If you think Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is just another novelty, tossed off to take advantage of the mashup craze, listen to the author Seth Grahame-Smith on NPR‘s Weekend Edition. He tells Liane Hansen how much work it was to create and talks about the book’s serious central theme that ties slaveholders and vampires together,

I see them as sort of one and the same. Both creatures, basically slaveholders and vampires, steal lives — take the blood of others — to enrich themselves.

Grahame-Smith bases the book in reality; Lincoln was a “great admirer of all things gothic… as we all know Lincoln could be particularly morbid in his darker days… He’s very tall with sunken eyes, he was… the original Goth.”

The book continues at #5 (tied with #4) on the 3/28 NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Seller list after two weeks.

Will Grahame-Smith continue writing mashups? No, he says his writing “will always contain elements of the supernatural, a bit of history, and maybe some pop culture,” but he “wants to do more original storytelling.”

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Seth Grahame-Smith Retail Price: $21.99 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: Grand Central Publishing – (2010-03-02) ISBN / EAN: 0446563080 / 9780446563086

Hachette Audio; UNABR; 9781607881735; $26.98
BBC Audio: UNABR; 9781607883548; $69.99
ebook and audio available from OverDrive

This entry was posted on Monday, March 22nd, 2010 at 8:17 am and is filed under 2010/11 - Winter/Spring, Bestsellers, Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.