Hello All Vamps, Donors, and Curious Readers,

Due to college, various other projects, and certain life changes in the recent past and near future, my work on Real Vampire News will be significantly decreased. As I can, I will be posting various topics of interest, but this site should not be considered a “One-Stop Shop” for the time being. Hopefully there will continue to be guest submissions posted, which ought to be pretty groovy.

If you are interested in becoming a writer/news-finder-and-poster/etc for Real Vampire News, please feel free to send an e-mail to webmaster@RealVampireNews.com

If you find that your vampire readings requirements are not being met, I suggest you check out one of the following sites:

• Atlanta Vampire Alliance
• Sanguinarius’s brilliantly informative site (Mostly Sang Topics)
• Darkness Embraced
• SphynxCatVP’s amazing site for inquisitive vamps (Mostly Sang Topics)
• Black Swan Haven (Donor site)
• Of course there are many more, but those tend to be my “go-to” picks

I hope you will pardon this lapse in responsibility on my site.

Sincerely,

-John Reason

As some readers have surely noticed, SphynxCatVP has began adding some of her content to Real Vampire News. In search of interesting content for the reader base, I also asked Giselle (A donor) to provide some of her work as well. Hopefully readers will enjoy the newfound diversity on the site.

-John Reason

Just a few days ago the Atlanta Vampire Alliance had it’s fifth anniversary. Most people in the vampire community look at the Atlanta Vampire Alliance (AVA) as the de facto group for scientific research of the vampire experience. The AVA has put in a lot of time and money into it’s various endeavors between running a myriad of sites online, sponsoring offline meetups, and perhaps most importantly producing and interpreting the VEWRS and AVEWRS surveys.

I would  like to proffer my sincerest thanks for what the AVA has brought to the proverbial table in the vampire community. Keep up the good work.

The Voices of the Vampire Community has released the poll results from last week regarding the proposition for a Donor/Vampire Appreciation Day by Drake Mefestta. This poll does not designate action on the part of the VVC, but it does portray an idea of how the online vampire community feels about Mr. Mefestta’s plan.

Check out more on the Atlanta Vampire Alliance post.

The Voices of the Vampire Community (VVC) has released a new poll in regards to the idea of a Donor/Vampire Appreciation Day. The information gained from this poll may play a part in brightening someone’s day in the future – it may even be your day that gets brightened. I ask you to follow the link after the quited block of text, and click the bubble on the poll that best fits your opinion.

Do you support the creation of an international “Real Vampi(y)re Donor Appreciation Day” & an international “Real Vampi(y)re Appreciation Day”?

Please take a moment to vote in this poll and distribute to all those you know in the vampire and donor community.

http://www.veritasvosliberabit.com/appreciationdaypoll.html

Thank you!

Ripped directly from Mr. Mefestta’s Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/drakemefestta

To the members, supporters, and observers of the Vampire Community
July 31, 2010

Throughout the decades the vampire community has been comprised of members from all paths, faiths, and walks of life. As a community and as individuals we have all felt, at one time or another, the burden of our own personal tribulations, being what we are and existing within a social structure that is growing but still infantile in its understandings has made for a difficult way of life for many within our society. I feel that there is a part within our community that still can be considered far more unacknowledged in their way of life and whom I feel deserves necessary validation and recognition for what they do in support for our community, our donors.

Within the general society donors are often looked at as simply food, portrayed often as something to be fed upon and nothing more, given an almost consistent stigma of helpless prey to the mighty hunter and to this I raise my objection. I believe most would agree that though we the vampires may be negatively perceived by many, there are still others who would equally find positive traits, things to admire and find fantasia or mystique in therefore the icon of the vampire still has a formidable substantiation to it . The donor’s life however I consider the perception to not only be misconstrued in society but also not as empathized within the community due to the fact that almost all that would feed from a donor had never been in the donors place and truly experience what they sacrifice for our preservation and all so willingly as well.

By this I would wish to declare that on October the 1st, I will be holding personally as a secular holiday, as a day of thanks to the donors that have given so much for our preservation. I feel that they are just as much of a part of our community as any other and hold an irreplaceable role as the ones who make it possible for us to exist and maintain our sense well being and that is something to give deepest honor to. I hope you will all join me by giving thanks to your donors however you see fit and celebrating their sacrifices to us. This secular holiday I offer for our community I hope will fortify the bond further of our society and whatever role we all have within it.

I welcome your thoughts and insights to this desire of mine and anticipate you will support me in this endeavor.

Regards,-Drake Mefestta

Just in time for the new Twilight movie, BU Today interviewed Joseph Laycock:

For millions of Twilight fans, the saga of young Bella and handsome vampire Edward is nothing more than a love story — a romantic escape from reality. But according to religious studies scholar Joseph Laycock (GRS’13), vampires are more than pop culture icons. They believe they’re as real as Twilight author Stephenie Meyer — and Laycock has written a book exploring the phenomenon.

Vampires Today: The Truth About Modern Vampirism (2009) takes a look at teenagers, stay-at-home moms, grandmothers, and professionals, all unremarkable subjects save for one little thing: they claim to feed off of other people’s energy, and, every so often, they drink human blood.

Click here for the rest of the story.

Steve Wohlberg, occult researcher and bestselling author, has come out against Twilight in his new book The Trouble with Twilight: Why Today’s Vampire Craze is Hazardous to Your Health. In the book he states, “Twilight has positive features, but it is laced with occultism, contains mixed moral messages, and is now fueling the dangerous practice of sipping real blood among teens and adults.”

While many in the community have noticed an increased interest in Real Vampirism over the last few years due to the vampire craze becoming more active, the Twilight Saga is not the only contributing factor. Many vampire movies, books, and television shows have come to light in the last few years which cater to all types of people. I think it would be detrimental to the vampire community to automatically assume that the Twilight Saga is the reason for many of the fractures noticed between groups of vampires.

I leave you with one more quote from AvoidTwilight.com:

“In fiction, the vampire denotes power, sexuality, romance, and immortality; but in reality those who experiment with occultism, witchcraft, and drinking blood can easily slip through an alluring doorway into darkness, immorality,  and despair. Buyer, beware!” – Steve Wohlberg

Directly quoted from VVC Email:

June 2010 Global Vampire Community Discussion
Hosted By Voices of the Vampire Community (VVC)

Global Vampire Community Discussion on Sunday, June 27, 2010 @ 7:00 PM Eastern US/ET
(11:00 PM GMT).  If you need assistance with time conversions refer to: http://www.timezoneconverter.com/cgi-bin/tzc.tzc
The discussion will be held in the IRC channel #vampirevoices on
Dalnet.

Topic: What kind of things do you get from the vampire community that assist you in understanding and functioning with
your personal vampirism?  What are some things the vampire community
could do that we’re not currently doing, or that we could do better, to
help our fellow vampire or donor?

If you have the ability to install or use an IRC client (a program used to connect to an IRC
server) to access the discussion, please do so. If you don’t have an irc
client already installed on your machine, two popular clients are mIRC (http://www.mirc.com/)
and xchat (http://www.xchat.org/
or http://www.silverex.org/news/).

If you do not have the ability to access IRC another way, you can access
the discussion by going to http://tiny.cc/vampirevoices and entering your
desired Username, then clicking “Connect”. Please be aware that Dalnet
limits the number of people who can connect via the browser-based chat,
so if you have another option for connecting, we strongly encourage you
to not use the browser-based system.

For anyone who has an IRC Client, use irc.dal.net or another dalnet server (http://www.dal.net/servers/)
and join #vampirevoices

Please help spread the word to all those you know in the vampire community. The channel (#vampirevoices) is
always open so feel free to drop by anytime you wish. We hope to see
everyone there!

- Voices of the Vampire Community (VVC)
http://www.veritasvosliberabit.com/vvc.html

Donor and blogger “Mizz Dizz” has posted a review of the upcoming scholastic article by Joseph Laycock.  Here is a brief excerpt, after which you can follow the link to her blog to read more.

Joseph Laycock has been at it again, this time with an academic article: Real Vampires as an Identity Group [1]. My regular readers will know that i’m a bit of a fangirl of Laycock’s [2], so i was quite excited when the article was announced, and already planning an eventual review here. Getting some direct encouragement from a prominent member of the VC (vampire community) decided the case and moved it up on my priority list.

Click here to read more.