The tale of the vampire has always been told in one way or another: centuries ago, far before the time of Vlad the Impaler (a ruthless monarch who lived in 15th century Romania and served as inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula), people spread word about a demonic entity that performed harm to humans. This is said to have morphed into the vampire we know–and love–today.

With bestsellers such as Twilight, the original concept of the vampire has been lost, and our generation has romanticised it into something very different from its bloody birth. There are no more Count Draculas or Carmillas to frighten readers into stocking up on wooden stakes and silver thingamajigs to protect themselves.

In this generation, vampires are popularly known through characters like the sparkly Edward Cullen (Twilight Saga) and Civil War era Bill Compton (True Blood). However, the stories surrounding these characters are not the ones behind the initial rise of the vampire in today’s popular culture.

When The Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice was first published in 1976, it received blockbuster positive feedback. Rice had managed to put a never-before-seen spin on these creatures of the night and, sadly, people nowadays hardly give her series the credit it deserves for setting the stage for modern vampires.

Anne Rice’s series was and still is so successful that on October 28 she is releasing a new addition to The Vampire Chronicles, Prince Lestat. Picking up where Rice’s The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned left off, Rice’s new novel is, according to publisher Random House,  “a surprising and compelling return.” I read the promotional material, and it’s mysterious–hinting about a world of vampires out of control and a lot of travel through time and beautiful cities.

With luck (and Rice’s vast talent), the vampires that have been teenage-ified will once again return to their former glory.  What made a large splash about Rice’s series back in the 80s and 90s was the mixture of the traditional Gothic feeling of Dracula with more engaging characters, back stories, and plots. Pre-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans became the destination for vampire-loving fans.

She also artfully combines the concept of a person’s blood representing their life force with her vampires’ lust for it. Rice does not blandly describe the murders her characters carry out as simply drinking a person’s blood and dumping his corpse. Instead, Rice enforces the idea that a vampire drinking somebody’s life force  is an intense, emotionally-involved experience for both them and their victims.  (And they don’t hold back like lame Edward Cullen.)

Where vampires had once been feared by the public eye and unworthy of sympathy, Rice transformed vampires into beings with a consciousness–the modern-day vampire soap opera.  The characters inspire compassion, as some of them suffer from depression and, sometimes, madness.

Entwined with Egyptian and Pagan lore, Rice’s stories about her immortal creatures hold fans captive and mystified in a world where vampires can be as old as to be from Mesopotamia itself. Her characters are unforgettable from the confident, impulsive French aristocrat Lestat to the Renaissance era child-vampire Armand.

This being said, I  think that vampires have since gone downhill in both literature and movies. Stephenie Meyer, for instance, manages to suck (haha) out all of the monster and replace it with the teen angst human.

Her take on the vampire in the Twilight saga is not frightening or even slightly unnerving. Instead, she presents a “safe” vampire  who is apparently very into high school and dating uninteresting teenage girls.

The vampires, like Edward Cullen and his family, aren’t even eerie.  They also hardly have backstories, even though some of them are centuries old (at least, they do not have engaging ones even though there is a lot of historical content Meyer could have worked with as Anne Rice did).

Onscreen, their facial expressions are akin to those of terrified children. They are so unintimidating that if they got into a fight with One Direction, I wouldn’t be surprised if they lost.

Meyer isn’t the only culprit of presenting unimpressive immortals – authors like Richelle Mead (Vampire Academy) and P.C. Cast (House of Night) are also guilty. They wash away the enthralling mixture of humanity, immortality, and monstrosity and choose to portray either the extremely romantic or the extremely violent by appealing to the 21st century desire for teenage love stories and uncomplicated battles between good and evil.

Vampires aren’t only relevant in novels – they are in a lot of films and TV shows as well. In HBO’s show True Blood, the types of vampires in works like Dracula are combined with those of the Vampire Chronicles. Out with the Twilight sparkling boy band members and in with the gritty, dangerous immortals of backwoods Louisiana.

In addition to True Blood, vampires have also appeared in other TV series made recently like the Vampire Diaries, the Originals and From Dusk till Dawn (based on the 1996 film under the same title).

With the reemergence of Anne Rice into the literary world, hopefully the immortal that is loved by the masses may once again come back into popular culture as complex and fascinating and edge away from the romantic, troubled teenage feel that is so common today. If you haven’t read any of Anne Rice’s novels, check out the movie adaptation of the Interview with the Vampire (1994) starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. Keep your eyes on the box office – Universal studios has recently acquired the rights to Rice’s series and hopefully will get to work on more Vampire Chronicles films soon.