Nah, not rambling or lecturing at all: It kind of gave me a few ideas to nibble on, actually. We'll see what comes of it.
Super powers are kinda a must, but if she is struggling with her religious aspects, the thirst must be a main component in her character. Ann Rice's vamps don't have emotion. If she tries to reconnect with her religion and fails, it also tells the reader about her indirectly.
A few hopefully *not* too spoilery details: my main character has somewhat recently converted (a year or two) to being a Jehovah's Witness, and since her faith -- which she loves dearly, since it's given her a sense of purpose and community -- does not allow blood transfusions or anything like it, she has to decide between following the tenets of her faith to the letter and wind up dying, or adjusting her beliefs to fit her new state of being and risk being shunned by others in her faith community. The idea came to me when I was watching a short PBS documentary on Jehovah's Witnesses, much of which dealt with the case of a young man who needed a liver transplant and the challenges he was facing because of it, since the surgery would require him to have a transfusion... and I'd recently been watching episodes of the anime "Hellsing", thus my strange brain came up with the question, "What would someone who's Jehovah's Witness do if they got turned by a vampire?" It was a loopy idea at first, but as I started quiddling with it, the story started to take shape and acquire a much more serious note.
