Steven Van Patten: The Laughing Black Vampire

Brooklyn native Steven Van Patten is the author of the critically acclaimed Brookwater’s Curse trilogy, about an 1860s Georgia plantation slave who becomes law enforcement within the vampire community. In contrast, the titular character in his Killer Genius series is a modern-day hyper-intelligent black woman who uses high-end technology as a socially conscious serial killer.

Christian Brookwater is a former Georgia plantation slave who became a vampire during the 1860s. His long, tumultuous life takes a complicated turn when he is forced to travel to modern-day Senegal to rescue a child from a vengeful werewolf prince. It is here that Christian uncovers a plot that would throw the entire vampire nation into a civil war. To stop this, Christian must betray his best friend and mentor, an influential Italian vampire who nurtured him during his vampiric infancy. Christian is a member of a nocturnal law enforcement community that safeguards the secrets of the creatures of the night. This involves the killing of werewolves and other deranged monsters; something Christian excels at. But his fraternization with humans and his incessant need to kill racists vexes his superiors, who threaten to execute him if he doesn’t curtail his ‘racial impulses’. Christian also suffers from a rare condition that makes intercourse with human females especially dangerous. Christian’s other mentor is a four-hundred-year-old vampire samurai lord who teaches him the arts of war and sacrifice and has a knack for appearing whenever things become desperate. Of course, the warrior’s code can’t replace the desire for love, as Christian discovers when he becomes enamored with a human female in the 1940s. Despite Christian’s affliction, the two lovers raise a child together and for a while, our vampire gets a taste of true happiness. Some years later, his family life ends tragically as Christian loses his great love and becomes estranged from his teenaged son. Heartbroken, Christian embarks on a series of illuminating, yet sinful adventures as he migrates to a new home: Harlem, New York.

This forty-second issue of Tales from the Canyons of the Damned consists of six sharp, suspenseful, thought provoking short stories—each from a different featured master of speculative fiction.

Worth a Thousand Screams by Robert Jeschonek
Armageddon’s Eve by Steve Oden
The Thing in The Subway by Steven Van Patten
The Edge of Mercy – A Tale of Altiva By Teel James Glenn
Whistleblower by Hunter C. Eden
It Closes the Eye of the Sun by Daniel Arthur Smith

Tales from the Canyons of the Damned (canyonsofthedamned.com) is a dark science fiction, horror, & slipstream magazine we’ve been working on since 2015. What is Dark Science Fiction and Horror? Think of it as a literary Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, or Outer Limits, it’s Netflix’s Black Mirror and Amazon’s Electric Dreams in the short story format. And it’s a bargain. Each monthly issue has three-to-five sharp, suspenseful, satirical tales from today’s top speculative fiction writers.

These are Dark Sci Fi Slipstream Tales like you’ve never read before.

Laughing Black Vampire Productions – Home of Steven Van Patten (brookwaterscurse.com)