Lee Duigon

I’m going to write a full-scale book review on this for Chalcedon’s print magazine, Faith For All of Life, but in the meantime I’d like to give readers of this blog a heads-up on Ellen C. Maze’s new vampire trilogy, starting with “Rabbit: Chasing Beth Rider.” (TreasureLine Publishing, 2010)

Some of us have been wondering when the first “Christian vampire novel” would come along. Well, this may be it. In fact, Maze has already written a series of four “Corescu Chronicles” that might qualify.

What makes this book qualify? The “Christian element” of the story is not just tacked on; it is the story.

Some critics say C.S. Lewis beats the reader over the head with the Christian symbolism of his Narnia books, while some others say J.R.R. Tolkien buries Christian symbolism so deeply in his Middle-Earth books that nobody can find it. (Well, I say that.) Ellen Maze does something very different: her Christian element is overt, and the mainspring of the story.

To me, contemporary vampire fiction is the nadir of literature–and I say this as someone who has actually had a vampire book published (“Lifeblood,” Pinnacle Books, 1986). I was pretty much a pagan when I wrote that, and I can’t say “Lifeblood” reclaimed any ground for the Kingdom of Christ. But compared to all the “Twilight” knockoffs floating around today, “Lifeblood” wasn’t so bad. But “Rabbit” is a conscious effort to plant Christ’s banner in the heart of enemy territory, for which I applaud Mrs. Maze.

Rather than steal my own book review’s thunder, let me ask readers of this blog: What do you think a “Christian vampire novel” ought to look like? What should the author do, and what should he or she most definitely not do?

If you have any questions about the story collaboration, please ask them here as “comments” instead of attaching them to the story.

Just for fun, I invite readers of this blog to collaborate in writing a short fantasy story. To join in, just write the next paragraph of the story as a “comment.” It should, of course, bear some relation to the paragraphs that went before it. I’ll delete anything obscene, any graphic sex or violence or profanity, anything disrespectful to God or Jesus Christ, and anything that’s just incoherent. Otherwise, your paragraph becomes part of the story.

Got it? Good! The game is now open to anyone who wants to play. Let me get the ball rolling with a first paragraph. After this, I’ll clam up and the rest will be entirely the fruits of the readers’ imagination. Here goes…

Jennifer woke on a snowy morning and looked out the window. There was a centaur in her back yard, standing by the bird bath–not at all the kind of thing you expect to see in the suburbs: or anywhere else, for that matter.

The rest is up to you, folks.