Novelist Karen Russell has released her new book "Vampires in the Lemon Grove" which is a collection of short stories about vampires and war veterans.

Novelist Karen Russell's debut novel "Swamplandia!" was a bestseller when it was released in 2011. Since then, the American writer has not released any novel up until now. Recently, Russell released a new collection of short stories titled "Vampires in the Lemon Grove".

Russell warns that the vampires in her stories are not like the ones in the movie "Twilight". Instead, they are "pretty unsexy, elderly, monogamous vampires." She also addresses the fact that while vampires do have their fellow vampires as company, being a vampire can get very lonely.

Talking about her inspiration behind the story, she reveals the idea came to her from an experience she had in a lemon grove in Sorrento, Italy. She and her sibling had come across this very tall, lean man who was sucking on a lemon. A funny thought crossed her mind and she wondered how funny it would be if the man was a vampire and the lemon was a "vampire methadone." At that time, Russell revealed, no one in her family but her thought it funny, and this formed the base of her story.

Russell's first novel "Swamplandia!" too was listed in many bestseller lists.  "I spent most of my 20s with these alligator wrestlers in the swamps of South Florida," she says, of writing her debut novel. "While I was writing the novel, which took me a really long time ... I would sometimes take a break from the swamp and write a story, and that felt kind of like a fling." The title story in Vampires, in fact, was written during a period when "Swamplandia! had become an inhospitable place, and I didn't want to go back there for a while."

"I really try to write every day," she says. "It's hard, but it's my favorite thing to do, so it's usually not too, too hard." Then she catches herself, and laughs. "As soon as I said that, I was like, 'You dirty liar!' Because sometimes it's the most excruciating thing to do. But when it's going well, yeah, absolutely."