The Very Bloody Marys

He’s the only vampire cop around–and a gang of Vespa-riding vampires threaten to drain San Francisco dry! Big trouble at night in the city. A gang of Vespa-riding vampires are killing San Franciscans so indiscriminately they threaten to not only drain the city dry–but risk the discovery of vampires everywhere. Gay vampire cop Valentino is called upon to stop the group calling themselves The Very Bloody Marys before the situation gets worse. Unfortunately, it already has. You see, Valentino is still only a trainee who is in way over his head now that Pogue, his mentor, is missing. And this brutal gang is tough, smart, and very, very bloodthirsty. To do his job, Valentino must move quickly–and carefully–otherwise he may just get himself killed. What can a creature of the night do? The only thing he can, track the gang through the haunts of some very odd characters, unravel the mystery, and try to stay out of the sun. The Very Bloody Marys is a comic horror novel about vampires, ghouls, faeries, and the undead that move around after dark. Part chase, part gallows humor, part shivery excitement, this new story from the wildly imaginative M. Christian is funny, frightening, and very entertaining. An excerpt from The Very Bloody Rising (whee!) and falling (ouch!) with the crest and descent of the city’s well-known manic-depressive geography, the faded and split upholstery squeaking, squeaking, squeaking with failing springs each time, Mariah piloting, me hanging on for dear life, we headed away from downtown and out towards the fog belt. For the daylight people, the regular folks, the Sunset and Richmond were two sides of the same coin, separated by the green of Golden Gate Park. For the nighttime people, the irregular folks-the shadows, the shades, the spooks-the Sunset and the Richmond were the hesitant lands, the transforming acres, tentative real estate. Places where this could be that, and that might even be this. The fog that slipped between the row houses, that blurred the edges of Doegler’s repetitive architecture, spinning and twisting among the alphabetically named avenues, made more than concrete and brick driveways and bay windows vague and uncertain. The white rolling, the ghostly churning similarly pushed the already permeable barrier to its limit. Was that a Plywood Specialty Woodnymph (paneled skin and knotty eyes) coming out of that Chinese market? Could that have been the Sacred Locomotive of Kioram taking the place of the N Judah light rail vehicle (gleaming gold, flashing diamond, and deeply lustrous plutonium)?Might that have been a Lantern of Aristophanes regally perambulating across an intersection (shimmering silks and opulent velvets trailing behind like ornate smoke)? Could be, might be, perhaps, maybe, possibly . . . I hated it. Bad enough to prowl the halls and corridors of downtown, where the shadows nipped at your ankles and-according to Pogue-Things That Shouldn’t Be Named looked at you with sly schemings and horrible ponderings. They think with minds of maggots and icky would his soul be good straight or on a nice point of perfectly browned toast? But back there, at least the map didn’t change from block to block. As bad as they were, things stayed where they were. Out in the Avenues though, the definitions were way too slick, too hesitant, too damned foggy. The Very Bloody Marys takes you on a surreal and very weird ride through San Francisco’s dark side–the side of the undead.