Fountain of Knowledge

I'm a day late this week, sorry about that . But I'm loving what I've learned so far, and I'm hoping to see some vivid conversation come out of this week's topic.

Okay, so I know 'Vampires' isn't technically a genre. You can find vampires in horror, fantasy, drama, they span the board depending on who writes the story, what it's about, all sorts of factors. Vampires are just another character type.

But (especially these days) there's so much discussion about what makes a good vampire novel. This is all (of course) opinion. One person may like the sparklies while another feels that Nosferatu was the only true representation of the mythos (and my apologies if I used that word wrong).

So...this is still a genre discussion, but the questions for the week are more along the lines of:
what do you think makes a real vampire story? Does it have to be unique? Are there certain rules that should always be followed? Is sexy or scary better? What's been overdone? What worked that no one uses?

Stuff like that, or whatever you want to add to the topic of writing/reading vampires