Before "Twilight," There Was "Dark Shadows"

"Of course a woman is going to kill me. I wouldn't have it any other way!" Quentin Collins, Dark Shadows

I'm guest blogging today with Casey Crow, author of sexy, southern, sassy romance.  Visit her at http://www.caseycrow.com/.  A big fan of One Life to Live and General Hospital, she wrote a blog post not long ago (9/20/10) entitled  "Inspiration from Soaps."  Today, I'm stealing her idea--and I hope she doesn't mind!

Just for fun, I'm asking, who is (or was) your biggest soap star crush?  All through grade school, high school and college, I watched The Edge of Night and All My Children.  But once I started working full time, prior to VCRs, I lost track of all the characters and plot lines.

Regardless, I still remember my crushes, but my biggest one appeared on a soap discontinued long, long ago.  At age seven, I fell madly in love with actor David Selby, who played bad boy Quentin Collins on the paranormal soap Dark Shadows.  Quentin was the werewolf cousin of good guy vampire Barnabas Collins.

Dark Shadows was a Gothic soap that aired from 1966-1971.  It revolved around the wealthy Collins family of Collinsport, Maine, and the strange occurrences that tormented them. Unprecedented for its time as a daytime program, Dark Shadows introduced ghosts, vampires, witches, zombies, warlocks and time travel into its story lines.  Sounds more like a soap for today rather than 40 years ago.  My sister and I loved the show, and every day after school we couldn't wait to see it! 

When I was 6, I must have fled from the room terrified on several occasions while watching Dark Shadows, and my mother even threatened (more than once) that she wouldn't allow me to watch it if it continued to frighten me.  I remember one particularly unsettling episode when a portrait aged, and then the character herself, beautiful Angelique, aged as well.  When she revealed her wrinkled appearance by removing a hood from her face, I was scared to death and up off the couch running! Somehow, I managed not to let my mother make good on her threat, and thank goodness for that, because Quentin wasn't introduced until I was seven!

Once I dreamed that Quentin kissed my cheek (a true seven year old girl's fantasy), and was thrilled the next morning because it seemed so real! Well, Dark Shadows finally ended in the early '70s, but I must say, my heart went KABOOM when, as a young woman years later in 1982, I saw David Selby on Falcon Crest!

For me, Twilight's Edward Cullen pales in comparison to heart throb Quentin Collins! But enough about my crush, who's yours?

Tweet me @: maria_mckenzie. Thanks for stopping by!