Christopher Farnsworth

From a Q & A with Christopher Farnsworth, author of Blood Oath:

Why do you think there's such a fascination with vampires and zombies in pop culture?

Right now, we're having a hard time envisioning the future. Forty or fifty years ago, the future was flying cars and cities on the Moon. It didn't work out that way; we've got people wearing suicide vests instead of jet packs. That's frightening. I think it's natural that we're looking to familiar monsters to symbolize all the unknown terrors out there. We know how vampires and zombies work. More important, we know how to kill them. That can be comforting, in a weird way, when you're faced with things like terrorism, economic collapse, and swine flu.

That's the deep, serious answer. The other, equally true answer: they're just cool.

Is your book a "mash-up" of genres? How does it compare to wildly popular books such as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter or Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?

The book is a mutt in some ways: a hybrid between the spy and vampire genres. It mixes historical fact with a world where everything we've seen in horror movies actually happens. I think people who read and loved Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies would pick this up and feel right at home. Like those books, it's an attempt to assemble a new world out of some familiar pieces. But...[read on]

The Page 69 Test: Blood Oath.

--Marshal Zeringue