Dean P. Turnbloom | Halloween, Holmes, and Vampires!

Wow! Fresh Fiction asked me to do a blog post for their October Book- Spooktacular. This is so great. What better for Halloween than a vampire trilogy!

Fresh Fiction reviewed my first novel, SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE WHITECHAPEL VAMPIRE. That novel became the first in my Whitechapel Vampire trilogy, followed by SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE BODY SNATCHERS and now, SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE RETURN OF THE WHITECHAPEL VAMPIRE.

I decided, with a little bit of trepidation (anyone who’s seen my blog knows I’m not a great blogger; actually I suck), to combine a few of the topic choices normally provided guest-bloggers with a little bit of “Meet the Author” mixed with a little “Recipe Sharing” of how I wrote the novels, and finally a “Musical Tie-In”. The little bit of meeting the author has already occurred—hope you didn’t miss it, but I find it terribly boring to talk about myself. I would much rather talk about my characters. They are so much more interesting.

Fresh Fiction is known primarily for romances and while I never really considered my novels as romances, when you get down to it that’s exactly what they are. The main character has no less than three women linked to him romantically. Even though a vampire, I would have to say that he holds his own in getting the girl, so to speak (starting with the tarts in Whitechapel, but it wasn’t romance he was looking for there, was it?). But you’d be disappointed if you expected Baron Barlucci to be a clone of those “boy-band” vampires in TWILIGHT. He’s more a cross between Dracula and Lestat.

All told, the first book came out much differently than I had initially imagined, and much removed from the primary inspiration. The genesis for writing this book came from James Taylor. That’s right. I was listening to a song about a fisherman who was lost at sea, frozen, and then revived a century later. Frozen Man, from Taylor’s 1991 album “New Moon Shine”, is the song that inspired the Whitechapel Vampire trilogy. It’s true—strange, but true.

I thought to myself that it would be novel to have a nineteenth century vampire escaping capture fall into the northern Atlantic and become frozen, cast up on some frozen shore, only to be discovered in modern times. He would thaw out while onboard the ship and decimate the crew in an orgy of blood and carnage as he made up for missing a hundred years-worth of meals. But as I began to write and the ideas began to flow, I thought what a great cover for a vampire ‘Jack the Ripper’ would be. Then I began to wonder what it would be like to be a vampire, existing for centuries by causing death and destruction. I began to have sympathy for the man he had once been, and might be again, if only he could find a cure. And it was that search for a cure that became the spine linking the novels.

I brought in Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in the first book as a bit of a lark, but once I began writing their parts it was such great fun I decided they should have a far greater role in the sequel. Even the style and POV (Point of View) evolved throughout the trilogy. Whereas the first book was more or less the omniscient narrator, this changed in the second book. Part of the reason for the change was that I drew a bit of criticism for naming the first book “Sherlock Holmes…” with Holmes coming in late in the book. But as I explained, Holmes was at first intended to be a minor character. It was due to my enjoyment of writing his part that it increased in size and he sort of took over (as Holmes usually does).

Another criticism I received was not following the Conan Doyle method of having Watson report in first person. So, in the second book I dabbled with that a bit, having successive first person narrators. And then finally in the last book of the trilogy Watson is the sole speaker marking it as a true pastiche.

So there you have it, a quick synopsis of how I came to write these three novels. Now it’s up to the reader to find for him or herself wherein lies the romance.

About Dean P. Turnbloom

Born in the rolling hills of southern Indiana in 1954, Dean P. Turnbloom joined the Navy in 1973 and never looked back. He spent thirty years serving his country, during which time he met, fell in love with, and married a beautiful California girl, Nanette. Together they had three children and still live happily in southern California.

Dean’s writings have been carried in numerous small publications in print and online. He has now turned his attention toward larger works. SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE WHITECHAPEL VAMPIRE was the first work in the Whitechapel Vampire Trilogy. It was succeeded in 2014 with SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE BODY SNATCHERS, and this year comes the trilogy's completion with SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE RETURN OF THE WHITECHAPEL VAMPIRE.

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About SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE RETURN OF THE WHITECHAPEL VAMPIRE

Bodies washing up along the eastern coast of New England and the mysterious grounding of a "ghost ship" near Manhattan combine to bring Sherlock Holmes out of retirement to resume his pursuit of the villainous Baron Antonio Barlucci-the Whitechapel Vampire. But when he arrives in London to enlist the assistance of Dr. Watson, the good doctor has reservations.

It's been twenty-five years since Holmes and Watson hunted Barlucci, twenty-five years since they learned the baron was buried beneath a mountain of ice and snow. Has Holmes' preoccupation with Barlucci driven him to see connections where none exist? Have his powers of deduction gone stale while in retirement? Has Watson's worst fear, that Holmes' obsession with the baron has unbalanced his finely tuned psyche, come true? Sherlock Holmes and the Return of the Whitechapel Vampire is the exciting finalé to the Whitechapel Vampire Trilogy. In this final chapter, Holmes must face more than evil. He must face his own mortality- the only certainty in an uncertain world.