Del Toro Sinks His Teeth Into "The Strain"...

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Director Guillermo del Toro, noted for the Oscar-winning feature "Pan's Labyrinth", is the co-author of the new horror novel "The Strain", the first of a trilogy co-written with Chuck Hogan.

"The whole idea was to go back to one of the branches of vampire fiction that seems to be vacant, tragically vacant in the last few years, which is not a romantic, tragically misunderstood male lead like in a romance novel but as a creature of alternate history, biology and anatomy that is essentially a parasite or a predator hunting humans," del Toro said during a recent CBC interview, referring to the type of mosquito-like creature, embodied in the classic silent film "Nosferatu".

The director thinks interest in vampires goes beyond the current fleeting 'dalliance' with the "Twilight" series, in which the vampire is a romantic bad boy.

"There are few characters that belong to the cosmos of mankind," he said. "The same is true for the vampire...it's very malleable...it's an incredibly open metaphor for power, greed, sexual appetite, you name it."

Obsessed with vampire lore, Del Toro's preferred vampire is a reanimated corpse with "no soul and an alien hunger to consume blood."

"I found to be honest, that I was really in my element when creating creatures and creating outlandish headpieces, but I thought I was not blessed much with a knack for American reality, American dialogue, procedural stuff and I found all that more in the partnership with Chuck," Del Toro said about his crime writing partner.

The other two books in the trilogy are due in 2010 and 2011...