Welcome to the March 2024 issue of my newsletter, “News from the Crypt,” and please visit Carter’s Crypt, devoted to my horror, fantasy, and paranormal romance work, especially focusing on vampires and shapeshifting beasties. If you have a particular fondness for vampires, check out the chronology of my series in the link labeled “Vanishing Breed Vampire Universe.”
Also, check out the multi-author Alien Romances Blog
To subscribe to this monthly newsletter here, please e-mail me at MLCVamp@aol.com, and I will add you to the list.
For other web links of possible interest, please scroll to the end.
Below is an excerpt from “Therapy for a Vampire,” a humorous story I’ll probably be reading from at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts this month. It’s one of three lighthearted works in the collection DOCTOR VAMPIRE, spun off from my main vampire series. Psychiatrist Roger Darvell, half vampire and half human, is working (with the help of his human professional and romantic partner, Britt Loren) on a cure for a young vampire’s phobias. In this scene in historic downtown Annapolis, Franz has just celebrated his success in walking across a bridge over running water by picking up a “donor” at the bar of a waterfront restaurant.
You can find the DOCTOR VAMPIRE three-story collection here:
Multi-genre author Karen Hulene Bartell is joining us this month.
*****
Interview with Karen Hulene Bartell:
Margaret, thank you so much for interviewing me for your March newsletter!
What inspired you to begin writing?
IMHO, reading is the inspiration for and entry into writing.
Born to rolling-stone parents who moved annually–sometimes monthly–I found my earliest playmates as fictional friends in books. Paperbacks became my portable pals. Ghost stories kept me up at night–reading feverishly. Novels offered an imaginative escape, and the paranormal was my passion.
An only child, I began writing my first novel at the age of nine, learning the joy of creating my own happy endings…However, I got four pages into my first “book” and realized I had to do a lot of living before I could finish it!
So here I am all these decades later, still creating my own happy endings…
What genres do you work in?
More often than not, I write paranormal romances, but I also write political-suspense thrillers and frontier romance.
Do you outline, “wing it,” or something in between?
Mostly, I “wing it.” Occasionally at the end of a day, I’ll make a brief outline of the action I want to write about the following day, but overall, I’m a “pantser.”
What have been the major influences on your work (favorite authors or whatever)?
Reading has been the major influence on my work. But rather than idolizing one author, it’s more accurate to say each and every author since I learned to read has influenced me in style, expression, or pacing. However, when I was a child, I read every Nancy Drew book our library loaned, so if I had to choose one author who inspired me, I would have to name Carolyn Keene.
Please tell us about your Sacred Journey series.
The Sacred Journey series was my first. Five books are a chronological “record” of Angela’s spiritual journey, beginning before she was born with her mother, and culminating in the realization of her mission. As she follows her inner path, she helps others realize their potential.
SACRED CHOICES – Journey from a test to a decision to an uncanny conclusion – On a quest to learn if it’s the Aztec goddess Tonantzin or Our Lady of Guadalupe who’s been revered for 500 years, Ceren learns she’s pregnant. Her husband urges abortion. Judith advocates pro-choice, and her sister provides the voice of reason. Is it her imagination, a vision, or an angel that inspires her decision?
Sacred Choices
SACRED GIFT – Everyone is gifted, but some never open their package – Spirits are everywhere for those privileged to see. But branded ‘different,’ Angela conceals it until she encounters apparitions along San Antonio’s River Walk. Divine gift or ungodly burden, she’s proof there’s more on earth than is dreamt of, but can she use her sacred gift to spur others to realize their potential?
Sacred Gift
LONE STAR CHRISTMAS: HOLY NIGHT – Christmas brings hope, but darkness looms in the joy – San Antonio prepares for Christmas with twinkling lights, riverboat caroling, and frosty nights. The air is fragrant with homemade tamales. But Maria, seven months pregnant, abandoned, and losing hope, encounters an even darker force. Can she escape her obsession with an ex-con and fight off the evil forces at work? Lone Star Christmas
HOLY WATER: RULE OF CAPTURE – What happens when love or the wells run dry? – A corporation plans to legally pump their land dry. Embroiled in a local water-rights conspiracy, Tulah is torn between her childhood sweetheart and a charismatic corporate lawyer working for the other side. Will she protect the aquifer and save her family’s business? Or will she grab her chance at “the good life”? Holy Water
SACRED HEART: VALENTINE, TEXAS – The desert wind sings eerie music – Angela’s quest begins as a dream, but it becomes her mission. She listens for clues as desert winds call her, propel her across time and across Texas. Will she marry her fiancé Kio, struggling along his own inner path, or should she risk their future to explore her attraction to Kent, the empathic art law student? Sacred Heart
What kinds of research do you do for your Western novels?
I enjoy researching all my novels. In fact, I’d say it’s one of the parts I like best about writing, but the research for Kissing Kin, Book II of the Trans-Pecos series, was especially complex–as well as physically demanding and a whole lot of fun!
Why do I describe Kissing Kin’s research as complex?
A big reason is that the manuscript underwent several iterations before being published. The first version was a story about two generations linked by Covid and (via journals) the Spanish Flu of 1918. However, publishers passed on it, saying readers were sick of pandemics.
Because the second version would have been part of series set in Colorado, I changed the location, names, and family relationships. I also adapted the story to fit the series’ outline and removed the flu, but that version didn’t fly, either. My third attempt is the version being released March 13th, which required further revisions and, occasionally, restorations. Try, try, and try again…
Greed and a checkered family history shaped the property lines for Kissing Kin, where some of the characters swindled the land from its rightful owners. This aspect led me into a hornet’s nest of legal research: warranty deeds, quitclaim deeds, squatters rights, and a process called adverse possession. Both Texas and Colorado are ‘notice’ states, which means that recording documents legally notify the public of property transfers. But the state laws differ, and I had to research both sets of laws, rewriting the second version with Coloradan laws, and then redrafting the third version, while reverting to the Texan laws.
Karen’s “legal” advice 101: Warranty deeds are better than quitclaim deeds, but recorded warranty deeds are rock solid–unless squatters rights and a process called adverse possession come into play. Then you have a legal fight on your hands–as well as a thickening plot…
Kissing Kin is mainly set in a vineyard. As vintners, farmers, and ranchers know, nature can be cruel. Pierce’s Disease attacks grapevines from Florida to California, where insects called sharpshooter leafhoppers spread the bacteria. I’d never heard of Pierce’s Disease. I have no background in vineyards, and I have a brown thumb. Plants would rather die than live with me. Because of my total lack of knowledge, I had to research the disease, its carriers, and the way to control it.
I learned a new, nicotine-based pesticide eradicates the leafhoppers. I also learned from my grandmother’s hand-printed recipe book, that she treated chicken lice in the 1930s by painting their roost perches with nicotine-sulfate. Apparently, nothing’s new under the sun.
PTSD was another new area of exploration. Two of Kissing Kin’s characters suffered from its symptoms, which wreaked havoc on them–as well as their relationships.
However, the most entertaining research included picking and stomping grapes in two central-Texas vineyards. (I love hands-on (and feet-on) study 😉)
Why do I describe Kissing Kin’s research as physically demanding and a whole lot of fun?
After learning how to prune the vines and harvest the grapes, I did a Lucy-and-Ethyl grape stomp–which was sloshing good fun! Of course, the best research was the wine tasting that followed the stomping!
What is your latest or next-forthcoming book?
Actually, I have two books coming out this spring. Kissing Kin is being released March 13, and Fox Tale will be released April 8.
Kissing Kin Overview (Kissing Kin):
Maeve Jackson is starting over after a broken engagement—and mustering out of the Army. No job and no prospects, she spins out on black ice and totals her car.
When struggling vintner Luke Kaylor stops to help, they discover they’re distantly related. On a shoestring budget to convert his vineyard into a winery, he makes her a deal: prune grapevines in exchange for room and board.
But forgotten diaries and a haunted cabin kickstart a five-generational mystery with ancestors that have bones to pick. As carnal urges propel them into each other’s arms, they wonder: Is their attraction physical…or metaphysical?
Fox Tale Overview (Fox Tale):
Heights terrify Ava. When a stranger saves her from plunging down a mountain, he diverts her fears with tales of Japanese kitsune—shapeshifting foxes—and she begins a journey into the supernatural.
She’s attracted to Chase, both physically and metaphysically, yet primal instincts urge caution when shadows suggest more than meets the eye.
She’s torn between Chase and Rafe, her ex, when a chance reunion reignites their passion, but she struggles to overcome two years of bitter resentment. Did Rafe jilt her, or were they pawns of a larger conspiracy? Are the ancient legends true of kitsunes twisting time and events?
What are you working on now?
My WIP is Silkworm, a political-suspense thriller set in Taipei, Taiwan, that portrays a US Senator’s daughter caught between two men, two cultures, two political ideologies, and the two Chinas.
A love triangle is the metaphor for Taiwan and China (the two dragons) competing for geopolitical and technological accords with the US. As mainland China seeks to recover the third of its lost provinces–Taiwan–Rachel Moore struggles to escape the triple nightmare of impending war, a marriage of convenience, and an assassination plot against the man she loves. Silkworm weaves their stories with the trilateral events currently erupting in Southeast Asia.
What advice would you give to aspiring authors?
For aspiring paranormal romance authors, I recommend easing into writing through, what I call, the ten “Es”: Establish, Elude, Evoke, Evince, Encounter, Engage, Entertain, Evaluate, Elicit, and Ease.
Establish rapport for the protagonist early on. Let the reader relate.
Elude with scents, sounds, or senses. Let the protagonist walk into a room and get a whiff of her mother’s perfume or a puff of his uncle’s cigar. Are those stairs or floorboards creaking? That chill down the protagonist’s spine feels like someone is walking over their grave.
Evoke memories. Remembering deceased relatives or friends or reading the diaries of ancestors that have passed may help the lingering spirit to be recognized, forgiven, or to find closure.
Forgotten memories or lost journals can help, not only the spirit, but the protagonist, as well, when they learn the truth or understand the role they play in the family story.
Evince the paranormal through evidence. Scents, sounds, or senses set the atmosphere, but eventually, more than hints of a paranormal being are necessary to make the story believable.
For instance, in Kissing Kin, a rocking chair apparently moved of its own volition. But then, they discovered that forced air through vents had “pushed” it. Still later, they learned the history of the rocker, and the protagonist relived the past in a dream. Finally, the protagonist saw the entity’s ghostly figure rocking in the chair.
Or in Fox Tale, I gradually interspersed a mirror’s natural warps with supernatural distortions.
As we left the restaurant, we walked past a convex antique mirror. Still buzzed, I giggled at our distorted, disproportional reflections. His ears looked pointed, like an elf’s. No, like a fox’s. Startled, I gulped.
“What?”
“I…I thought I saw…” Fingers shaking, I pointed at the mirror.
“What?” He glimpsed the mirror.
His reflection was normal.
“Nothing.” Relieved, I giggled and shook my head. “Just that convex mirror playing tricks on my eyes.” Or too much wine…
Encounter the entity. Tease the reader with occurrences that seem paranormal but can be explained through physics or logic. Then, after “disproving” anything supernatural, have the entity manifest itself in a way that’s plausible yet proves it’s unearthly.
Engage the entity. Interact with it. Communicate with it to learn their purpose for the visitation.
Entertain the entity’s request, as well as entertain the reader. Have your protagonist consider how they can—or if they should—help the entity reach its goal or right its wrong.
Keep in mind, your writing’s primary purpose is to entertain the reader throughout the story’s exposition, climax, and denouement.
Evaluate the entity’s motive. Why did the ghost / cryptid contact your protagonist? This is where the entity and / or protagonist deepens their rapport with the reader.
Elicit their help. The entity entreats the protagonist for help. Possibly the entity offers to help the protagonist (because they’re related / had been coworkers or friends).
Ease their plight. After much consideration, have the protagonist agree to assist the entity—but show why. Is it mutually beneficial? Does the protagonist feel an obligation of some sort? Is the protagonist sympathetic? Why?
Hopefully, you’ll ease into writing Paranormal Romance with the ten Es: Establish, Elude, Evoke, Evince, Encounter, Engage, Entertain, Evaluate, Elicit, and Ease.
Happy drafting!
What is the URL of your website? What about other internet presence?
Website – Karen Hulene Bartell
Connect – Connect
Buy Links –
UNIVERSAL LINK: Universal
AMAZON: Amazon
GOODREADS: Kissing Kin
APPLE: Kissing Kin
BARNES & NOBLE: Kissing Kin
Social Media Links –
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KarenHuleneBartell
MeWe: https://mewe.com/i/karenbartell
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HuleneKaren
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/karenhulenebartell/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/611950.Karen_Hulene_Bartell
Website: http://www.KarenHuleneBartell.com/
Email: info@KarenHuleneBartell.com
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/karenhulenebartell
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karenhulenebartell/
BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/karen-hulene-bartell
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karenhulenebartell/
AUTHORSdb: https://authorsdb.com/community/17847-karen-hulene-bartell
*****
Some Books I’ve Read Lately:
PALADIN’S FAITH, by T. Kingfisher. Fourth novel in the “Saint of Steel” series, based on the premise that the titular deity unaccountably died, traumatizing his paladins by their direct experience of his death. The few survivors of that cataclysmic event have been taken under the protection of the Temple of the White Rat. Professional spy Marguerite appeals to the Bishop of that Temple for protection on her current mission. She has learned of an Artificer inventing a device to extract salt from seawater much more easily – and cheaply – than currently possible. Inexpensive salt, although a great boon for the general public, would undercut the monopoly of the Sealords and destabilize the economy. Marguerite intends to find and protect the Artificer. A male and female paladin, Shane and Wren, are assigned to escort her. Paladins of the Saint of Steel, although bereft of their deity, retain certain gifts: A berserker frenzy in battle called the “dark tide,” granting them superhuman speed and strength, and the “voice,” with which they can persuade almost anybody of anything, provided the speaker is sincere. While a plot centered on economic and commercial conflicts didn’t strike me as a great thrill, it’s more of a MacGuffin providing a framework for the story’s essential core – a quest / road trip during which character relationships have plenty of scope for growth. Marguerite, in her role as a covert information gatherer with a perfumery business as a front, trusts most people little or not at all, with very few exceptions. Reluctantly she begins to accept Shane as one of the latter. Having been rejected by one god and abandoned by another (as he views his situation), he regards himself as a failure. Moreover, he’s even more conscience-ridden than the average paladin. When he inquires about a word for feeling guilty about not feeling guilty enough, his comrade, Wren, tartly replies, “Pathology.” Like all Kingfisher’s fiction, PALADIN’S FAITH sparks with witty dialogue and wry, self-aware internal monologue, even amid dire crises. The latter include exorcisms of demons, a process dangerous to not only the lives but the souls of both bystanders and exorcists. This novel ends with a hook for the next volume, but not, thank goodness, a cliffhanger. While the story of Shane and Marguerite winds up with a satisfying conclusion, more stories remain to be told. The “Saint of Steel” novels can be read independently in any order, although understanding references to previous installments would enrich a reader’s experience.
THE BAD WEATHER FRIEND, by Dean Koontz. In this thriller combining elements of SF and the supernatural, the title character, the opposite of a proverbial fair-weather friend, steadfastly protects his charge through life-threatening disasters. Protagonist Benny Catspaw, a kind, decent young man highly successful in real estate sales and house-flipping, has such a disaster crash down upon him within a single day. He’s fired from his real-estate agency, his girlfriend breaks up with him, his long-time bank rejects him for a loan, and someone trashes his house. Meanwhile, a previously unknown relative ships him a large, casket-like crate. It contains, not books as claimed, but a benevolent giant named Spike, who introduces himself as a “craggle.” Almost two thousand years old, at present he’s tasked with discovering the forces out to destroy Benny’s life and setting things right. Near the end of the book, Spike defines a craggle as “a benign supernatural creature whose mission is to help nice people lead safe and meaningful lives when. . . thwarted and abused” by persecutors such as the villains. He has superhuman strength, plus the abilities to remove and replace his own organs and to stop time, either by “sidelining” one or more individuals or freezing time altogether in his immediate vicinity. He eats (quite a lot) but doesn’t excrete and has no reproductive organs. He displays a fearsome capacity for intimidation, sometimes entailing severe injuries but never killing. Otherwise, he behaves in a kind, patient manner. Along with a diner waitress named Harper Harper (sic), he and Benny embark on a quest to track the instigators of Benny’s persecution to the ultimate source. Despite a horrible childhood, including a stay at a bizarrely evil boarding school, Benny has grown up uncorrupted by those influences. This novel checks off almost all the standard Dean Koontz tropes – near-future mad science; caricatured sociopathic villains with delusions of utopian superiority; an apparent conviction that the world is going straight to perdition because of the collapse of traditional values (including aesthetic ones); luxuriant, at times pretentious prose style; a manic pixie dream girl heroine; love almost at first sight. But no golden retriever this time; instead, the good guys end up with a huge, placid rabbit and a highly intelligent whippet. This novel is so over-the-top, even compared to Koontz’s other recent thrillers, that I strongly suspect it of deliberate self-parody. Numerous metafictional asides from the narrator to the reader support that idea. When Benny and his companions finally confront the evil mastermind, she reveals that he’s targeted as a threat to the Better People (their unironic title for themselves) because he is – too nice! Yet the lyrical final paragraphs of the last page cast doubt on the self-parody hypothesis. At that point the narrator seems completely serious. So could the entire absurd plot up to that point be meant seriously, too?
WHAT FEASTS AT NIGHT, by T. Kingfisher. Another enthralling horror tale narrated by delightful protagonist Alex Easton, first met in WHAT MOVES THE DEAD. Like that book, this one is too short for my liking, although I grant that its length in terms of the story’s requirements could hardly be improved. While the new novel could be read on its own, readers already acquainted with the characters would get more from it. In WHAT FEASTS AT NIGHT, Alex doesn’t repeat most of the information about Gallacian “sworn soldiers” explained at length in WHAT MOVES THE DEAD. Therefore, a new reader wouldn’t immediately grasp what Alex means by, “I’m not exactly a man.” Sworn soldiers adopt a nonbinary identity for the duration of their service and often (like Alex) for life. The language of Gallacia, a tiny, fictitious central European country, has several gender pronouns in addition to the standard masculine and feminine. As Alex puts it, “No one speaks Gallacian if they can avoid it. Our language is as complicated and miserable as everything else in this country.” Sworn soldiers use ka (subjective) and kan (objective and possessive). Priests are referred to as va / var. The unique pronoun for God is Ha / Har. (Noting that “in English those are sounds associated with laughter,” Alex comments, “Yeah, sounds about right.”) Pre-adolescent children, regardless of sex, go by a neutral pronoun. A couple of brief, offhand remarks reveal Alex’s biological sex as female, but that fact is of no importance. Ka is neither man nor woman; ka is simply a soldier. The book opens with Alex’s return to Gallacia after a long absence, accompanied by kan batman, Angus, “inherited” from kan father. Angus has persuaded Alex to spend a while at the family hunting lodge to host their staunch friend from the previous novel, mycologist Eugenia Potter, fictional aunt of Beatrix Potter. They expect only a quiet period of relaxing and possibly hunting while Miss Potter investigates the native fungi of Gallacia. They find the lodge deserted and in disarray. It turns out the caretaker has been dead for some time, and nobody wants to talk about the lung affliction he died of. They soon learn many people suspect that he was killed by a moroi, an actual creature in Romanian folklore, sometimes conceived as “a phantom of a dead person which leaves the grave to draw energy from the living” (Wikipedia). In other words, a breath-sucking vampire! Unlike WHAT MOVES THE DEAD, which postulates a natural explanation for the destruction of the House of Usher (both structure and family), this new horror novel has a supernatural premise. Of course – it would be quite a letdown if the mysterious affliction and Alex’s nightmares turned out to have a mundane basis. A young man hired, along with his grandmother, to work at the lodge suffers agonizing dreams and falls ill with a severe respiratory disease. After dreaming of a strangely sad young woman who suffocates him by sitting on his chest and inhaling his breath, Alex succumbs to a similar illness. Could the problem be connected with the clogged water flow in the lodge’s springhouse? The grandmother grimly wards the property with heaps of salt and every other anti-supernatural remedy known to local superstition. Her air of perpetual exasperation and disdain for “young fools” such as Alex provides dark comic relief. Miss Potter’s very English understated, levelheaded reaction to the weirdness counterbalances the local people’s fears. The wryly witty conversations among her, Alex, and Angus, typical of Kingfisher’s writing, strike humorous sparks even amid the atmosphere of growing horror. Alex’s disparaging remarks about his native land come across as sardonic humor rather than bitterness. Most interestingly, Kingfisher intertwines the supernatural menace with Alex’s spells of “soldier’s heart” (what we now call PTSD) that linger from his combat service in the Serbian-Bulgarian war of 1885. War, he reflects, doesn’t stay in the past; it’s a “place” to which former combatants continually return – a truth vividly portrayed in the story’s climactic scenes.
For my recommendations of “must read” classic and modern vampire fiction, explore the Realm of the Vampires:
Realm of the Vampires
*****
Excerpt from “Therapy for a Vampire”:
Roger grabbed Franz by the shoulders. “Don’t you know better than to drink from a victim who’s under the influence?”
“But she was delicious.” With a lopsided grin, the lad stripped off his shirt and tossed it onto the hood of the car. “Watch me cross the water again.”
“Wait, what the hell are you doing?”
Franz’s outline shimmered with the vibrations of molecules reordering themselves. Velvety, sable fur spread over his arms and chest. His canines elongated into fangs, and wings erupted from his shoulders. Opening to a six-foot span, pale greenish, they resembled bat wings less than those of a gigantic moth. He sprang into the air. At his weight, of course, he couldn’t literally fly. He levitated, with the wings for steering and balance. Within seconds, he’d cleared the roof of the restaurant. Diners on the rooftop deck stared at him open-mouthed.
As he glided toward the bridge, Roger raced along below, wishing that, on this occasion anyway, he himself shared the power to transform. “You idiot, get down here!” He ran across the creek, while Franz soared over the dockside parking lot. Half the people enjoying the fall evening craned their necks to watch, and half of those seemed to be taking pictures with their phones. At least the light’s too bad for them to record anything clear enough to convince skeptics—I hope. Dashing past a clump of gaping tourists, Roger shouted over his shoulder, “Special effects. Rehearsal for a film shoot.”
Luckily, the fugitive didn’t meander over the rooftops at random. Using surface streets as a guide, he followed Main Street up to Church Circle. He flew circles around the steeple of Saint Anne’s for a minute, then landed at a slant, anchoring himself with a one-handed grip. Not bothering with the gate, Roger leaped over the fence and stalked across the lawn to glare up at the young vampire. “Have you lost what’s left of your mind?” Unprofessional language, but the situation justified it.
“Look, Doctor, I’m touching the church.” Instead of descending to the ground, he launched himself in the direction opposite from Main Street.
Fewer pedestrians here, at least. Roger sprang over the fence again and ran around the circle to catch sight of Franz spiraling toward the adjacent State Circle. He flew between the State House and the Governor’s mansion, then sank to hover above the brick-paved courtyard between the mansion and a three-story office building.
The noise of a car engine diverted Roger’s attention. He glanced toward the sound and saw a police car rounding the circle toward him. The vehicle idled at the curb, and the officer in the passenger seat rolled down her window. Roger strode over to the car to capture the woman’s gaze before she could speak. “Everything is all right here. There’s nothing you need to worry about. Forget it.” He stared past her shoulder at the male driver. “You didn’t see anything worth investigating. Move along and forget about it.”
“Not worth investigating,” the driver repeated.
The female officer echoed, “Nothing to worry about.” Her voice held a tinge of uncertainty, though.
Roger gave her a firmer mental shove. “That’s right. Everything is fine. Move along.” Thinking of the likelihood that Britt would tease him about performing a “Jedi mind trick,” he resisted the irrational impulse to add, “These aren’t the vampires you’re looking for.”
The woman relaxed in her seat. “We should move along.”
The driver nodded. “Right. Have a nice evening, sir.”
Once the car had disappeared around the curve, Roger exhaled a long breath and marched to the center of the courtyard. Franz was precariously balanced on the shoulder of a monumental statue of Justice Thurgood Marshall.
Roger pointed at him, then at the ground. “You. Down here. Now.”
To his relieved surprise, the lad obeyed. Roger grabbed his arm before he could wander off again. “Transform.”
Franz shuddered as the change rippled through him. Seconds later, he looked like an ordinary young man, although shirtless, disheveled, and staggering from intoxication.
Roger steered him away from State Circle toward the most direct route to City Dock and the bridge. “No more making a spectacle of yourself. You’re coming home with me until you sober up.”
They’d walked a block by the time Franz managed to form a coherent sentence. “What about my car?”
“When I can trust you to drive, I’ll bring you back to pick it up. And if the restaurant has it towed before then, consider that a lesson.”
-end-
*****
The long-time distributor of THE VAMPIRE’S CRYPT has closed its website. If you would like to read any issue of this fanzine, which contains fiction, interviews, and a detailed book review column, visit the Dropbox page below. Find information about the contents of each issue on this page of my website:
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All Vampire’s Crypt Issues on Dropbox
A complete list of my available works, arranged roughly by genre, with purchase links:
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Carter Kindle Books
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Goodreads
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“Beast” wishes until next time—
Margaret L. Carter