A Vampire a Day: Blood Thirst by Richard Matheson

I first encountered Richard Matheson as a writer on Twilight Zone. He wrote some of the most memorable episodes, including the Richard Donner-directed, William Shatner starrer "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet." He also rwote the classic novel I Am Legend.This is a compilation of vampire fiction from the last century that's available in both paper and hard cover. If you want to buy it new, it'll cost you around $15, but Amazon's sellers have it for a penny and postage, which is probably my favorite way to buy books. The book was written in 1997, so it predated a lot of influential vampire storeis, from Twilight to True Blood, but this is definitely a book I need in my library.

Sunday Friend Promotion Delia Fontana's Aixa & the Scorpion

One of the things that annoys me about a lot of horror stories is that they all seem to be based on the same old, same old European/Catholic tropes. When I read a story that doesn't fall back on that, it makes me happy. (In fact, one of the best zombie movie scripts I have read lately integrated voodoo, biochemistry, and social issues and was set in the sugar cane fields of Florida.)

Delia Fontana has started up a new series she calls La Bruja Roja (the Red Witch) with an intial story of 11,000 words. She has four stories in the initial series, and will be publishing them serially, once a month. At that point (December), she'll combine them in one package, add some bonus material (like a Blu-Ray release) and then move into her next sequence of tales, The Poison Heart.

She published the first instalment Aixa & the Scorpion over the weekend. It'll be followed by Aixa & the Shark, Aixa & the Shadow, and Aixa & the Spider.  the stories are set in a town that straddles the Texas/Mexico border but also marks the dividing line between life and death. She describes Sangre de Cristo as a place much like the Bon Temps of True Blood, a place where the paranormal is the normal. If you'd like to read a horror story with a decidedly Hispanic twist, check it out!