September 7, 2001 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

eveningsout

Beware, some of these these handsome men bite

Bound in Blood

The Erotic Journey of a Vampire by David Thomas Lord

Kensington, $14 trade paperback Vampire Vow

by Michael Schiefelbein Alyson, $12.95 paperback

In the Blood

by Scott Miller

IUniverse.com, $11.95 paperback

Reviewed by Anthony Glassman

It's a flood, an invasion. The sky is falling, and it's raining men. Gay men. Gay men with fangs. Oy.

Not one, not two, but three recent novels have dealt with the burgeoning new genre of gay vampires, and they run the gamut from good to god-awful (the books, not the vampires). Going from glorious to infamous, they are Vampire Vow by Michael Schiefelbein, In the Blood by Scott Miller and Bound in Blood, The Erotic Journey of a Vampire by David Thomas Lord.

Schiefelbein is currently a writing and literature professor in Memphis, Tennessee, but he was also a seminar-

ian, studying for the

priesthood. His take on

vampirism is perhaps the most interesting, and, at the very least, explains why the world hasn't been completely overrun with bloodsuckers.

Victor Decimus was a Roman centurion under Pontius Pilate and pseudo-lover of Jesus Christ. Jesus won't have sex with him, and, of course, eventually sacrifices himself to relieve the world of the burden of its sins. Along the way, Victor

Vampire Vow

becomes a vampire to spite Jesus, and repeatedly rejects his friend's offers of salvation.

Now, Victor moves from monastery to monastery, preying on the helpless and trying to destroy the religion his friend founded, waiting to meet the right person so he can pass on his undeath and move into the shadow world to which old vampires retire.

Of the three books, this one is by far the most engrossing. The theological concepts, the envisioning of a vampiric hierarchy, the conflicting emotions of the protagonist, all conspire to render an absolutely fascinating book. Schiefelbein is working on the sequel, which can't come out soon enough.

In the Blood, by Scott Miller, is based on Mr. Miller's musical of the same name. Yes: a musical about a gay vampire and his relationship with a hematologist in the age of AIDS. The concept is enough to make someone projectile-vomit, yet it works.

The book works, that is. The play was produced in St. Louis, and doesn't seem to have strayed far from its birthplace.

Vampire Zachary Church is found on a beach, crispy and toasted in the morning sun. He is rushed to the hospital, where he meets Adam Graham, a hematologist with a heart of gold and a secret: he has AIDS.

Both start the relationship without revealing who or what they are. When the truth is revealed, Zachary has a tough choice to make. Will he rid Adam of the virus that is killing him, at the same time dooming him to the half-life that caused Zach to attempt "suicide?" Or will he let Adam die, but keep his soul?

In the Blood is pretty decent. It's not the greatest novel ever, but it's a far cry from the

worst. It makes a good, interesting, comfortable read; nothing too involved, but still worth the effort.

Unlike, say, Bound in Blood. David Thomas Lord gives his readers almost 350 pages of thinly-veiled caricatures of famous people, pointless sex scenes and an anti-hero that is about as engrossing as Joe McCarthy.

Jean-Luc "Jack" Courbet was turned into a vampire by his mother's new husband in nineteenth-century France. Jack works as an art critic, preying on the gay bars and sex clubs of a New York at once banal, seemingly outdated, and incredibly annoying.

Jack is hiding from his mother, also a vampire, who needs the secret Jack holds to living eternally. Apparently, vampires must pass on their "gift" at least once within their first dozen or so decades or they die again. Both Jack and his mother are nearing that deadline. It is an undeadly game of cat and mouse and will leave readers slumped over

BOUND

BLOOD

The Erotic Journey of a Vampire

their tables, dead asleep.

Apparently, Lord is working on a sequel. Someone should consider driving a stake through his computer before its unholy product sees light.

The book comes off as incredibly shallow; his caricatures of Michael Musto and Anne Rice are actionably libelous, there is enough sex in the book that it makes one wonder why he bothered putting in vampires at all, and his "attention to detail," as authors refer to such things, is hardly more than a habit of using incredibly long lists of adjectives to pointlessly over-describe people, places and objects. What's

THE BLOOD

worse, sometimes he uses the

wrong word. That is an unforgivable sin, and that alone merits this book being remaindered before it can kill again.

Of course, the cover itself looks like a Harlequin gay romance novel, all pecs and leather jacket and tight jeans. At times a book can be judged by its cover. This one is guilty.

The wise reader would be well-advised to spend their money on In the Blood and Vampire Vow, and take the $14 for Bound in Blood and buy some crosses, some garlic and some wooden stakes. After all, the children of the night might someday make an appearance, and nobody wants to be unprepared.

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