For as long as I can remember, I've written about vampires with beards. Perhaps I've always seen beards as vampiric symbols of longevity and patriarchy. Or perhaps I just like to chuckle at the image of a vampire getting blood stuck in his moustache. I'll leave the psychoanalysis to braver folk than I.

The story of Montez, the villain of Pink Moon, began with the image of Daniel Day-Lewis in 'There Will Be Blood'. What I remember from that movie is various shots of an imposing tyrant standing in a desert, spattered with black oil and red blood, endlessly scheming and exploiting those around him. For me he was capitalism, pure and ugly. I then took a second bearded archetype (perhaps from the opposite end of capitalism) in the form of 'The Big Lebowski'. 

By mashing these two characters together, I aimed for contradiction - the same contradiction that is the essence of Hollywood, and moreover the essence of California and perhaps America* itself. The fictional city of Amberfly is a place mixing cult optimism with urban despair, a parched desert with a neon jungle, and the struggling poor with the decadent wealthy. My villain was intended to reflect this: a nightmarish shadow lit by the soft light of a pink moon.

*I'm a United Kingdom transplant living with my American partner, the artist/cartographer.

As fate would have it, I found real-life mirrors for the kind of character I was conceiving. In the 1970s there were cult leaders in California who not only oozed physicality (bearded giants with stunt training and martial arts skills!) but had an eclectic history of jobs, interests and influences that would put some vampires to shame. Just like Bridges and Day-Lewis, these fascinating fathers had deep voices, big dreams and the fanatical fanclubs. They were the modern day vampires I was searching for.

It's funny to imagine a stereotypical vampire being transformed over the long years of its existence, first into a Daniel Day-Lewis-type oil baron and next into a Jeff Bridges-like spiritual leader. Becoming slower and stranger, hiding more of their monstrous aspect beneath an illusion of mellow transcendance. The best villains are often those that subvert expectations, and we really wanted our adventurers to get a jolt when they crack open Montez's coffin, only to find a hippie telling them to "chill out!"