Brains!!!! and Some More Vampires

So I've been trying to ballance being a full time graduate student, working about ten to fifteen hours a week (more like twenty for a couple weeks there actually) writing and having something of a social life. All of which leaves me feeling a little like the undead myself.

Speaking of undead, I've been working on not one but two vampire stories over the last couple weeks.

The longer one I've been writing off and on since the summer. This is the vampire story set in Ancient Egypt and I love it. I love the setting, I love creating the magic, and all the different characters (one of which is an Egyptian God, how cool is that?). I've been having a hard time with the romantic elements though. Mostly because while my two main characters undoubtedly want each other I've been having a hard time working out ways for their relationship to go deeper then the physical. Over all it has made the story kind of slow going.

The other vampire story I'm writing a lesbian erotic story set in the same version of New York City as Changeling Moon. There are tentacle monsters, a vampire detective, scientists trying to reanimate dead bodies, galvanism, and dapper women in suits. I've had a lot of fun throwing in dozens of references to all sorts of classics in there while still trying to come up with original characters and storyline. My goal for this story is short and hot, it's not a romance necessarily (although definitely developing affection between the two main characters) but there will be lots of sex. Hopefully I will end up with a nice balance between the erotica and the monsters. 

One of my favorite parts of writing these two stories is that Vi and Neferhotep are two very different kinds of vampires. While Vi is more classic vampire in a lot of ways, Neferhotep is not. Both of them share certain elements that come from my own preferences in vampire literature but by and large I've been having fun writing to very different takes on a classic monster.