Dead on My Feet » (Reprint)

William Mark Simmons is the author of five novels; his first, In The Net of Dreams, was a finalist for the Compton Crook Award and made the LOCUS "Best" list in 1991. That novel, with its two sequels, When Dreams Collide and The Woman of His Dreams, have recently been published in one hardcover volume by Meisha Merlin Publishing. For Baen he wrote the popular and critically praised One Foot in the Grave, to which Dead on My Feet is a sequel. Simmons has worked as a teacher, actor, director, musician, and entertainer, hosting his own shows on both television and radio while winning awards as a journalist and copywriter. He currently manages a public radio station in Louisiana, hosts a classical music program, and is an adjunct faculty member of the University of Louisiana at Monroe.

A year ago, Chris Csejthe (pronounced "Say-thee") was completely human-then a blood transfusion with the Lord of the Undead changed everything. Now he is a hunted man, sought by human and vampire alike for the secrets he knows and the powers that his mutated blood may bestow. So far he's dodged undead assassins, werewolves, a 6,000-year-old Egyptian necromancer, and Vlad Dracula himself. But now he's really got problems. The dead are turning up on his doorstep after dark to ask for justice and the police want to know where all those corpses are coming from. Undead terrorists are testing a doomsday virus on his new hometown and he's caught in the crossfire between a white supremacist militia and the resurrected Civil War dead. His werewolf lover, jealous of his dead wife's ghost, has left him. And the centuries-old and still very beautiful (and very deadly) Countess Bathory is determined to have his uniquely transformed blood for her own dark purposes. Now, more than ever, life sucks!

Publishers Weekly

In this lighthearted and somewhat jumbled contemporary vampire tale, a sequel to Simmons's One Foot in the Grave (1996), vampire Chris Haim has more problems than merely protecting his secret. He must contend with faction fights among the vampires, as well as pursuit by representatives of those factions and by a few other odd beings to boot, and he must distinguish real from fake psychics in New Orleans' voudun community. Haim is also trying to keep his personal relationships straight, since his old lover, Lupe the werewolf, is potentially jealous of his new one, Deirdre, and a jealous werewolf can ruin your whole day. Plots and subplots and vignettes abound, involving Vlad Dracula, Erzebet Batory the Blood Countess, biotechnology and a biowar conspiracy using tailored viruses that makes less than cheery reading in the middle of the SARS epidemic. Simmons's experience in the visual media probably explains the intense development of some scenes that otherwise seem the mark of a first-time author. Readers unfamiliar with Haim's previous outing may have trouble getting into the story, but fans of the early Terry Pratchett or Eric Flint's Joe fantasies will enjoy the humorous bits. (June) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.