Vampirewestern Stories

The year is 1877. The reclusive vampire Lourdes has gone West to escape the temptation of the growing American nation; however, what he presumed was a pure land of only sky and sand turns out to be filled with vice and worse - more of his preternatural kind. And when Lourdes shoots dead a vampire preying on the closest thing to innocence in the Old West, a brothel worker named Katterina, he ends up igniting a war that puts himself, Katterina, and the whole of her little town in the crosshairs of a gang of vampire outlaws. To save the girl, Lourdes must do battle with otherworldly bandits, a corrupt priest, a cowardly sheriff, and the relentless desert sun. And, even if Lourdes can overcome these obstacles, he will have to protect Katterina from his own vampiric hunger. Lourdes's story threads a central narrative rich with gunfights and fangs together with interludes into the inner workings and underbellies of the denizens the vampire cowboy encounters on his journey. It paints a portrait of a lawless world which no longer exists, one in which the difference between good, bad, law, and outlaw is often no bigger than a grain of sand. "With Lourdes, Peter Tatara has delivered a well-crafted genre mash up and an unforgettable main character. Fans of Stephen King's Dark Tower cycle are sure to love this novel." - Robert Place Napton (Dark Wraith of Shannara, Son of Merlin, Battlestar Galactica Origins: Adama) "Tatara is to be commended for his remarkable ambition, talent, and skill, and I am quite positive this won't be the last we'll be hearing from this vibrant new author." - Joshua Ortega (The Other Dead, Gears of War) "Anyone new to the Vampire Western genre should most certainly allow Lourdes's odyssey to be their very first bite." - Matt Hawkins (FORT90, Attract Mode) Cover Design by Eric Maruscak - PepperInk.com Cover Photo by Olivier Le Queinec - Shutterstock.com

Jacqueline is a psychiatrist in supernatural research at The Institution, a mysterious organization of clinicians dedicated to exploring the unliving world. She is also a mother dying of cancer and is convinced Immortality's curse is her only hope of a pain-free life with her daughter. Lacy is a vampire and a prisoner of her care, burdened with a choice: Tell her story and earn her freedom or bite her tongue and wait for her captor to die of the illness poisoning her blood. With each passing day Jacqueline's tortures grow more extreme and the price of staying silent grows steeper. When Jacqueline threatens to turn her torture on the auburn-haired, bright-eyed, Caed-Lacy's longtime paramour and accomplice in crime-she begins to talk, and the tale she weaves is one marred by tragedy and marked in blood. From the gallows of Salem to the wild, western reaches of Tombstone, Arizona, Lacy spins a story of love and loss in a world where the greatest monsters are not the shadows that go bump in the night, but the people we know best. As Death stalks the shadows of Lacy's tale, and Immortality lures her to sign away her soul for a promise of eternal bliss, Jacqueline starts to wonder if getting what you want is a blessing or a curse. And whether the things we hunt are the things that haunt us in the end.