A Vampire a Day: Of Saints and Shadows By Christopher Golden

I'm a fan of Christopher Golden's. I've mentioned that I'm an admirer of the illustrated novel Baltimore, which he wrote, and his Joe Golem: Occult Detective series is wildly entertaining and I love the world it's set in--a mostly drowned New York where the poor people live in the watery areas and the rich live uptown. I didn't know that there are actually multiple volumes of Baltimore, so hooray for that. (Here is a list of his books, if like me,  you don'thow many books he has for you to discover and enjoy.)
I love that Golden writes in multiple genres, and for teens as well as adults. I love that he writes video games and comic books as well as novels. (Is he the ultimate geek or what?  I'd love to run across him at #SDCC some time.) He's also very open to fans approaching him on his Facebook page and from his posts, he seems like a really decent guy.
I found Of Saints and Shadows in a used bookstore, captured by the cover, which uses familiar vampire tropes (crosses, daggers that look like fangs, red backdrops) in a way that seemed elegant and decadent and interesting.
I didn't know at the time that it was the first in a series--I'm not sure it WAS meant to be the first in the serie (it was published nearly 20 years ago), but it was urban fantasy of the first order. I LOVED his protagonist, Peter Octavian.
This novel has pretty much everything I crave. Golden has created a really rich world and mythos for his vampires (who lust after the "blood song") and the backdrop of the Venice carnival is particularly gorgeous. (Why should all the vampire stories be set in Paris?)
You will REALLY like this one and there are half a dozen sequels in the series to enjoy after this one.

A vampire a day: Baltimore by Michael Mignola and Christopher Golden

This illustrated novel is collaboration between Michael Mignola, who created Hellboy and Bram Stoker Award-winning novelist Christopher Golden.  The result is a stylish dark fantasy with enough literary trappings to entice readers who wouldn’t ordinarily be caught dead (undead?) reading a graphic novel.  It’s a character study featuring four distinctly different men with experience in the paranormal, all of whom have unique stories to tell.

We are in an unnamed European city, sometime during the years of Great War.  The battles still rage, but a plague born of vampire blood breath is abroad and inside the City, everything is dead.  In fact, the plague has reduced the war to a mere sideshow, fought only by those who cannot admit that it no longer matters. 

The men, who are strangers to one another, have been summoned by Captain (Lord) Henry Baltimore, whose friendship they have in common.  They arrive at their destination—a deserted inn—before Baltimore and pass the time by exchanging tales of horror.   

Heart of Darkness, the classic Joseph Conrad novella, begins with people telling stories too, and I doubt that's an accident. There are all sorts of "references" in this story, which is rich and layered.