Cape Wolfe native, Michelle Arsenault is now the author of three self-published books. She recently received in the mail her very own copy of her third book, The Rock Star of Vampires.
Isn’t that an environment that vampires avoid?
The answer comes in the synopsis of The Rock Star of Vampires, and it starts out in question form, “Did Hollywood get it wrong?”
“When I first had the idea about vampires, I didn’t even want to write about it,” confesses Arsenault who goes by the penname, Mima. “Everyone’s doing this. I can’t be another one of the vampire writers.”
But the ideas kept coming to her and she decided to take a different tact.
“I just kind of wanted to bring it back down to earth, as much as you can with a vampire, I suppose,” she chuckled at the contradiction.
“What if the person sitting beside you on the bus is a vampire? How would you know?” she offered her premise.
“What if they’re just normal people? What if a lot of the things we’ve heard are just blown out of proportion, just to make it sound more exciting, just like a lot of things? You know how things get exaggerated.”
Arsenault, who grew up in Cape Wolfe and recently moved back there following stints in Moncton and Vancouver, is now the author of three books, all self-published through iUniverse.
Her first two books, Fire, in 2010, and its prequel, A Spark Before the Fire, in 2011, are general fiction, but this time, in The Rock Star of Vampires she’s delving into the fantasy world.
“I thought it was catchy,” she said of the title and storyline. “It’s catching a lot of attention, so it must be working.”
The book has been in print and online since the first of May and Arsenault is pleased with the initial reaction. Like her first two books, Arsenault said The Rock Star of Vampires is directed mainly at the age 18 to 30 readership although it crosses into other demographics.
The Rock Star of Vampires focuses on Ava, a mortal vampire. The novel, Arsenault explains, is as much about Ava’s own unhappiness, and trying to find happiness outside of herself, as it is about the actual vampire scenario.
Ava learns there are some vampires who are immortal – they’re the ones who run things - and so she pursues the idea of becoming one of them.
Of course, she must confront the reality that, since she’s having such a hard time dealing with being a mortal vampire, what happens if she becomes immortal and can’t adjust to that new, permanent reality.
Although her free time is being taken up in promoting her latest book and contacting libraries around the world, Arsenault already knows The Rock Star of Vampires is not her final book. She will be writing one based on another character from The Rock Star of Vampires, and there just might be a sequel later on, she suggested.
