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Vampires Are Our Friends
Immortal Gifts follows a centuries-old Jewish vampire on the run from an antisemite trying to make him permanently dead, who falls in love with a mortal woman in the twenty-first century. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The original concept was a one-time challenge with my writing group: “The vampire has a wife. Set the story in the last five years.” Several people submitted wildly different stories. Mine turned into Immortal Gifts.
I’m a Pantser, and it’s a normal part of my process to reread what I’ve written and extract subtext. Early on, I started to feel that the character was Jewish. That was interesting, so I went with it.
A lot of Abraham’s early biographical details (date and place of birth and desire to study at an academy that does not allow Jews) came from the life of Jewish composer Louis Lewandowski. Obviously, Abraham is not Lewandowski! But Lewandowski ended up being the first Jewish student at the Berlin Academy. Lewandowski was admitted as a favor to his friend, Felix Mendelssohn. Abraham, not having a Mendelssohn, lied.
Abraham is not the typical vampire often found in paranormal books; he offers readers a human perspective on supernatural beings and explores how immortality affects who they are. What were some of the emotional and moral guidelines you followed when developing your characters?
I was primarily interested in the concept of immortality in choosing vampires. It’s true that my vampires have the no-food and sunlight issues, but that was primarily so the reader wouldn’t immediately say “Immortality? Sign me up!” 🙂
Aside from that, I wanted my vampires to be very grounded in reality. Vampires are always people—that’s one of the things that makes them fun to me—but I wanted them to be very much the person they always were. If someone is a good person, eternal life in itself won’t change that. If someone is a bad person, immortality won’t change that, either. In other words: it’s your choices and actions, not the length of your life, that determines your moral alignment.
Early on the question of consent started coming up. Turning someone without asking permission first is, at the very least, a faux pas. When is it justified? Is it okay to turn someone without their consent to save their life if they haven’t offered an opinion? When is it okay to make someone’s medical decisions for them? Because that’s what it is in my book: a miracle cure for almost any ailment that also has significant drawbacks.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Mortality. Grief. Consent. Resilience in the face of oppression.
At one point I was describing the book to my sister and told her, “Don’t be afraid of the vampires. Vampires are our friends. You know what’s not our friends? The natural processes by which our loved ones get sick and die. Those are horrifying.” (Our parents are both dead, by the way.)
Will there be a follow-up novel to this story? If so, what aspects of the story will the next book cover?
I’m working on the second book, and we’re still talking about mortality (and gifts). We did leave off with a couple of characters in uncertain situations and had a reveal about a third.
A lot of Immortal Gifts was written during the pandemic and has a lot of pandemic-feeling isolation. The second book is shaping up to be more… sociable.
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Prussia, 1841. Abraham only ever wanted to play violin. Hiding his Jewish status so he can study at the prestigious Berlin Academy of Music, the eager young man is delighted to find a patron who believes in him. But he’s mortified when his new friend turns him into a vampire… and Abraham earns the fury of an ancient antisemite who vows to see him permanently dead.
Fleeing the hate-mongering fiend across the decades, the sensitive violinist at last settles in twenty-first-century New Jersey with a mortal woman. But when he discovers his relentless tormentor has tracked him down yet again, Abraham despairs he’ll never find true happiness.
With everyone he’s ever loved at risk, can he escape the rage of a ruthless bigot?
In a complex tale woven through history, Katherine Villyard delivers a fresh and insightful twist on the vampire novel. Infusing the narrative with profound themes of love, betrayal, and the nature of monsters, she crafts an unforgettable saga of surviving prejudice that will keep readers turning pages deep into the night.
Immortal Gifts is the thoughtful first book in the Immortal Vampires contemporary fantasy series. If you like well-drawn characters, dual-timeline storytelling, and pulse-pounding suspense, then you’ll adore Katherine Villyard’s compelling read.
Buy Immortal Gifts to tap a vein of devotion today!
Immortal Gifts
Katherine Villyard’s Immortal Gifts is a tender, layered, and unexpectedly intimate vampire novel that defies the genre’s usual brooding tropes. Instead of sleek, soulless predators, we meet Abraham, a centuries-old vampire who finds comfort not in shadows and bloodlust but in love, cats, and quiet domesticity. His relationship with his human wife, Destiny—a Wiccan veterinarian with a bleeding heart and a sharp wit—forms the emotional center of the book. Through alternating perspectives, we get a story that weaves deep questions about mortality, belief, identity, and love into a slice-of-life narrative where vampire myth meets real-world heartbreak and healing.
The writing is deceptively simple, yet emotionally precise. Abraham’s melancholy charm and Destiny’s fierce warmth play off each other perfectly. The prose flows easily but is filled with poignant moments that sneak up on you. There’s a real sense of lived-in love here, of two souls—one eternal, one ephemeral—trying to bridge an impossible gap. Villyard never glamorizes the vampire life; instead, she shows its weight. The grief Abraham carries for every lost pet, every lost love, feels real. I actually teared up more than once, especially during the sections with Victoria, their aging cat. That mix of supernatural elements with such grounded, human sorrow hit me hard. It’s rare to see a fantasy book so in tune with real emotional textures.
What I appreciated most, though, was how Immortal Gifts manages to be funny and soft even when it’s tackling grief, anti-Semitism, or ethical dilemmas around immortality. The characters talk like real people—awkward, earnest, sometimes ridiculous. There’s no need for purple prose here; the dialogue and emotional beats do all the heavy lifting. And can we talk about the Jewish and Wiccan interfaith wedding ceremony? It was weird, beautiful, and oddly hilarious. I was grinning one minute and choked up the next. Ludwig’s historical flashbacks were chilling, especially his origin story, but they gave the book depth and darkness without overwhelming it. Villyard handles historical trauma with care, and that care is felt.
Immortal Gifts is for people who’ve loved and lost, who find meaning in small rituals and shared quiet. If you’ve ever bottle-fed a kitten at 2 a.m. or struggled to hold it together at the vet, this book will feel like home. It’s for the weird, the tender-hearted, the spiritually curious. For those of us who like our love stories with equal parts warmth and weight, this book is a gift.
Pages: 414 | ASIN : B0DM9YKV2F
LITERARY TITAN 