Immortal Gifts received a 4+ star review, making it an IndieReader Approved title.
Following find an interview with author Katherine Villyard.
What is the name of the book and when was it published?
Immortal Gifts. It was published on February 4, 2025.
What’s the book’s first line?
“The thing about Destiny is that she’s a bleeding heart.”
What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”.
Abraham lied about his Jewish identity to attend an academy that didn’t allow Jews. His musical patron turned him into a vampire, thus earning Abraham the enmity of an ancient antisemite. Now Abraham is in modern New Jersey, married to a mortal woman. With everything he loves at risk, can he escape the rage of an ancient bigot?
Also, if you know about Jewish kosher laws, being turned into a vampire is A Thing.
What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?
The easy answer: on August 22, 2021, my writer’s group had a one-time vampire story challenge (for the new member who kept complaining that what he wanted to do with his novel “had been done”). Most people who participated wrote a short story, a lot of them humorous, but apparently, I have a lot to say about vampires!
The hard answer: The pandemic. I went from seeing people at work and at religious services and at writer’s group to being at home alone with my cats. Then two of my favorite cats died, right when they were most important because of the isolation. Also, one of my critique partners died during the writing of this book.
What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
Vampires are often a metaphor. In this book, being a vampire is a metaphor for the pain of diaspora, otherness, and persecution, but it’s also a way of looking at mortality from the point of view of the person who is going to outlive those around them. The main character’s wife’s profession—a veterinarian—is a metaphor for the short lives of our beloved animal companions, as a way of expressing the short lives of mortals to an immortal being.
What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character? Who-real or fictional-would you say the character reminds you of?
Probably that he’s not only a religious vampire, but that he’s Jewish! Vampires are frequently seen as “unholy”—allergy to religious symbols, drinking blood is an evil corruption of Catholic communion, etc.—but there’s an uglier side to it as well. During the Dreyfuss affair, the French newspapers depicted the wrongly-accused Jewish army officer Dreyfuss as a vampire to malign him, and Stoker might have been partially inspired to write Dracula as a reverse-colonization narrative due to the influx of Eastern European Jewish immigrants to England, particularly to the Whitechapel neighborhood of London, and Jack the Ripper, who terrorized that Jewish neighborhood. My vampires are not allergic to religious iconography, as I think that brings up awkward questions.
Abraham takes some biographical notes from Lewis Lewandowski, the composer of a lot of Jewish liturgical music—his date and place of birth (moved a day) and his desire to attend the Berlin Academy of Music, an institution that didn’t allow Jews. But Abraham is not Lewandowski.
When did you first decide to become an author?
I started writing in elementary school! I wrote a lot of short stories in the aughties and teens, but this is my first completed novel.
Is this the first book you’ve written?
I released a collection of my short stories in 2022.
What do you do for work when you’re not writing?
Perhaps surprisingly, I work in IT. (One might not think of vampires as being techie.) I’m a database administrator, which means I keep big piles of information happy and serving to customers.
How much time do you generally spend on your writing?
That depends entirely on how intense the day job is being.
What’s the best and the hardest part of being an indie?
The best part is that I’m the boss and no one can tell me to make changes I don’t like to my book. You hear of people wanting to buy My Big Fat Greek Wedding and rewrite it to be My Big Fat Latina Wedding so it can star Jennifer Lopez, or of authors being asked to age their characters down to teenagers and set their book in High School to cash in on the YA boom. Or that the publisher decides if your book is a series, and when the series is over. This is quite literally not my problem!
The hardest part is that I’m the boss and am in charge of hiring freelancers or learning how to do new things myself. No one is good at everything, and I accept that and hire out things I’m not good at.
What’s a great piece of advice that you can share with fellow indie authors?
We all come to writing from different places with different skill sets. Lean into yours! For example, I’m good at websites, took a college art class on laying out books (with an old skool printing press, not a computer!), and did dramatic readings in High School Theater. Maybe you’re an extrovert who loves social media and live events, or are good at video production, or like drawing your characters. Maybe you’re a voice actor who can record your own audiobook. Maybe your day job is marketing. Whatever you’re already good at is your superpower!
Would you go traditional if a publisher came calling? If so, why?
Sure. I don’t know that they want book two in a series, but I’d consider querying a standalone. It’d be a new experience. New experiences are cool.
Is there something in particular that motivates you (fame? fortune?)
How can I say “My art” without sounding pretentious? 😀 Seriously, though, if it’s not a book I’d want to read, I don’t think I’d do a good job writing it. And if I like it, hopefully other people will, too!
Which writer, living or dead, do you most admire?
I’m on an Anne Rice kick right now. She really blazed a path for all vampire writers. I don’t know if she was the first one to have a sympathetic vampire hero—there was a Victorian serial called “Varney the Vampire” where the vampire was the protagonist—but she was wildly influential. I particularly love that she saw the potential for history to enter into your vampire book. Some of her non-vampire books were straight-up historical fiction.
Which book do you wish you could have written?
I could give you a whole list! I think I’m going to go with Leigh Bardugo’s The Familiar because it hits my witches and wizards/vampires/real-life religion/history buttons. I don’t know if Luiza would call herself a witch, and Santangel is not technically a vampire, but they hit the notes.
Also a shout out to The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez, for the sympathetic sapphic vampire of color who tries to lead an ethical vampire life.