Blood, Sweat and Ice Cream

Recently, when an acquaintance heard about my romance novel Until Summer’s End being accepted by the Wild Rose Press she commented “What’s it about? Oh, never mind. Romances are pretty much all the same.”

Yeah, they’re all the same. Except for characters, settings, conflicts, themes – you know little things like that.

Romances come in a great variety of styles. Some I love, others not so much. I must admit – with no criticism for those of differing opinions – that I don’t get the “vampire” thing. Romances in the paranormal category frequently feature vampire heroes and heroines and are obviously enjoyed by many people or else they wouldn’t continue to be published at such a rapid rate. And even though I do like fantasy, I’m not one of the ones lining up to buy the next vampire romance.

Upon reflection, I think any romantic visions I had concerning vampires vanished in college. And it all had to do with laundry and ice cream.

When I was a student I had a work study job in the costume department of the University theater. One fall, we did The Passion of Dracula. On the whole it was a pretty cool play. The stage hands figured out how we could do a real explosion on stage and we costumers learned to make really these really cool peasant shirts.

But then….our washing machine broke down. As the only member of the crew that owned a car, I was elected to take costumes to the Laundromat every day to wash them. But we aren’t talking any old sweaty stinky costumes. We’re talking about costumes that were dripping in blood – fake blood, but still.

I was certain someone would call the police about my suspicious daily laundry trips and I would be hauled away to jail. I think it may actually be a little scarier that no one did call the police or question me in any way!

Secondly, there was ice cream. A local restaurant sold peppermint sundaes on Valentine’s Day and I loved them. But for this show, peppermint flavored fake blood capsules were used in a couple of scenes where blood had to flow from Drac’s mouth. After my two weeks of schlepping laundry I now associated the smell of peppermint with blood.

So when the next Valentine’s Day rolled around, my boyfriend thought he would be really sweet and surprise me with a sundae. It was months after the show, but I still couldn’t bring myself to eat it. Blood and ice cream – eewww!

Sorry Drac. I could have forgiven the laundry, but not the ice cream.