Waiting on Wednesday: How to Kill a Vampire: Fangs in Folklore, Film and Fiction by Liisa Ladouceur

"Waiting On" Wednesday" is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

I have a little bit of a fascination for things that go bump in the night - vampires, werewolves, that sort of thing. I like reading the folklore and mythology behind our beliefs about such things. How to Kill a Vampire: Fangs in Folklore, Film and Fiction by Liisa Ladouceur examines just that as well as how it's been applied in films and fiction.

"Tell me something that's not obvious!" you cry out. Well, in addition to how to kill vampires from different cultures, the book gives advice about how to avoid becoming a vampire in the first place.

And according to the blurb, "It traces the evolution of how to kill the fictional vampire—from Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the Hammer horror films beginning in the 1950s to Anne Rice’s Lestat and the dreamy vamps of Twilight, True Blood, and The Vampire Diaries—and also celebrates the most important slayers, including Van Helsing, Buffy, and Blade. In exploring how and why these monsters have been created and the increasingly complex ways in which they are destroyed, the book not only serves as a handy guide to the history and modern role of the vampire, it reveals much about the changing nature of human fears."

All in all, if you have an interest in vampires that goes beyond just enjoying the fiction - what makes them tick, where do the writers get some of their ideas from - then this book might be worth your time. How to Kill a Vampire is due out September 1, 2013 from ECW Press.