Vampire Huntress: Remembering L.A. Banks
“I was like, ‘When I grow up, I’m going to write something and this will not happen. My guys are gonna make it.’”
Taken from classic interviews, how urban fantasy author L.A. Banks crossed genre lines, the elements of her childhood that made their way into her stories, and why she called Dracula the “Hugh Hefner of vampires.”
The Vampire Huntress Legend series is a twelve book series written by Leslie Esdaile Banks (1959-2011) under the pen name L.A. Banks. The urban fantasy series centers around twenty-something woman Damali Richards who, by day, is a spoken word artist—and by night, a hunter of vampires and demon-predators. While most believe these creatures only a myth, Damali is the Neteru, a human born once every thousand years to fight the Dark Realms.
This job for Damili and her team becomes more difficult when Carlos Rivera, Damali’s love interest, is turned into a vampire. The twelve-book series uses religious and mythological lore as the Neteru team fights demons while becoming physically and emotionally stronger, whereas Carlos works as a Reverse Mole for Damali’s team. Eventually, the series expands to revolve around the team fighting to halt the Apocalypse before the Antichrist can rule the world.
The Vampire Huntress series revolves around the struggle between good and evil, and the strong bonds of love—including family, friendship, love of self, love for the world, and the love between man and woman. There is also the thread of people of all different races, ethnicities and religions finding common ground, working together to fight the same fight for the Light.
From the Horror Addicts tribute to L.A. Banks:
Women of horror helped craft a culture within the medium that added character to how many male horror writers developed their own stories. A level of maturity, audaciousness, sensuality, and political/social commentary between the pages of great stories that scared us senseless. Who were the women that influenced horror? These founding women were: Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelly, and more. Later they would influence and shaped the pens of contemporary women horror writers such as Carrie Vaughn, Anne Rice, Sherrilyn Kenyon, and Charlaine Harris. However, it is black women writers such as Tananarive Due and L.A. Banks who chose to elevate the medium and bring with them a fresh flair to the foundation that has sorely been missed, the reality of the black voice and everyday man/woman.
Struck down at the height of her career, Leslie died in 2011 from a rare cancer. At the time of her death, Ms. Banks had written and published more than forty novels and twelve novellas wrote more than 40 novels in a variety of genres, ranging from romance and women’s fiction to crime/suspense/thrillers and paranormal fiction—under a number of pseudonyms, including L.A. Banks, Leslie Esdaile, Leslie E. Banks, Leslie Banks, and Leslie Esdaile Banks.
From the Horror Writers Association tribute to L.A. Banks:
Those who knew Leslie well will tell you that she never did anything halfway. Bestselling author Jonathan Maberry, who went to the same junior high school as Leslie, recalls her as someone utterly fearless. They both grew up in the rough Kensington area of Philadelphia in the late 1960s, but Leslie crossed racial lines without hesitation to befriend Maberry. It turned out they shared a passion for fiction, and for a time they swapped books.
In addition to being a popular author, Leslie was a business woman, and community leader. She was named a 2010 Living Legend by the Black Alumni Society of University of Pennsylvania, received the 2009 Romantic Times Booklover’s Career Choice Award for Paranormal Fiction, was named one of Pennsylvania’s Top 50 Women in Business for 2008, and won the 2008 Essence Storyteller of the Year award. She served on the Mayor’s Commission on Literacy. She was featured as well in an HBO Special on Vampire Literature and Legends as a prelude to the premiere of the series TRUE BLOOD.
Below are interviews that were conducted with LA. Banks. In these excerpts, the author talks about crossing genre lines to create her own brand of science fiction, what elements of her childhood made their way into her stories, and why Dracula is the “Hugh Hefner of vampires.”
From BlackSci-Fi.com
L.A BANKS ON WHY SHE DIDN’T START OUT WRITING VAMPIRES
When I first started off back in the early 90s, my first novel was a paranormal. Because I always loved like The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, you know, all that kind of stuff. [African-Americans] really never got represented in anything that was otherworldly, science fiction, or futuristic—at least, in the era that I was watching all these things.
So, when the first novel came about, I did a time-travel, it involved a curse, it had legend and lore, and all the stuff that I liked to read as a kid. They didn’t know where to shelve it, but because it had a hot relationship, they put it in the romance section. Remember, in the 90s, unless it was very futuristic or “Octavia Butler”-ess like work, it would not be considered science fiction. I kind of floated around in between genres for a lot of years.
When Blade blew up at the box office, Buffy went off the air, my agent said, “Hey, do you want to do vampires?” I said, “I got a chance to do what?” And I could create superheroes to combat the vampires in that series that look like us.
When I started writing—especially when I started writing vampires—science fiction purists were like, “Okay, that’s over here. There’s a main track of science fiction, and then you’ve got like these weird entity people, and you’re like one of these weird entity people.” So, I didn’t even really fit in the science fiction mainstream. The people who were dealing with brave new worlds and stars that went supernova, you know, events and all that. so I didn’t really fit [with] Sam Delaney, Octavia Butler, and Stephen Barnes. I wasn’t in that particular mainstream, because I was dealing with more of the old folklore.
What I did—where the science fiction piece comes in—is adding things like what are we doing with genetic tampering and genetic engineering. The werewolves are genetically engineered, versus the naturally occurring type. So, you have two different phyla of the same species, and the ones that are genetically engineered have issues.
A lot of my influences are from watching television—The Outer Limits, Star Trek, Twilight Zone. Pick any movie. And then, this is gonna sound corny, but it’s the truth—I loved the era of the black exploitation flicks. I could take you back.
I’ll never forget going into movies to see Night of the Living Dead with my cousins. This was the one movie to have a Brother in a heroic role. And he was tearing it up! All the way to the end! And at the last minute, they shot him—30 seconds out at the end of the flick and threw his body on the pile. I was traumatized. I was like, “When I grow up, I’m going to write something and this will not happen. My guys are gonna make it.”
Watch the whole interview here:
Unreleased L.A. Banks Interview with BlackSci-Fi.com (I Am Black Sci-Fi) Aug 14, 2011
From RT Book Reviews
L.A. BANKS ON WHY SHE CHOSE TO MAKE HER HEROINE, DAMILI RICHARDS, A WOMAN WHO GREW UP IN FOSTER CARE
I really wanted to deal with the fact that she was supposed to be one of these quote-unquote “throw away kids.” You know, out of foster care, in an urban environment, growing up in poverty, a runaway—all the things that would say, “This kid should turn out to be a statistic. They’re not going to make it. They’re not going to amount to anything great.” I wanted to leave a message to young people that it doesn’t matter where you started. You don’t have to become what they call you. It doesn’t matter what they call you, it’s what you answer to.
Even in the beginning, she didn’t really have a sense of calling. She didn’t want to change, because change is scary. And you find that a lot of people in that environment, they find it very frightening to break out of the herd and get away from the pack. To go off on your own takes a lot of courage.
I really wanted to focus on that. It’s been very rewarding for me as an author to have the freedom to write a character like that, and then have her so embraced by so many across all different ethnicities and religions.
L.A. BANKS ON GROWING UP IN A ROUGH NEIGHBORHOOD, AND MINING HER OWN BACKGROUND FOR HER FICTION
I don’t think I realized how traumatic it was. That’s the thing when you’re in it. And I had very strong aunts—they got out on the porch and they folded their arms, they’re like, ‘Hey, off my property!” They didn’t play. And that’s what I wanted to bring to this series. I wanted to have those people that you do not see on the news who are fighting against whatever conditions that surround them, and they’re holding their own. They’re saying, “Not here. We have standards in this house. You’re not going to be doing what everybody else is doing.”
And that was the [inspiration for] Marlene. She became that older female became all those—my mother, my aunties, my grandma. It didn’t matter that we didn’t have all this money. “We’re going to put bleach down the front steps, we’re going to pick up in the front of the house, and you girls are going to have chores. You’re not going to be running guys in and out of the house. You’re going to finish high school, and you’re not going to get pregnant.”
They held the line. I wanted to show that if you have people that love you and care about you, whether they are a direct blood parent, a mentor in the neighborhood, or an aunt—somebody that cares about you—you can still become.
Watch the whole interview here
L.A. Banks on her Vampire Huntress Series (RT Book Reviews) Oct 31, 2011
From the Science Fiction Society of Northern New Jersey:
L.A. BANKS ON HOW SHE DID HER RESEARCH
Research is an eclectic blend and a half. I start off with world news—I’m a news junkie, so I’m jumping from MSNBC to BBC to CNN. A lot of times, things will come up in the news that are just so bizarre. And I surf the web looking for AP newswire stuff. So, that’s one.
I watch all the different science channels. I watch you know Animal Planet, Science Channel, Military Channel—Future Weapons, I love Future Weapons.
You can adapt things. To give you an example, I’m watching Animal Planet and they were talking about the lions. And I’m looking at the male lions, and basically their job is to find hunting ground territory, but the females do all the work. So I’m sitting here watching, and it’s like three or four female lions and they’re tackling this bison. And they’re getting their buts kicked. This bison is not going down. So the other lions circle around and he’s like laid back. Now, once they finally drag the carcass back, they’re like limping and bloody. He’s like stand back, ladies, he eats first.
So, I thought this is perfect male vampire behavior. So, that’s how my vampires are structured. Because when see classic Dracula, it's like five lair kittens and one Hugh Hefner vampire. So I just took it from Animal Planet and just spliced it and lay it over. And then when people read it, it rings true on some kind of resonant level somewhere that they've seen this before.
If you’re going to do werewolves, you gotta go and look at wolf behavior. really understand how outlet I mean the Dog Whisperer—like, I’m listening to the guy talking about alpha dog and all this kind of stuff and, you know, viola!
All that kind of thing is necessary for you to build a credible monster. You need to take it from something natural and just layering something into it.
Meanwhile, there’s like 293 different types of vampires. Jonathan Maberry has a book, Cryptopedia. (We went to the same junior high school together—small world!), so I go to his work.
You can go to subject matter experts. People love to give you information. so if so I mean I have a buddy over at the University of Pennsylvania and does engineering and physics. He helped me come up with the concept of V-point, which is a vampire orgasm where they dematerialize and fuse with the cells of the other individual and they send all the pleasure to them and suck all the pleasure out of them. It’s crazy. But I had to learn a little bit of physics to make it sound like it was really something good.
L.A. Banks Explains How She Does Her Research (Science Fiction Society of Northern NJ) Mar 17, 2009
Horror and comedy both make us jump—which is why these elements work together so well together. Looking at books from authors like Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Tanya Huff, Kelley Armstrong, John Scalzi, Diana Rowland, and Kevin J. Anderson, plus many authors you should meet.