# 5 (from my Substack archives): Vampire Enthusiast Chat With K.M. Enright and Morgan Dante
In which some authors geek out about those fanged monstrous babygirls.
This post has been sitting unfinished in my drafts since the beginning of 2025, so I thought it was about time to wrap it up and share. I’ve managed to wrangle two amazing authors, K. M. Enright and Morgan Dante, to chat about our mutual obsession: vampires.
Introduce yourself and your published and/or upcoming book with vampires.
K.M. Enright: I’m K. M. Enright, and I am a dark fantasy writer who draws on both the gothic and horror in my stories. My debut series follows a blood mage spymaster as she recruits a noble bastard with a terrible gift to hunt down a magical serial killer for the vampiric Eternal King—all while planning to overthrow him. The first book, Mistress of Lies, is out now, and the sequel, Lord of Ruin, is coming this August from Orbit!
Morgan Dante: I’m Morgan Dante, and I’m a writer of Gothic stories and horror romance! I love vampires; they’ve been my favorite supernatural creature for a long time. My newest book that features vampires is Sacrament, a M/M/M dark romance.
Ezra Arndt: Hello, I’m Ezra Arndt (they/them/theirs) and the host of this vampire-themed chat. I absolutely adore vampires and try to incorporate them in as many of my writing projects as I can. Awakened Darkness, the first book of my in-progress queer erotic dark fantasy series, heavily features vampires and vampirism as blood magic.
What’s your favorite bit of vampire media, and how has it influenced your projects' take on the lore?
K.M. Enright: It all started for me, like for so many others, with Interview with the Vampire. I know, I know, cliche, isn’t it? But I imprinted on Rice’s lush, queer as hell writing before I even had the words to describe myself, as a person and as a creative, and it really did become the seed for who I would become. I found myself gravitating towards stories where it’s difficult to categorize someone as good or evil, to romances where just because you love someone doesn’t mean that you can’t hurt them. Part of the joy of Rice’s vampires is how messy and human they are–even in their most grandiose moments, they are still petty and flawed and full of rage and love. And that humanity at the heart of the monster–that is what I am most excited about, every time I sit down to write.
Morgan Dante: I’m predictable. I like The Vampire Chronicles, especially Memnoch the Devil, but I really love the AMC show. I’m captivated by the idea Louis says that “all vampires are made of trauma.” Typically, when I started writing, I didn’t like the very melancholy and negative view of being a vampire because I thought it’d be awesome to be immortal and be able to have the time to learn so much. I saw vampirism as something fun and sexy. That said, IWTV and Baldur’s Gate 3 approach vampirism in a way that makes me ask: When you’re immortal and frozen mentally in times when you experienced trauma, can you ever become a different person? Is there an incentive to regret your actions and change if regret only means a lifetime of shame? In ways, it’s made me rethink the hedonism of certain characters (like Lestat or Astarion after he’s ascended) as tragic. To survive—“I have a capacity for enduring,” Lestat says—they become their masks.
Ezra Arndt: I’ve been enchanted by vampires as far back as I can remember. The earliest pieces of vampy media which I imprinted on were the manga-version of the Vampire Knight series by Matsuri Hino, the Vampirates series by Justin Somper, and the Morganville Vampires series by Rachel Caine (that one influenced a lot of the Lost Gods series… even though, to this day, I still haven’t finished it due to waves of sadness over the author passing). But after seeing the 2024 remake of Nosferatu, I find myself utterly obsessed with it. I’ve always been drawn to the strigoi and variations of that type of vampire (another favorite of mine is Netflix’s 2021 movie, Blood Red Sky). The slow transformation into a creature of rot and bloodlust always gets me. “I am an appetite. Nothing more.”1 That line really spoke to me. That primal otherworldly need to devour and destroy no matter the cost to you or those in your path… The act of consuming that which you used to be, especially that which you are madly obsessed with, has always spoken to my creative muse.
What do you like to play around with the most when it comes to vampires, even when it deviates from already established mythos?
K.M. Enright: I love the duality of vampires—they are both the elegant aristocrat and the feral beast, and that is a dichotomy that I lean hard into as my series goes on. You’ve got the Blood Workers, who are all about the controlled but still endless hunger, the polite smile that hides the cruelest designs. But we’re also going to see what happens when Blood Working goes too far, when the vampire is born, and what remains when the mask is stripped away completely. Additionally, I found myself drawing on other stories, particularly from Filipino mythology, about creatures that stand alongside the vampire. I can’t say that much more, since Lord of Ruin isn’t out until August, but I can’t wait for readers to see what I’m doing with the manananggal. There is a wide world out there, and I’m glad to be shining the spotlight on even one of the other monsters.
Morgan Dante: I don’t really have my own concrete mythos that I follow because the fun for vampires to me is how their powers or hindrances (having no reflection, for example, and weakness to sunlight) resonate thematically. I like to play with classic Gothic interpretations and such, but I’m open to different interpretations. Mostly, in Sacrament, I enjoyed making my own three-tiered power system with vampires. It gave me interesting ideas and challenges to explore.
Ezra Arndt: When it comes to vampires, some symbolism I like to twist to fit the story of whatever project I’m working on is the blood-sucking and near-cannibalism of that act. As I’m sure everyone has gathered from previous posts, I find the concept of these feral creatures sucking the literal life from their victims to sustain themselves, and how that mirrors how a lot of abusive relationships are, in fiction or otherwise, utterly addictive. I’ve always been into deconstructing those themes, wrapping them up in ragged ribbons held together by staples, and weaving stories inspired by various vampire folklore from whatever region, geographical setting, or mythology that I’m drawing inspiration from.
What do you wish other people, creatives or otherwise, would ask you about your vampire project?
K.M. Enright: I am always happy to answer questions about redefining the vampire, particularly from the perspective of those who don’t usually get to be the vampire. These vampires aren’t merely queer coded, they’re out and proud. Isaac is a queer, Filipino trans man, and he’s out here to flip the narrative on who’s the victim and who’s the monster, and I absolutely love that.
Morgan Dante: I would always be happy to hear questions about historical and literary inspirations, as well as the themes in each vampire book.
Ezra Arndt: I would absolutely love to get some questions in the vein (heh) of the intersection of vampires, queerness, disability, and puritanical sensibilities throughout history and literature. I’m not a scholar or anything, and there are a lot of things I don’t know about them, but modern vampires (and their slow decay into the arguably even more monstrous strigoi) are a hyper-fixation of mine.
Lastly, is there any particular place to connect with you on the wide, wide internet?
K.M. Enright: You can find me at kmenright.com and at my Substack, kmenright.substack.com. I can also be found on Bluesky at (at) kmenright.bsky.social and on Instagram at (at) km_enright.
Morgan Dante: You can find me at morgandante.com and at my Substack, which is morgandante.substack.com. My newest vampire book, Sacrament, was released on Valentine’s Day.
Ezra Arndt: I can be found clicking away on Substack at ezraarndt.substack.com or making graphics instead of writing for Instagram (at) ezraarndtwrites. While the sequel to Awakened Darkness is still in the works, be assured that I have plenty of vampire fiction and poetry in various stages of writing and editing.
If you’re a creative into the Gothic, taboo, and monstrous and want to do a collaborative post similar to this in the future, feel free to leave a comment below or reach out to me via email.
A quote from the title character from the 2024 Nosferatu film.
