The Vampires Don’t Sleep Alone Collection
Presented in an amber apothecary glass vial.
Because of the nature of this project, imps are not available for any Vampires Don’t Sleep Alone scents

Vampires Don’t Sleep Alone: Your Guide to Meeting, Dating and Seducing a Vampire
by Elizabeth Barrial and D.H. Altair

Last year, Del Howison and I were hired to write a tongue-in-cheek guide to dating vampires. Essentially, the premise of the book assumes that vampires are real and that they have recently come out of the crypt, so to speak. It explores the potential challenges found in actually dating vampires, and touches on the anthropology and science of vampires. We shelved most of the supernatural tropes, and concentrated on painting as “realistic” a picture as possible. I wrote the deadpan pseudoscience and false history, Del added warmth, contemporary advice, and wit. The project went through many iterations. It was initially supposed to be geared towards teen readers, and then the concept morphed to appeal to a more mature audience. I’m really, really happy with the way that we tweaked the vampire mythos.

In the end, after months of research, innumerable conversations, eleventybillion rewrites, and much love and tears, the book went to the editor… and here we are.

This is my first time writing in this capacity, with publishers and all that snazzy stuff, and it was a nerve-wracking, wonderful, educational, and exciting experience. I want to thank Del (from the bottom of my heart!) and the people at Ulysses Press for this opportunity, and I hope that our book does them proud!

I finished your book last night. I now know more about vampires than I knew there was to know. I’m also very impressed. The book is extremely well-written, with healthy doses of wit, irony and much intelligence.

—Karl Alexander, author of Time After Time

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Excerpt:

There have been quite a few scholars and historians among the vampire population, and over the centuries, repositories of their collective knowledge have been established all over the globe, the most notable libraries being in Vienna, Baghdad, Madrid, Kiev, Venice, Kyoto, Santo Domingo, Damascus, Thebes, and Detroit, though their specific locations remain shrouded in secrecy. Even in the twenty-first century, there is still very little trust between Homo sapiens and Homo striga, and vampires generally feel safer keeping their information among their own kind, so it is almost impossible for non-vampires to access the historical records. From time to time, however, information does leak out, and the following is partially based on Valentina Luzio’s dissertation on intercultural vampire stereotypes, but it has also been pieced together through information we have gleaned through conversations with our vampire associates.

Over the centuries, vampires have classified their own kind, and in the past, these classifications became the root of a rough caste system that some vampires still adhere to today. For the most part, though, the terms are now used as loose slang, similar to the way that humans have coined phrases to describe those who share related predilections, tastes, and behaviors. The terms of vampire classification that we have come across are Cicuta, Interfector, Tombeur, Silenti, Transeo, Philologi, Misericordia, Vespillo, and Sanctus.