As a writer it is often difficult to find readers to provide feedback before a final proof. Some of my fellow writers use me as a sounding board, which gives me the opportunity to read some pretty cool material long before it will see publication. I see no reason not to give my readers a heads up concerning some of the unpublished material I have been reviewing. Since all of this stuff has not gone through the rework stages I will not be offering ratings.

It seems no one under forty is immune to the vampire craze, whether on TV, on the big screen, or in fiction. I have even begun writing a vampire serial with Dominick Mattero. I don’t know jack about vampires. The Hemavore setting is his. I just write the characters. I have often thought that the vampire craze had something to do with our deep dread of AIDS since they came about together in the 1980s. There is something else though, that causes this fascination, which goes much farther back than Anne Rice. I think Dominick has hit on part of the complex with his Vampire State serial, which I have read five issues of.

Vampire State seems to be a comic script. It is a near future setting in which New York is ruled by a vampire aristocracy, making the entire setting a huge metaphor for our parasitic mega-state. Each issue is from the viewpoint of a character from one of the following backgrounds: citizens who willingly—even eagerly—give their blood for the privilege of city life; feral humans who are hunted by the vampires; the stuck-up vampires themselves with their various political factions; and the Daughters of The Stake a fanatical sect of redneck Christian vampire hunters with a jihadist level of fanaticism.

I have less of an appetite for vampire fiction than most, and only went for Hemavore because Dominick supplied a science fiction angle for vampires. The vampires in Vampire State are a mix of Bram Stoker and Anne Rice types, but their politics makes them more human than most current treatments. This is like someone set Thirty Days of Night at a Democratic Party National Convention held in New York City. Imagine Hillary Clinton ripping off heads!

I’d like to see this out there someday.