Book Spotlight: Vampire Weekend by Mike Chen
Good morning friends, and welcome to a new book spotlight! Today I’m sharing a book that is out tomorrow, and one that I’m actually really excited about! Vampire Weekend by Mike Chen is right within my reader likes. Vampires? Check. Heartfelt content? Check. Music as a bonding tool? Check, check and check. I honestly can’t wait to give this a read.
About a Boy meets What We Do In The Shadows in the next fun genre-mashup from Mike Chen, featuring a punk-rock vampire learning to connect to the world again when her surly teenaged grand-nephew needs her, and her music, to get him through a tough time.
Louise knows first-hand that vampire mythos is all a lie. After all, she IS a vampire, and it doesn’t involve glamour, speed, flying, or anything Anne Rice wrote about. Instead, it’s actually pretty boring and quite lonely — the best part about it is the longevity, which Louise uses to go to see as many cool bands as she can. But all that changes when Louise’s estranged brother Stephen arrives at her door with his 12-year-old grandson Ian.
Ian’s father has recently been killed in a car accident and his mom is battling late-stage cancer. Stephen and Ian have taken a road trip while Ian’s mom receives treatment, and while they thought they’d find a long-lost relative, they get Louise — who explains her youthful appearance with a story about her relation to theme. Louise empathizes with the young boy and invites him to stay for a weekend. Together, they bond over their love of music, playing guitar late into the morning. But when Ian learns her secret, he asks for something more than guitar lessons: He asks her to make his mom a vampire to cure her of cancer.
Problem is, Louise doesn’t wish this loneliness on anyone. And a bigger problem — she can’t turn anyone. Only rumored elder vampires can do so, and she doesn’t even know where to find them. In an act of defiance, Ian runs away. As Louise pursues him, she comes across a path to these elder vampires — and a secret that could change how vampires view life and death forever.
With Ian missing, vampires on his tail, and a possible family squabble to finally reconcile, Louise hits the road to set things right — and discovers that caring about someone else is the most punk rock thing in the world. Especially for a vampire.
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Are you ready for an excerpt? A sneak peek into this highly anticipated book? I thought so. Let’s do it!
CHAPTER 2
VAMPIRE POWER MYTH #2: We can bite into anything.
In movies, veins pop like a balloon hitting a nail. But in reality? Kids constantly bonk into sharp objects and get light scrapes. Construction workers work around nails and metal, but somehow buildings go up without anyone bleeding out. I worked in a hospital, so I saw this firsthand.
In practical terms, biting someone for blood was not easy. Newly turned vampires don’t exactly have functional teeth. A gradual sharpening takes place over the course of a week, but we’re not the instant kill machine from movies.
The so-called “vampire attacks” in the news? Sounded like algorithm-driven clickbait to me. And that was exactly how I thought about it—or didn’t think about it—when I got to work.
Because today was a blood day. And blood days were literally life and death for me.
Not that I gave off that vibe. Instead, I went about my business, pushing my janitorial cart into the blood bank of San Francisco General Hospital. The automatic door shut behind me, my cart’s squeaking wheels announcing my arrival to Sam, the department’s night manager, and some staffer who looked more on break than actually working. They leaned over a monitor, attention pulled away by whatever was on the screen. Which worked to my benefit.
Some vampires worked with blood volunteers—usually fetishists who gladly let someone feed off them, likely thinking it was a kink or a new obscure fad diet rather than real vampire sustenance. That still involved the wholly unhygienic and socially awkward process of drinking from a live human. Underground dealers also existed, pumping blood from their arms into a bottle for an in-person transaction.
Me? I went with blood bag theft.
Which, to be fair, I held zero guilt over. Did you know that hospitals waste about 25 percent of blood bags every year? Thus, my weekly pickup during my janitorial rounds hardly made a dent. It all fell within the normal range of lost, misplaced, or expired. In fact, the managers viewed me as helpful for bringing the soon-to-expire bags to disposal. If some happened to make it into my backpack along the way, no one was the wiser.
This, of course, assumed that there were actually blood bags to take.
Today, the usual inventory of expiring blood bags was empty.
As in, nothing on the shelves. Nothing to deliver. Nothing to steal.
Nothing to feed from.
In fact, even the main storage units for in-date blood bags appeared low.
Any stress from the Copper Beach audition evaporated, as things do when food sources suddenly disappear.
I paused the music on my phone and pulled the earbuds out. Some things required a little more professional behavior. I began scouring the other storage possibilities when I overheard the words the vampire community feared the most.
“I swear, it’s a vampire.”
Eric constantly preached that if humans did discover us, racists would find new reasons to fearmonger, while scientists would capture us for all sorts of poking and prodding. Given that we’d all managed to abide by this for centuries, it seemed like a pretty good suggestion to follow.
My hands squeezed the cart’s handle tighter as I listened.
“That’s ridiculous,” Sam said, shaking his head.
“No, think about it.” The man turned, the tag on his scrubs revealing the name Turner. “After everything we know about viruses these days, who would actually drink blood? Only vampires.”
“Okay, look,” Sam said, rubbing his cleft chin. “You’re assuming someone drank this guy’s blood—”
“Police said he’s missing about ten ounces of blood. Same as the other two attacks.”
“Alright. Let’s assume someone—or something—drank ten ounces from that poor guy. They said his neck looked chewed, dozens of stitches needed. If you’re gonna believe something ridiculous, go with a werewolf.”
Suddenly, that headline didn’t seem like simple clickbait. Ten ounces. Roughly the same amount my body needed daily, though half that offered cranky survival. So that was the typical amount a vampire needed to sustain until the next feeding. And the chewed neck like a werewolf bite? That was a real concern, not because werewolves were real (they’re not), but because biting into a human was not easy.
In theory, you first had to properly locate the carotid artery, then make sure it was easily accessible by positioning the head and neck the right way. Then you needed a well-placed bite—millimeters of accuracy here, from an angle where things are hard to see. I challenge any human to try and bite precisely into a piece of Red Vines stuck on a loaf of sourdough to gauge its difficulty. This was in addition to the fangs’ fairly mediocre ability to puncture.
Biting humans was messy. Factor in an especially scared nondonor human and tools to make the process smoother and, well, the result could easily be mistaken for werewolves.
With the hospital’s blood shortage, their conversation ratcheted my anxiety enough for me to mutter, “Oh shit.”
Mike Chen is a lifelong writer, from crafting fan fiction as a child to somehow getting paid for words as an adult. He has contributed to major geek websites (The Mary Sue, The Portalist, Tor) and covered the NHL for mainstream media outlets. A member of SFWA and Codex Writers, Mike lives in the Bay Area, where he can be found playing video games and watching Doctor Who with his wife, daughter, and rescue animals. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram: @mikechenwriter
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