We start out right in the thick of the action with our protagonist Cody watching from afar as the vampires roast and devour a family. In Jonathan Janz's DUST DEVILS we are treated to the kind of vampire that vampires are SUPPOSED to be: unsympathetic, ruthless, soulless monsters.

You can keep that crap, thank you very much. THAT is the kind of vampire I like to read about and see in my movies, no matter the popularity of pale heartthrobs with a CGI sheen. Sex show dancers giving more than just a happy ending to the voyeurs who frequent their establishment, while running a night club which serves its vampiric patrons cocktails of blood while excited partyers are turned horrifically or devoured entirely in the back. Ray Garton's masterpiece LIVE GIRLS comes to mind when I think of the monstrous vampire, which is still one of my all-time favorite imaginings of these undead fiends. About abominations who force victims to drink blood from their own flesh so as to turn them into immortal creatures of the night, damning their souls and unnaturally sustaining themselves on the flesh and blood of the innocent. We're talking about monsters who hunt people and drink their blood. And make no mistake, beasts they certainly are, no matter how they are portrayed or how the unfathomable gold flakes-somehow embedded in their skin and ONLY visible in sunlight-sparkle beneath the open sky.

For myself, I've always preferred the more monstrous imaginings of the beasts.

There's also a plethora of other types who've fallen somewhere between these incarnations, making it clear that the vampire-at least as conjured in the minds of authors and filmmakers at the forefront of popular culture-is capable of shifting its form into many different archetypes as writers strive to keep the mythical creatures relevant and fresh. Often they're portrayed as noble gentlemen, full of charm and chivalry, and more recently they've been portrayed as moody teenagers, either rocking torn jeans and leather jackets or-worse-SKINNY jeans and sparkling skin. Vampires have taken many forms throughout the centuries since the myth surrounding them came into being. Old West Vampires in a delicious bloodbath.

The Darkest Lullaby by Jonathan Janz