A few questions with Seth Grahame-Smith

Seth Grahame-Smith made waves last year with his much talked about book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Now he’s back with another literary reinvention, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Drawing on the style of biographers like Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, Grahame-Smith reconstructs the life of our sixteenth president to reveal the untold role that vampires have played in American history.

So many books have been written about Lincoln. Time magazine said that there are more books about him than any other American. Why do you think no one before you knew that he was vampire hunter?

No one had the same kind of access to the truth. As I explain in the book’s introduction, I got my hands on his secret journals. From those I learned that from the time that he was ten years old until his death, Lincoln was a vampire hunter. This is a story that is intertwined in the growth and near death of our nation. I guess it was lucky for me that I found his journals.

As I understand it, vampires killed Lincoln’s mother when he was nine years old, right?

He didn’t discover the cause of her affliction until after she died, but when he realized that his mother was killed by vampires, he swore vengeance.