Deep cuts: The vampire stories that inspired Caitlin Starling's new novel, 'Milkteeth'

You’ve watched or read (or both!) Interview with the Vampire, Dracula, Sinners, and all the other heavy-hitters, you’ve dabbled in playing Vampire: The Masquerade…now what?

You could always check out Milkteeth, my newest novel, which asks the burning question: what if vampires had to breastfeed?

…I promise it makes more sense in context.

More seriously, it’s about Beatrice, a vampiric broodmother; she raises the fledgling children of other vampires through the first three years of their transformation, until they are both mentally mature and able to consume human blood safely. Beatrice is very good at what she does, but she’s looked down on with a certain amount of disgust by the vampires who rely on her.

When she takes on a challenging new charge and her body begins to change in inexplicable ways, she has to figure out a solution before everything can be taken for her—or worse, she devours her own brood.

It’s equal parts domestic and rancid, filthy and tender, violent and intimate. And if that’s less your speed, or you want to see some of the works that are responsible, at least in part, for Milkteeth’s existence, here are some lesser-known vampire stories that I’ve enjoyed.

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TV Show

Penny Dreadful

If you’ve heard of anything on this list, I’d wager it’s this show. Running three seasons on Showtime, Penny Dreadful brought together a broad variety of Victorian pulp horror into an atmospheric, brutal, and occasionally messy symphony. While there are a lot of moving parts, Eva Green’s character, Vanessa Ives, finds herself embroiled on a take on Dracula that is lushly horrific.

The combination of corrupted filth and glittering set pieces across the span of the series epitomizes one of my favorite things about vampire stories: how the seduction and the rot are one and the same, and are inextricably linked.

Novel

Christopher Buehlman, The Lesser Dead

Buehlman’s novel, set in the 1970s Manhattan subway system, is horrifically, wonderfully rancid, with an all-consuming voice and style. His vampires are monsters in every sense of the word, and their charisma comes from their monstrosity, not in spite of it. He also poses a question that I loved, and kept in mind when writing Milkteeth: what would scare a vampire?

Film

Only Lovers Left Alive

Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton star as Adam and Eve, two vampires who have loved each other for centuries, but often spend long periods apart. When Adam descends into a deep depression, Eve comes home to visit.

The movie is a meditation on music, art, and, ultimately, faith in the coming and going of cycles, and the ability of even the unchanging undead to reinvent themselves on occasion. It’s also occasionally hilarious. Seeing this in a little independent theater with a glass of red wine indelibly shaped the writer I grew into.

Anime

Hellsing

Speaking of formative vampires, I saw Hellsing for the first time shortly after it was translated into English. It’s on the dark and brutal side of vampire stories, filled with vicious killers, relentless cravings for blood, and a large helping of ominous and cruel bureaucracy. Alucard, bound to serve the descendants of Abraham Van Helsing, seeks out and destroys other undead monsters, but he’s hardly tame. It’s a great reminder that vampires hunt; it’s definitional.

Hellsing has more than a few adaptations, including Hellsing Ultimate, which stays closer to the original manga source. I think I owe myself a rewatch!

Novel

Isaac Fellman, Dead Collections

If you prefer your vampires more on the domestic side, Dead Collections is a brilliant, funny, and intimate take on the genre. Sol, an archivist who also happens to be a vampire, and so rarely leaves his place of work, falls in love with the widow of a television writer come to donate the papers of her late wife, and in the process begins to grapple with what his vampirism really means. Like the archive he works in, he’s now immortal…but always at risk of arbitrary destruction.

And while vampire stories often deal with legacy and the hidden costs of immortality, Dead Collections does it all from a delightfully fresh (and queer) angle. In particular, its focus on coming to terms with a changed body echo through Milkteeth.

Novel

Claire Kohda, Woman, Eating

I read Woman, Eating while editing Milkteeth. The two are quite different, with Woman, Eating centering on a young vampire trying to engage in the larger mortal world, and her experiences with art and isolation, but they both return again and again to that most central vampiric curse: the endless hunger.

Try Woman, Eating if you’re in the mood for something on the literary side that will still manage to unsettle you.

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There’s a wide world of vampire-inspired stories out there. If any of these stories capture you, follow where they lead. You may discover a whole new way to look at our favorite thirsty monstrous mirrors.

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