When I brought up the idea of doing another post, Chuck Miller, who in my view has too high an opinion of himself, said he didn't think it would be necessary, he could talk about the book all by himself. We went back and forth on this for a while, and I pointed out three things to him:
1.) The stuff the book is all about, the whole thing with Professor Moriarty, happened to me and Mary, not to him.
2.) Chuck Miller did not totally write the book all by himself, in spite of the fact that he put his name on the cover. The story was written by me in my own words, as a first-hand experiencer of the events. This is what is known as "first person narration," which means it is being told by the person to whom it happened to. None of this happened to Chuck Miller. He was nowhere to be seen when we went through all this stuff, as far as I can recall. While me and Mary were fighting off gross, disgusting vampires, Chuck Miller was probably asleep or playing on the internet or bragging to somebody about something he had supposedly done at some point in the distant past.
After I brought those two things to his attention, he went into some bullcrap about how that's the way the publishing business works, and that he deserved to have his name on it because blah-blah-blah, and I was being an ingrate and that him taking some of the credit would keep me from developing too much of an ego, and that I ought to thank him for taking my sloppy manuscripts and turning them into something readable, like that was some big deal or something, and that he had to make like a hundred corrections on every page, which I don't even believe is true. I told him my manuscripts weren't the least bit sloppy, and he hardly had to do any work on them at all, and did he think I was some kind of an idiot? He didn't answer that, but he said the bottom line was that I would never have gotten anything published at all without his help. So I said, no, the actual bottom line is something else, and that was my third thing:
3.) I told him that if he didn't let me write a post, I'd stop sending him any manuscripts at all, and so would my brother Jack, who works with Doctor Unknown Junior, and also the Black Centipede, who is very sympathetic to my cause. Then he'd have to make up stories all by himself, and then he could see just how many people would bother even looking at them, much less paying money for them. I mean, if he's this big-deal writer and has this wonderful imagination, how come he never did anything with it until the Black Centipede started sending him those case reports? So, there was that, and there was also something else. I had what I think is called leverage to use on him. Because, you see, I had gotten my hands on some short stories he wrote when he was in college-- never mind how I got them-- and I told him if that was the kind of stuff he wrote by himself, he could just go to it, and I wished him luck. Which I didn't, of course. I was being sarcastic.
He cursed at me and threatened me for about fifteen minutes, but I just sat there and smiled, and when I got a chance to put a word in edgewise, as the saying goes, I told him I was prepared to post some of his crappy old stories all over Facebook and everywhere else if he didn't quit being so ugly to me. Well, he changed his tune pretty quickly and became all apologetic and everything, and started calling me "Miss Valis," and saying "Please" and "thank you," and so on, and the end result is that I am writing this piece, and he is going to post it exactly as it is, or else I absolutely will post those stories, starting with this one about a girl with hairy legs that is so terrible he'd never be able to show his face in public again if people saw it.
As for the book, I have to say that it is probably the best and most exciting book I have ever read in my life, even if I did write it myself, which I did, and I didn't make a hundred mistakes on every page. Maybe five or six at most, and they wouldn't have made hardly any difference at all, even if they were left in there. The story has so much fantastic stuff in it that I almost don't even know where to begin. There are vampires, there is the actual Professor Moriarty, there is the actual Sherlock Holmes-- not that Iron Man guy, Morton Downey Junior, that was in those movies-- there is a crappy Halloween party, there is a comic book geek guy, there are girls with really huge boobs, there's a giant talking turtle, there is Dracula and Jack the Ripper, there is mystery and intrigue and time travel and new words I found in the dictionary and a bunch more stuff on top of that, which I can't even go into here because it would be what is called "spoilers," and I have too much integrity to do that.
It's better that you see it for yourself, which you can do as soon as you buy the book.
Another thing about it is that it's the first part of a trilogy. Trilogies usually consist of three books, and Vionna and the Vampires is the first one in the Moriarty, Lord of the Vampires trilogy. Moriarty was around for a long time, and he caused trouble for more people than just me and Mary. The second volume, "Black Centipede Confidential," tells about the time in 1933 when Moriarty was goofing around in the city of Zenith, trying to find Jack the Ripper's Analytical Engine, and pulled all kinds of horrible, dangerous stunts, and how the Black Centipede put a stop to his foolishness. That one will come out later. I have not read it myself, but the Black Centipede has told me all about it, and it sounds very cool, and will probably be almost as good as Vionna and the Vampires, which is now available on Amazon, by the way, and well worth the price, even including shipping.
The third book will be The Return of Little Precious, which is all about my brother, Jack Christian, and Doctor Dana Unknown, and their dealings with Moriarty approximately one decade ago. I'm in that one, too, even though I can't remember any of it, so I can't really comment. Mary's not in it at all. Which is not unfair, since she was in just about every chapter of Blood of the Centipede, and I hardly showed up at all. I am practically the star of Vionna and the Vampires, though, and I do all kinds of fantastic things, like for example time-traveling back to 1888 and solving a perplexing case with none other than Sherlock Holmes himself! I am absolutely serious, you can read it for yourself in black and white, as they say, when you buy a copy of Vionna and the Vampires, which happens to be available on Amazon right now. In addition, I learned some totally unbelievable things about myself, which will just blow you away when you find out what they are, I am not kidding.
Mary does some stuff also. She was kind of snippy with me during some of the events described in the book, and still hasn't admitted that I was right about certain things. But we're not mad at each other anymore, even though I would have a right to still be mad at Mary a little bit, if I was still mad, which I'm not.
Oh, and speaking of Blood of the Centipede, our new book, Vionna and the Vampires, which is now available for purchase on Amazon, by the way, features what you might call the "flip sides" of a couple of scenes in Blood. You should probably buy both books so you can see what I mean. But if you can't afford both of them, just buy Vionna and the Vampires. You can go to the link right down there and do that. You won't be sorry, I swear to God.
And it has this really gorgeous cover painting by Jeff Hayes. I'm the one on the left.
Thank you.
Yours Truly,
Vionna V. Valis
World's Greatest Psychic Detective, For Real
BUY THE BOOK HERE: www.amazon.com/Vionna-Vampires-Moriarty-Lord-Book/dp/1495948617/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1392691882&sr=1-1
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