In San Salud, vampirism is more than a myth: its medical mystery. And those it effects are vanishing one after another…
Guide for Dating Vampires is a series of achillean vampire romances taking place in a fictional Californian city where a shady pharmaceutical company experiments on vampires. We interviewed the author, D.N. Bryn about monsters, disability, and neurodiversity.
D.N. Bryn is a queer, disabled author of fantasy and paranormal romance, who has tricked themself into believing that having two attention-seeking cats as copy editors will counteract their dyslexia. It has yet to work, but the cats have no complaints.
We spoke to author D.N. about their use of vampires as an allegory for disability, the self-reflection and research that goes into accurate representation and making the choice not to “heal” disabled characters.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Firstly, what got you into writing? Has it always been in the fantasy and paranormal genres?
Does writing Nancy Drew fanfic as a 10 year old count?! I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, but speculative fiction has always been my favorite, starting with fantasy but transitioning lately to more science-based paranormal and sci-fi. I love a world that’s much like ours – diverse, beautiful, and a little disastrous – but with a twist that helps reveal our own pains and joys more clearly.
Your series sees vampires through not only a sympathetic lens, but vampires as people that lack rights and require extra assistance to live. With that in mind, what is it about the traditional vampire that works as an allegory to disability? Are there ways that your series breaks vampire tradition in order to stick to this allegory?
Besides the fact that monsters in general have been representations of the marginalized going back centuries, there are so many of the traditional vampire myths that have direct correlations to disability, from the danger of sunlight keeping them indoors during the hours when most people are out and about, to requiring a substance their bodies once produced but no longer can, to a staple in many diets being toxic to them, to the fact that often a vampire was originally an ordinary human before a traumatic event flipped their lives upside down. Even the myths of vampires being unwilling to cross running water and compulsively counting small objects imply a sense of neurodiversity!
The primary myth that I chose not to include in my vampires is immortality. This was less for allegory reasons (I have another book in the works where immortality itself is disabling), but because there’s other connotations that come with the vampire as an immortal, secretive being that didn’t feel right for the highly marginalized and disenfranchised group I was writing.
What pieces of media have inspired your work?
Since my first novel, Our Bloody Pearl, was inspired by a gorgeous picture of a group of sailors pulling up a white-scaled merman in a net, there hasn’t been one thing that’s largely inspired my books, but rather many little things here and there. My Guides for Dating Vampires series has been compiled from my love for vampires all my life, from Buffy to Castlevania and beyond, with a big helping of the daydreams I’ve had for my own life and the pains and joys I’ve experienced over the years.
Your series has a lot of disability and neurodivergence representation (anxiety disorder, type I diabetes, chronic pain, autism, and chronic depression to name a few). What kinds of research went into these depictions? Do you have advice for writers that want to depict disability and neurdivergence in their stories?
A lot of my research is just looking at my own life and asking, ‘What was actually going on with your mental health or body at that point? How did it impact you and your relationships and what would have helped but was never offered?’
For disabilities and neurodivergences I don’t share with the character, Google becomes my best friend for the rough draft, specifically finding scientific information and accounts from those with lived experience. My goal is always to avoid anything inaccurate or harmful before it ever reaches my sensitivity readers so that their job can be to add in the little everyday things I inevitably missed while researching.
My advice for those incorporating disability and neurodivergence into their own works is to be in community with disabled and neurodiverse people. Listen to those who share your marginalization and those who don’t, and take this to heart in your everyday life before it goes on the page. Disability is about more than simply a single individual’s body or mind; it’s about a life, a community (or lack there of), and the society that surrounds it all.
I saw that you noted on your website by “How to Sell your Blood and Fall in Love” that the disabled characters in the book are not healed at the end and that you made this choice as someone who permanently lives with chronic pain and sensory overload. Can you say more about why it’s important to you that stories don’t always “heal” their disabled characters?
It’s been really important to me to show that people like myself who live with chronic pain (and other painful and exhausting daily limitations) can still have full and beautiful lives, complete with romance and adventure and — when needed — rest and support from those around us. We need more stories where disability, including those aspects which we might prefer not to live with, is not a burden to be overcome in the third act, but a normal part of life worth accommodating for. A theme throughout my books is that we are all worthy of love and community, exactly as we are, and that means there’s no “healing” required.
Is there anything else you’d like to be known? (Could be fun or serious or you can plug in some info about your other works).
After the Guides for Dating Vampires series wraps up next year, stay tuned for even more disability in romance, but this time in a more traditional fantasy setting!
