well you could make something up to suit your setting, or you could go with one of the many slang terms - leach, fanger, blood sucker, demon of the night, parasites, etc. Really though, I would advocate making a term that fits within the context of your world. Are vampires a new or old presence? Do common people know about them? If not, then odds are that the scientific community wouldn't entertain the term "vampire" except in private jest and make their own medical term upon discovery. Use the word that the people of your world would feel most comfortable with. If the term "Vampire" unnerves them or makes them feel that it's too hokey, get inside their heads and think of the euphemisms the culture you've written might come up with.
After a quick glance at your manuscript, you could call them Johnny Carsons and I'd still be all, "Awesome, another vampire novel."
If they're going to be vampires, you may as well just call them vampires. If you go for a classic description of them, and the rest of the story is good, then no one will mind. In fact, vampires are still awesome, it's just these modern adaptions that seem to ruin it.
I'd just go for Vampire. Let's not forget that the Vampires in Twilight are a modern re-imagining. You could simply use the word in a more traditional sense. Heck, even Bram Stoker changed what Vampire meant - he was the one to add the 'not seen in mirrors' thing. Before that time, it was an attribute used with Ghosts instead. Many old lores state Vampires didn't even have physical bodies. There's tons to play with. However, I did once describe them as 'Haemotophageous', which is the term to define a creature such as a leech that feeds on blood.
You COULD always call them something else, like 'vampire' in another language. try reading into vampire lore and mythology, they give tons and tons of different names for them, depending on which country you're reading into. This way you can still use it later and have some silly book-wormish person figure out it's roughly translated to 'vampire' in English, only, they know it's a different breed of the stereotypical vampire. Just my two cents.
Don't use a name that is too hard or complicated to pronounce, nobody wants to read a story, get into it, then stop to try pronounce some strange word. . . Who is your target audience? Teens may want something less elaborate than adults. Personally I think vampire works fine but if you want to use something else, I quite like 'tcol4417' 's Children of the Night. Or maybe just "We are the 'Night'" could work fine xxx
There's dozens of classifications of Vampires. Just before the whole craze spilled forth, I actually wrote out a full classification of vampires according to powers, looks, abilities, and weaknesses. I had a story started for them too, but I dropped it. I wasn't really sure if the idea would really catch on. Then the Vampire craze exploded. By the time I got back to the story, I was like, "Crap, now I'll just look like everyone else." I don't know how long I'm going to wait before I try getting it up and going again, maybe a decade or so. That being said according to my research and what I've seen as the overused areas, there's still room for some originality. Nothing is new under the sun; all you can do is take something and do it well, if not better than everybody else. But hey, crazes come and you can either ride with them or try something else and start a new trend. Remember the late 90s and early 21st century pocket monster craze? It's still going on a little bit today. But right now, if it's a humanoid that feeds off of blood, people are going to call it a vampire no matter what you name it, I guarantee it.
I just read a book recently about vampires and I found the overuse of the word quite distracting and a bit irritating. What draws me in as a reader is the name of the character, Lestat, for example, was such a fabulous name for a vampire that I could picture him throughout the book as being all vampish and seductive, yet ruthless. The book I just read had the most boring, insipid name for a vampire, that it just did not do it for me...
Why should you need the word 'vampire' ? I'm writing a fantasy novel based on the nors mythology and I try to use the word 'elf' as less as possible, because people associate it with elves as for example in lord of the rings, while my 'elves' are totally different. Have you read the books by Darren Shan? He wrote about vampires too without it being cliché, and he hardly used the word 'vampire'. you could also let them refer to eachother as 'blooddrinker'.. or something less cheesy.
I just read a book recently about vampires and I found the overuse of the word quite distracting and a bit irritating. What draws me in as a reader is the name of the character, Lestat, for example, was such a fabulous name for a vampire that I could picture him throughout the book as being all vampish and seductive, yet ruthless. The book I just read had the most boring, insipid name for a vampire, that it just did not do it for me...
I read a book, years ago, called Children of the Night as it happens. And the book pulls in a lot of Transylvanian history. Vlad Tsepecht (sp?) and all that. Anyway, you don't need to necessarily look outside of the culture that we traditionally associate with vampires. In this story, they were referred to as "strigoi." That's apparently a traditional term. It's different, easy to say, catchy, and culturally interesting. To me, in any event.
my suggestion, Call them Children of the Night or Something, Make reference to them as Vampires, be aware they will be called vampires then, understand I have no problem with you personally when I completely ignore your book. I hate the Vampire/werewolf craze that Steph Meyer started. It ruined an entire vein of History in the world I have been creating and perfecting for years. SO I'm a little bitter. That said, Anne Rice's Vampires and the Vampires from the World of Darknes LARP mythos are really the only modern re-tools I appreciate, you should look into those creatures a little, you might find some interesting concepts to steal.
I really dislike it when someone tries to show me things that I know are "X" but tell me they're "Y". Especially when we have a book full of characters in a real world setting who don't know what a werewolf or vampire or zombie is and then they're given some wacky name to call it. Right now I can tell you, making your vampires have some awesome name won't distinguish them, the writing will. The name is just their name, its what they're called and while there might be some cool name out there for them (you could try Lillum as there is myths about them being children of Lilith), I don't think the name should take away from the fact they're vampires. Maybe its something they like to be called themselves and humans see them another way?
I don't think its as epidemic as people think, its just that people pay attention to it because of all the Twilight hype. Honestly, I can't understand why people get so upset about Vampires though.
No, this particular epidemic was caused by the Twilight hype. No one's really upset about it, though. People just find it kinda wacky how many young folks all have their own totally awesome, totally original vampire novel they're working on.
It seems to me when you look at the number of vampire books, movies and TV shows, even before Twilight, vampires have been pretty much the most popular horror/supernatural creatures for some time now.
Vampires have always been popular. What you are noticing isn't a rise in popularity of vampires, but a particular type of interpretation. The Gothic vampire romance to be more specific. I was in a creative writing class a couple years ago and one of the girls in the class wrote a short story that was essentially Twilight but with werewolves. It even had the "abstinence porn" angle (in a less subtle way) that Twilight has where she said the way people become werewolves is by having sex with them (not making this up). Before Twilight the vampire trend was Anne Rice, who turned vampires into bondage gear wearing night club dwellers. Just look at the Blade movies, the visuals and stories (not the character mind you) are a direct result of the popularity of Anne Rice.
Exactly, people act like this all just suddenly got popular but Vampire movies come out pretty often and there's so many vampire books they could have their own section in a store.
-i agree ,unless the vampires are that different,just call them what they are;vampires -now i'm writing about alien vampires with insane powers so they are ,in fact,not always called 'vampires' -see the difference?if i were dealing with regular earth creatures,who were immortal,hurt by crosses,garlic,slakes,sunlight,silver,etc,i would just say vampire all the time. -this is not the case they are immune to every single one of these and have wings on their head above their ears and dark matter in their blood and red tears and they actualy eat food ,and they do have reflections,most of them are not dead,not all pale,not all caucasion like most modern vampires,they drink each other's blood more than any other species,and many people willingly go to them and they don't need to kill,and they do have kids. -actualy,the only thing they have in common with earth vamps is the need for blood and super powers ,thats to a way different extent than the earth vampires,so i could call them something other than vampire. -but the term is used by certain people in the novel because the creatures seem vampiric to those who are not like them. -- and yes,vamps were always popular and probably always will be.they just changer a bit like every decade or so
The vampires in my story call themselves Methuselah (which refers to the oldest living person according to the bible. If I remember correctly I had one of my characters explain it to a non vampire that they go by many names, but refer to themselves as Methuselah. Everyone else just calls them vampire
