I am inclined to let him rot in his sickbed. I daresay you will not find such a response acceptable, but that is why I abhor vows — they compel me to action. Both Hippocrates and your Guardian mentor would have done well to leave the hopeless and the cursed alone. Alas; to Greece we go? Perhaps I shall force him to finally admit that I am the more beautiful before I offer him my blood.– Colin Ames-Beaumont to Dr. Anthony Ramsdell, 1824

In vampires, the bloodlust responds to free will – but only the free will of the victim. If the victim does not want the vampire’s sexual attention, the bloodlust won’t force it on them; but if the vampire doesn’t have control over himself, even after the bloodlust has faded, he might force the sex. On the other hand, if the victim wants it and the bloodlust is high…well, once he starts drinking there’s not much for the vampire to do but go along for the ride.

— Savi Murray to Detective Taylor, 2007

One of the decisions I have to make when writing a paranormal series book is how to get out the backstory and the “rules” of the universe in a (hopefully) entertaining way — and avoiding the dreaded infodump and the “as you know, in the last book Heroine One killed the Bad Guy, but in doing so revealed that there was A Really Big Bad Guy that we still need to kill” speeches.

The backstory has to be there — for new readers who aren’t used to the world I’ve created, it’s critical to give them the information so that they know how everything works. But for readers who were there last time, there runs the terrible risk of being (agh!) boring.

In Demon Moon, I considered several ways of doing this. Some of it is in the dialogue — but because both Colin and Savi are “in the know” about Guardians, vampires, and demons, I had to be careful not to fall into that “as you know” trap. Luckily, Colin and Savi have very different ideas about how the universe works, and in their arguments I was able to give out quite a bit of information, all the while revealing their personalities and their beliefs.

Some backstory (like the events in Demon Angel) Colin simply tells — but coming through his voice, it doesn’t feel like such a rehash of events (which it is). Adding a bit of flavor keeps it entertaining, and we get to see how he views what happened.

But there was more. Colin is cursed, but he isn’t the type to a) dwell on the history of that curse or b) talk about it to anyone — which are real problems when I want to introduce as much backstory as possible throughout the book. Colin is not going to offer it up, and if he did, it would be out of character and a cheat. But if I leave it until the last minute, with barely a hint of what happened, then that also feels like a cheat — and will throw the reader out of the story.

Then there are rules about the world (particularly vampirism) that I wanted to lay out as explicitly as possible so that there was no confusion — but people rarely talk to one another in such a direct manner, particularly if they already supposedly know these rules.

I worked with a couple of ideas, until eventually, I thought to myself, “You know, Meljean — you have a really interesting split here between a vampire born in the Regency era, and a modern woman. Why not play with that a little?”

So, at the opening of each chapter (except for the last two chapters, because by then everything I need to say has been said) I alternated between telling Colin’s history through letters that he wrote to his friend Anthony Ramsdell (the hero of the novella in Hot Spell), and Savi’s emails to a woman who had also been newly introduced to the Guardian universe.

And the difference in the medium helped not only to keep each entry distinct, but to convey exactly what I needed them to convey. Colin’s letters tell a story. It’s given in small increments, with each its own little view into his life — but taken together give a picture of him coming to terms with his curse, and moving on from it.

But Savi’s emails are just short bursts of information, linked only by the way the information is given. There’s no thread to follow — no story (which is probably good, because telling two separate stories through those chapter openings would have been far too confusing.)

And it got me to thinking about most of my own correspondence — for the last decade, it’s all been by email. It used to be that I’d write letters, but I think that the last letter I wrote was in 1995, to friends and family after I’d moved to college. But as soon as I got on the Internet, it was bye-bye pen and paper.

It was also bye-bye “I’m telling you everything that’s going on, and what I’ve been thinking about” letters.

I don’t know if any kind of story can be pieced together from my personal e-mails, either. Certainly, there are long conversations that take place, but they are broken up. With letters, I remember making a lot more effort composing one portion of an argument or story, and to make it as self-contained and as fully formed as possible. Whereas with emails, the discussion can go back and forth, developing as it grows … but it doesn’t have to have fully formed pieces. One bit of information can be given at a time, because there’s no lag in receiving a reply.

And I’ll still tell little stories via email — I’ll tell someone about an experience that I had a local grocer or something — but I can’t remember any really long letters I’ve written to one individual, even by e-mail, in years.

On the other hand, I do blog quite a bit. Not always carefully composed posts … but some of them have been. And I know that other bloggers regularly take more care than I do.

So I’m wondering — do you still write letters to anyone? Not just simple notes or cards … but letters? Do you write them by hand, or do you type email letters (carefully composed instead of just shooting off a “hi, how ya doing?” or sending a quick question?)

Do you think private letter writing is quickly becoming a lost art? And do formats like blogging — though more open — fill up some of that writing space?