Thomas Winship looks like any other average professor at St. Thomas Aquinas College in Sparkill, NY with his black sweater and clean-cut look. He works as an adjunct for the school within the business and humanities departments teaching speech communications and a few classes in lower level English. In addition to working at STAC, Winship also worked in corporate America at a pharmaceutical company in training and organizational development. So, it may be surprising to learn that such a white-collared man is also the author a fantasy vampire series.
Vaempires: Revolution and the prequel Vaempires: White Christmas are the creation of this man’s imagination. While the vampire craze is at all time high, Winship made it a point to make his series unique and stand out amongst the rest.
“In many ways, my vampires are no different than stereotypical, mainstream vampires,” said Winship, “Until they mutate. The vaempires are very different. They are warm-blooded, their hearts beat, they feed on vampire blood. They are subject to secondary mutations….super vampires if you will.”
It is these mutated super vampires that cause a rebellion disrupting the peace between vampires and humans in a post-apocalyptic world. While the story centers on two teenage vampires, Princess Cassandra and her boyfriend Daniel, battling their way through the rebellion, Winship says that “it is not a YA novel.”
The novel contains some intense fighting and killing scenes that may be inappropriate for younger teens. However, this does not mean he does not want young readers. Winship attempts the straddle the line between adult and young adult in a genre called New Adult fiction.
Since Winship’s novel is not the only one on the shelves about vampire fiction, it is imperative that his story is unique and unlike anything else. He has read many of the popular vampire series including the House of Knight Series and the Twilight Series.
“It’s weird because when people find out, especially your family members, that you write vampire novels all the sudden all your Christmas gifts are vampire novels,” said Winship.
He has also read the story which started it all, Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Although he has kept up with the world of vampire fiction, Winship does not let these other stories influence his works.
“I wouldn’t characterize myself as a vampire lover…I like
my vampires,” said Winship,
“I like my world far more than anything else I’ve come across before.”
The world that Winship creates in Vaempires has been many years in the making. It was not even until later, in his 30s, that he gained a passion for writing stories. He dabbled in writing short stories for a time, but did not begin writing his series until 2010.
A few years earlier, Winship was working at a global company as an HR executive before it was bought by an even larger pharmaceutical corporation.
“As a part of any acquisition or integration, there are going to be a lot of lost positions,” said Winship, “I survived for a couple years…However, at the end of 2010, I was approached with a choice to make.”
Winship was told by the company that he would either have to re-locate to keep on his job or take a severance package with the end of his employment at the company. He decided to take the package and leave his job of 15 years because he saw it as an opportunity for Vaempires.
“In an economy where…so many people are taking a loss of job or career in a negative way,” said Winship, “I chose to look at it in a positive way and I will, in fact, look at it as an opportunity to try to fulfill, not necessarily, a lifelong dream, but a dream that’s been around for now well- more than a decade.”
Of course, Winship does not hesitate to say that losing a career that was spent moving up the ranks from a low-level production position to a corporate executive was difficult.
“To have that pulled out from under you, in many ways, is the single most discouraging thing that could ever happen,” said Winship.
Despite this discouragement and the loss of this “wonderful” job, Winship was determined to not let these factors bring him down.
“It’s counterproductive. It can’t lead to anything positive because its counterproductive,” Winship said, “Every minute that you waste feeling bad about yourself is a minute that you’re not moving forward and moving towards something good.”
Winship began to move towards something good rather quickly. After leaving the company, Winship only took 19 days to complete the first draft of Vaempires: Revolution. It took about three more months of editing and drafting to complete the novel.
His next book, the novella Vaempires: White Christmas, was released a few months later at the end in 2011. Winship plans on continuing the series and even creating parallel stories to compliment the novels.
While Winship is turning out books for the series, it should be noted that he is doing it without the help of a publishing house. Winship is currently a self-published author and is glad he made this choice for many reasons. “The traditional publishing business is a mess,” said Winship. Winship talked about how many publishing companies are going out of business and the industry is not looking to invest in many new authors.
Winship also chose self-publication because the book would be able to be released faster. At a large publishing house, it would take about 18 months of working with editors before the work would be released.
“You’re looking at about a 2 year process,” said Winship about the time frame of writing the book to publishing with a major publishing house. Besides the speed found in self-publishing, Winship was also intrigued by how much control he had in the editing process.
“I really don’t like people messing with my world,” said Winship. At a publishing house, Winship would have been forced to work with their editors and “making them happy.”
Although not being signed with a publishing house allows for much more freedom, Winship does have to also advertise for himself. His agent and wife, Elaine Winship, and he focus on using social marketing as a tool to get the book known.
Winship is currently running a “blog tour” for his novel and novella which means he will be featured different blogs over the course of a month. He also uses social marketing to further advertise for his books. Winship can be found on FaceBook as well as Twitter. To learn more about the books, author, and what is in store for the
Vaempires Series visit
www.vaempires.com.
Sources:
Interview with Thomas Winship 3/26/2012
