I love paranormal stories, but I’ve never been a big fan of vampires. As far as I’m concerned the traditional vampire is, as my son so eloquently put it, a giant human-shaped mosquito. I’ve always seen vampires as monsters, murderers who steal others’ lives to extend their own.

Nonetheless, I’ve read plenty of vampire stories, with all different takes on them and ways they can be heroes. There are even some vampire books that I like, but in general I’ve never really warmed to the idea of a vampire as hero. Yet, when Eden suggested the possibility of the Beneath a Christmas Moon anthology, the first story idea that popped in my head involved—a vampire.

And I ask myself, where did that come from?

It started with the title, A Vampire’s Christmas Carol. Those words exploded in my mind right out of the gate.

Eden proposed this anthology right after Christmas 2006 and at the time I was collecting all the Christmas stuff and putting it away. I remember noticing how many riffs on Dickens’ classic story we had in our DVD collection: The Muppet’s Christmas Carol and Scrooged, among others.

Dickens’ famous Christmas story has long been a favorite of mine and I’ve reread it several times. It occurred to me that at heart A Christmas Carol is a ghost story, which makes it paranormal already. So when I needed a story idea, I thought of all the ways writers have retold this one. Why not take it another step further and use a paranormal creature?

But then with the title in mind and my view of vampires, the entire plot of the story popped into my head. A vampire who’d been turned unwillingly, who’d resisted drinking blood for many years, and was near death as a result. He prefers to die rather than steal someone else’s life.

Michael Carpenter isn’t evil or selfish or greedy like Scrooge, but he is facing the biggest challenge of his life—and his undead life—on Christmas Eve, his last night on Earth. He has to get through the physical horrors of dying from lack of blood. Then an old enemy makes it harder for him, providing temptation in the form of my heroine, who is stranded when her car ends up in a ditch near his home and asks him for refuge.

I saw how it could make for an unusual and interesting Christmas Eve as both Michael and Carol recount their pasts to each other, favorite Christmas memories and Carol tells him her dreams for the future, struggling to distract him from waves of blood lust that ravage him almost unbearably. Carol comes to admire his courage and sympathize with his plight, but distraction is the only help she can give him to get to his self-chosen goal.

And then my heroine realizes that there might just be a way to save Michael.

Karen McCullough