well with only Gabriel’s point of view – allowing the reader to explore the mystery of the new world he has fallen into. A whole novel could have covered the transformation of Gabriel, the effect this has on his life and relationships and ended with him and his friends meeting the Knights (something that occurs about half way through the book) and leading into a second book where more of the politics of vampire society and the nature of the knights is revealed. Pared down like that, cutting out the extraneous fluff and pumping up the scenes with Gabriel, this could have been a great YA urban fantasy novel with a lot of potential for sequels.
I guess the issue here is the author is trying to portray a complicated political situation with conspiracies and secrets and is making the mistake of thinking that the reader needs to see all that immediately. As a writer myself I know the temptation is there when faced with this and I think the solution is to strictly limit point of view – the reader sees what the character sees and therefore may well be oblivious to the plots in the background but will see evidence of it in other character actions. It is a hard trick to pull off well (and I am by no means an expert at it myself).
Overall, a good story that manages to entertain marred by an over ambitious plot that needed a subtler approach to manage well.
But that issue is only part of what I want to talk about here. The main focus of this post is that weird transition between myths and history. The events in the Iliad and Odyssey, for example, combine elements of both. 
Also, I guess you can say there is precedent (Classical Precedent at that, you cannot get much more venerable that Homer***) for allowing your characters to be idiots. Always a good way to progress a plot and make readers shout ‘No! Don’t do that, you idiot!’ at the page while they read.
The truth comes at a cost, but how much does one have to sacrifice to gain success?
and the motivations have the quality of myths; they have that do or die edge to them. It’s possibly why The Wire is one of my favourite TV shows, and Omar my favourite character in it. With a clear nod to Achilles, he pushes his revenge to the edge of insanity for his Patroclus. Characters in these stories tell themselves they have a code, that their world is run according to rules, but in the end, no one else is playing their game, and they meet tragic ends. It’s a hyper-real, exploded version of reality, of our emotions thrown up against the nonsensical blocks of existence. If we delude ourselves that there are rules, that we can feel so strongly without compromise, we’ll come to a sticky end.
I realised, when I started writing my vampire story, that there’s the potential to do either, or both. That writing gothic fiction can provide a larger than life mythic edge. But that, in the ambiguous potential of eternity, there could be one hell of a long time spent staring into the void.
magical in some way. I remember being obsessed with witches, as well as Narnia and Robin Hood. I think I was a bit of a goth, even then. I had a secret magic club in my mum’s garden shed, which I shared with my friend. I wrote a lot of poems as a kid, and in my teens, but I’ve lost my bottle for it as an adult.
I’ve taken influences from a lot of places. I’m a pretty avid reader. My biggest influences are probably Chandler, Camus and Conrad. Heart of Darkness is definitely an important one for me. I love empty spaces, howling holes and rotten hearts in stories, and characters that are strangers to their emotions.
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