Vampires are so versatile. No other monster can take on so many forms

IN A WAY, best-selling American author Rachel Caine owes her current success to some lamp posts. Caine had enjoyed success with her Weather Warden fantasy series for adults when, in 2005, her publisher asked her to write a series for teens.

She knew it was going to be “vaguely vampire-ish” but wasn’t sure she had something new to say about the genre.

Then one night, on her way home from work (the Texan author gave up her day job as a director of corporate communications only two years ago), she was talking to a friend about her lack of inspiration. The friend asked her to just say the first thing that came into her head. “And I said, ‘Well, these street lights are really far apart’,” Caine recalls. “And then I said, ‘Hmm, if vampires designed a town, the street lights would be really far apart, wouldn’t they?’” she laughs. “And so we got into this whole urban-planning discussion about how a vampire-planned town would work.”

The result was Morganville, the brilliantly realised setting of a series of books that, with almost no mainstream publicity, would go on to become international bestsellers; the gripping 12th Morganville Vampires book, Black Dawn, has just been published.

Morganville is a small Texan college town, home to a university whose constantly partying students never spend enough time away from the campus to notice that the town is actually run by vampires. The vamps make sure all the human residents obey the rules and pay their taxes via the local blood bank. The humans are resigned or angrily resentful – but the vampires believe they’re being more than fair.

Readers see the town through the eyes of Claire, a teenage student who finds out the truth about Morganville when she moves out of the campus. Over the 12 books, Claire falls in love with her housemate Shane and becomes a crucial part of the town – but she’s not always sure who she can trust.

One of the most appealing things about Caine’s books is the ambiguity of the characters. Goodies can act like baddies and vice versa, and enemies can develop grudging respect for each other.

Very little in Morganville is black and white, and that’s how Caine likes it. “I always like to write the villains from their standpoint,” she says. “As far as they’re concerned they’re not the villains, they’re just trying to get by. They have reasons for doing what they do. So for me, it makes for more complex and richer characters, and I think it’s more true to life.”

Of course, when talking to someone who writes young adult fiction about vampires, it’s hard to avoid the T-word. Caine has been writing about the undead for 20 years, long before Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, but she sees the rise of Edward Cullen as a positive development.

“Those books did what someone always does for a genre – they brought it to mainstream prominence,” she says. “Anne Rice did the same thing in the 1970s. All of vampire fiction benefited [from Twilight] because suddenly the genre became more visible, more popular, everyone started reading it.”

Caine always knew her vampire story was not going to be an Edward-and-Bella-style romance. “I was trying to do something with a lot of friendship,” she says. While Claire’s relationship with Shane is an important part of the books, it’s not the core.

“I wanted to do something different – at the beginning I said it’s not going to be a romance, it’s going to be action adventure with romantic elements. And that’s what I’ve tried for.”

In fact, with its deftly managed cast, witty dialogue and compelling villains, the Morganville books are the best teen vampire adventures since Joss Whedon’s groundbreaking television series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

“Buffy changed the way a lot of writers looked at how to blend comedy and action,” says Caine. “It was almost unprecedented. [It] had the humour and action and the almost gothic, rich, doomed romance. It was a really adventurous show and that’s kind of the aesthetic I’m going for.”

But what is it about vampires – who are, let’s not forget, basically smarter zombies without the decomposition – that appeals so?

“Every time we reimagine the vampire we’re projecting something on to it that’s very current,” says Caine. “They’re a pretty perfect reflection of humanity.” The 19th-century vampire captured contemporary fear of sexuality, while many thought Rice’s work reflected fear of STIs.

And today’s angsty teenage vamps? “It’s the great allure of the ‘secretly awesome outcast’,” says Caine. “In teen literature there’s a lot of ‘yes, I go to school and I’m like everyone else, but secretly I’m so much better and so much more complicated’. Who doesn’t feel like that in their teen years? Who doesn’t feel like nobody understands them? Vampire literature speaks really well to that.”

Which is part of what makes them so fun to write. Caine never thought the series would last this long – few young-adult series reach 12 books, and she’s now contracted to write at least three more.

But unusually, the Morganville series has got more popular as it progressed, with Black Dawn hitting bestseller lists in the US, UK and Australia.

And most importantly, says Caine, “I’m still having fun. If it was a chore, I wouldn’t do it just to make money. But as long as people enjoy them and I enjoy doing them, I’ll keep writing them.”

And when the vampire craze eventually does get staked, she knows it will always come back.

“Vampires are so versatile,” says Caine. “There’s no other monster that can take on so many forms as a vampire, that can be whatever we want it to be. That’s why I don’t think it will ever go away.”

Black Dawn is published by Allison and Busby, £7.99