Mary Jane Kelly R.I.P.

One hundred and twenty-eight years ago today, Mary Jane Kelly was murdered in her room at Number 13 Miller's Court in London. She is believed to have been the final victim of the serial killer known as Jack the Ripper.

FROM VIONNA AND THE VAMPIRES:


CHAPTER SIX: THE FINAL PROBLEM


We ran all the way from the cafe back to Baker Street, leaving Moriarty behind. When we got there, Mary was gone. She had left us a note, though:

"Joseph Barnett sent word that he wants to meet me back at my room. I feel a certain obligation toward him. I have no wish to marry, but he must be told that he is to be a father. I shall be back to Baker Street as soon as possible."

My heart sank. How long ago had Mary written this note? Had she already stuck it to our door when I went out to investigate the empty house? I had forgotten to take any kind of precautions at 221-B before I rushed off with Moriarty. Had Mary still been there then? Could I have prevented her from going to Miller's Court? Oh, gosh, how stupid could I be, anyhow? The Ripper was Joseph Barnett, or vice versa. That had to be it.

"Dear God, Valis!" Holmes cried. "We haven't a moment to lose. We must get to Miss Kelly immediately!"

We got a hansom cab, and Holmes made a total nuisance of himself, pestering the driver to go faster. I didn't blame him. I'd have done it myself if Holmes hadn't had it so totally covered. Anyhow, I was busy trying to convince myself that Mary Kelly was okay and I wasn't to blame for anything. 

"Vionna is the girl that won't be blamed for nothing." 

The sun had climbed well above the rooftops by the time we got to Miller's Court. Holmes literally threw a handful of money at the cab driver. 

We made our way Number 13. Holmes tried the door and found it locked. He banged on it for a few seconds, but that didn't accomplish anything. He went over to the little window and discovered that one of the panes was broken out. He put his hand in, pulled back the curtain, and peeked inside. He stayed that way, slightly crouched down with his eye to the opening, for a very long time. I began to notice a terrible smell coming from someplace. Holmes kept on not moving or speaking, and I could not make myself move from where I was standing, or make myself say anything, either. 

I knew what Holmes was looking at. I had a picture in my mind that came from somewhere else-- I couldn't explain it, but I knew it was for real. Poor Mary Kelly, lying dead in that room. And not just dead-- the Ripper had outdone himself this time. The mutilations he had inflicted went way beyond the stuff he had done before. I couldn't think of any words to describe it. I just stood there, crying, without making a sound.

Finally, after about a million years, Holmes turned around to face me.

It was too, too late. I could tell by the look in Holmes' eyes. I had never seen anything like it. He was trembling, and all the blood had drained out of his face. The terrible smell got worse and worse and I imagined all sorts of things, and I knew that none of them could be as bad as what Sherlock Holmes had seen.

I felt like my head had been hollowed out completely. I couldn't move. As Holmes stood there, looking at me, I thought I saw a very bright light shine through the thin fabric of the curtain for just a second. Then, a few moments later, it seemed to me that I could hear my own voice coming from inside the room. I shook my head. I was losing my grip.

"We... We should go, Valis," he said. 

"The police..?" I said.

Holmes closed his eyes. "To hell with the police," he said in someone else's voice. "And Her Majesty's government, too. To hell with sorcerers and vampires and all their bloody games. And, most of all, to hell with the brilliant Mister Sherlock Holmes."

I didn't like the sound of that. I knew I had just heard someone die, and I don't mean Mary Kelly.

Just then, a man came around a corner and started walking up the alleyway in our direction. I have no idea what he looked like. I couldn't really see anything just then. The man was tall or short or young or old or well-dressed or shabby. I hated him immediately, just because he was there.

"I don't imagine you know a Miss Mary Kelly that lives in that room there?" he said. I wanted to hit him.

"No, not really," Holmes replied dully.

The man gave us a curious look. I prayed that he would make a smart remark so I'd have an excuse to crack his head open. The nerve of him, standing there like that, running his mouth, while Mary Kelly...

"I've had the devil of a time pinning her down," the man was saying. "My name's Thomas Bowyer. I work for Mister M'Carthy, the landlord. Miss Kelly is seriously in arrears on her rent. In fact, it has reached the crisis point. If she comes up with one more tale about being skint..."

"I shouldn't worry about that," Holmes said in a hollow voice. "I shouldn't worry about that at all." He grabbed me by the wrist and led me away. Mister Thomas Bowyer stood scratching his stupid head.

We were almost three blocks away when we heard Thomas Bowyer scream. I hoped he would never, never, ever forget what he was seeing. I hoped his hair would turn white. 

Neither Holmes nor I said a single word. We just kept walking until we reached 221-B Baker Street. Everything we passed looked and smelled funny. The sky itself seemed to be smeared with blood-- it had soaked into the ragged little clouds, and the smell of it filled the whole world.

When we finally reached 221-B, we found an envelope stuck to the door, addressed to Mister Sherlock Holmes. The handwriting on the front of it was familiar. We both knew who it was from, and neither of us wanted to open it up. We plodded up the stairs, and Holmes tossed the envelope onto the floor. He slumped into his chair and refused to answer any questions, or to speak at all. I sat down in the basket chair. 

We sat there like that, totally silent, for a very long time. Hours, probably. I really can't be sure. I might even have nodded off for a while. At some point, I became aware that Holmes had gotten to his feet. He did not speak or even look at me as he moved over to the fireplace.

Sherlock Holmes took a bottle from the corner of the mantelpiece, and a hypodermic syringe from a neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle and rolled back his left shirtcuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist, all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally, he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, sank back into the velvet-lined armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction, and ... 

I stood up, too. I picked up the envelope that Jack the Ripper had affixed to our front door from the floor where Holmes had tossed it, and stuck it in my pocket. Then I just sort of wandered out into the street. I wanted to go someplace, but I didn't know where.

***

https://www.amazon.com/Vionna-Vampires-Moriarty-Lord-Book/dp/1495948617/

Okay, maybe it COULD happen here...

Now available!
FROM MOONSTONE BOOKS
http://moonstonebooks.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=1167

AND ON AMAZON:
http://www.amazon.com/Kolchak-Penny-Dreadful-Double-Feature/dp/194401702X/

In "Penny Dreadful," Carl Kolchak teams up with private eye Domino Patrick to investigate a series of murders that appear to be copycat crimes based on the 1969 Tate-LaBianca killings. The trail leads to one Penelope Anne Hilligloss, a former member of the Manson Family who now seems to have aligned herself with an even darker power. Kolchak's quest for the truth, and the means to stop "Penny Dreadful," takes him to San Quentin State Prison for a face-to-face meeting with the one man who might have the information he needs: Charles Manson himself.

"The Time Stalker" finds Kolchak in Las Vegas, the city where he once destroyed a vampire named Janos Skorzeny-- or did he? When Skorzeny reappears and begins another murderous rampage, Kolchak must solve the riddle of the vampire's impossible return. Does a mysterious, accidental time-traveler named Zero hold the key? Can Carl put Skorzeny back where he belongs without being arrested by the Vegas P.D. or fired by Tony Vincenzo? With the help of an old, estranged friend from his original Vegas days, and a conspiracy-minded young reporter named Gail Karen, Kolchak once again tackles his first, most terrifying supernatural foe!

KOLCHAK DOUBLE FEATURE

Coming in February 2016! 

KOLCHAK DOUBLE FEATURE: 
"Penny Dreadful" and "The Time Stalker"
by Chuck Miller
Cover by Woodrow Hinton lll
Coming February 2016
from Moonstone Books
https://www.facebook.com/Kolchak-The-Night-Stalker-Double-Feature-1311752058839973/?ref=bookmarks

In "Penny Dreadful," Carl Kolchak teams up with private eye Domino Patrick to investigate a series of murders that appear to be copycat crimes based on the 1969 Tate-LaBianca killings. The trail leads to one Penelope Anne Hilligloss, a former member of the Manson Family who now seems to have aligned herself with an even darker power. Kolchak's quest for the truth, and the means to stop "Penny Dreadful," takes him to San Quentin State Prison for a face-to-face meeting with the one man who might have the information he needs: Charles Manson himself.

"The Time Stalker" finds Kolchak in Las Vegas, the city where he once destroyed a vampire named Janos Skorzeny-- or did he? When Skorzeny reappears and begins another murderous rampage, Kolchak must solve the riddle of the vampire's impossible return. Does a mysterious, accidental time-traveler named Zero hold the key? Can Carl put Skorzeny back where he belongs without being arrested by the Vegas P.D. or fired by Tony Vincenzo? With the help of an old, estranged friend from his original Vegas days, and a conspiracy-minded young reporter named Gail Karen, Kolchak once again tackles his first, most terrifying supernatural foe!

https://www.facebook.com/Kolchak-The-Night-Stalker-Double-Feature-1311752058839973/?ref=bookmarks

Vionna and the Vampires sample

Known for taking Genre Fiction in strange, twisted directions, award winning author Chuck Miller, creator of 'The Black Centipede', leads readers on a brand new 'Psychedelic Pulp' experience with his latest novel from Pro Se Productions- VIONNA AND THE VAMPIRES: Book One of the Moriarty, Lord of The Vampires Trilogy!

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” So said Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, more than a century ago.

Vionna Valis and Mary Jane Kelly are a pair of hard working psychic detectives experiencing a run of bad luck. A new detective agency, the Femmes Fatales, is taking most of their business. Things seem to change for the better in the form of a new client named Scudder Moran, a wealthy young man with a unique problem; He has been targeted by the very, very late Professor James Moriarty—the Napoleon of Crime in another century, now Lord of the Vampires! Unexpected help arrives in the ghostly person of the Great Detective himself, and they set about unraveling a tangled web of lies and secrecy that reaches deep into each of their lives. Can they find the light before Moriarty unleashes his final, most horrific scheme?

"Chuck Miller," says Tommy Hancock, Partner in and Editor-in-Chief of Pro Se Productions, "is by far one of the most unique talents in Genre Fiction today. He takes the staples and standards of several different types of stories and doesn't just mix them together. Somehow he intricately weaves usually disparate parts into the wildest trip on fiction I think any reader has ever taken. The Black Centipede stands out as a vastly distinct character from the rest of his masked cohorts and You'll most definitely discover that Vionna and her cast of cohorts shine in their own deliciously dark way as well."

VIONNA AND THE VAMPIRES by Chuck Miller (Creator of The Black Centipede) is the first volume in the “Moriarty, Lord of the Vampires” trilogy. With a demonically evocative cover by Jeff Hayes and format and design by Percival Constantine, this is definitely an opening chapter to a trilogy like no other in New Pulp.

VIONNA AND THE VAMPIRES is available in print and Kindle from Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Vionna-Vampires-Moriarty-Lord-Book-ebook/dp/B00IXX9OB2/ref=la_B005WX2CKQ_1_6_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1409659532&sr=1-6

SAMPLE CHAPTER from  
VIONNA and the VAMPIRES:
PART THREE
THE GHOST AND THE MACHINE
 
CHAPTER ONE: SHERLOCK HOLMES DISCOURSES

“Vionna,” Mary said gently. “Whatever is the matter?”

I had just stumbled down the stairs, after pulling on some sweatpants and a t-shirt. I was thinking about the very vivid dream I had just had, and it was making me cry. On top of that, my head was pounding. I don't mean I had a bad headache. I wasn't in any pain at all. It just felt like there was some kind of pounding going on in there-- muffled, but strong and steady.

I must have looked kind of crazy, because Mary seemed shocked when she laid eyes on me. As for me, I was so happy to see her alive, I ran and hugged her as hard as I could.

"Vionna!" she said. "What is it?"

"I had a dream," I said. "A very, very, very strange and bad dream."

"What happened in it?"

I shook my head. "I can't say right now." I let go of her and stood back, sniffling loudly.

"Have you had another of those strange lapses? We need to discuss those, Vionna. I think I may know..."

She didn't finish her sentence because poor little Vionna chose that moment to roll her eyes back in her head and fall to the floor. The pounding had become stronger and faster, and now something else was going on, too. It seemed I was hearing voices, more than one of them, coming from down in the bottom part of my mind. They got louder and louder, but I couldn't tell what they were saying.

“Oh gosh,” I said. “Oh, wow. Mary, I see what’s going on. There’s someone ELSE in here now!” I started pounding on my right temple with the heel of my hand.

Mary grabbed me by my wrists to make me stop hitting myself.

“Vionna,” she said, in the kind of voice you use on hysterical children or people who just aren’t right in the head. “Calm down, sweetheart. Everything is okay.”

By this time, I was bawling.

“No it isn’t!” I shook my head rapidly back and forth, flinging tears and snot all over the place, including onto Mary, who either didn’t notice it or decided to pretend it wasn’t happening.

“It isn’t okay,” I wailed. “I can’t have anyone else living in here. Next, it will be a whole family, and their dogs and cats too. I’m not big enough! I’ll collapse, and we’ll all die! I don’t wanna be Ground Zero!”

“Shhhh,” Mary shushed, pulling me by the wrists over to the couch and making me sit down.

“Darling,” she said soothingly, “you must gain control of yourself. Whatever is happening, you can deal with it. I shall help you.”

We went back and forth like this for quite a while. I won’t write all of it down because I’m sure you aren’t interested in four or five solid pages of me wigging out. I’ll just cut to the chase, which consists of me sitting quietly, wiping my face with my shirtsleeve.

“Here,” Mary said, handing me a hanky. “You don’t want that all over your clean shirt.” For a second, she reminded me of my mother, but then I remembered that I don’t remember my mother at all.

“Let me try something,” she said. “As you know, I haven’t been able to sense or communicate with your ‘Roommate.’ But if some new entity is trying to take up residence, I may be able to do something for you. I know where the odd things you've been saying come from. I didn't say anything because I didn't know what to make of it. But something must be done. My psychic powers aren’t all that reliable, but, as they say, it couldn’t hurt.”

Sniffling, I said to her, “You have no way of knowing that, but I don’t care, go ahead. Quickly please.”

Mary got all quiet. A while back, she watched an episode of “Star Trek” where Mister Spock did that Vulcan mind thing with somebody, and it really impressed her. She closed her eyes, twisted her hands into funny shapes, and put the tips of her fingers on my forehead and temples.

I closed my eyes, too.

Mary said, “My mind to your mind, my thoughts to your thoughts… Ah, here I am. This is one of those representational telepathic virtual environments I have read about. You’re unconsciously creating it yourself. Goodness, but it’s realistic. Like a big, old castle. You really should consider going into architecture, Vionna."

I couldn't see any of what Mary was seeing. I had my eyes shut tight, in both the actual world and my telepathic virtual environment.

“Ah, there’s the door behind which your ‘Roommate’ lives. My goodness, it’s solid steel. It appears to have no hinges and no handle. Just a tiny opening, like a mail slot. Perhaps your lost memories are in there, too. But that isn’t… Hello, what's this? It looks like a sound stage or a.. a movie lot! Why, it's London, in what appears to be the late Nineteenth Century. What on earth?

"Oh! There IS someone else in here.

“Yes, I can see you there," Mary said, evidently to somebody inside my head; I couldn't hear whoever it was, but apparently Mary could. 

"Whatever are you up to? Do you know you are causing this young woman a great deal of agitation? What did you say? You must speak up. Come closer, please, or would you rather I come to you? Very well. Let me just get a look at you, then. Are you… Oh my! Oh my effing God! It’s YOU! This is… I wasn’t effing expecting anything like this! Gee effing dee!

“What’s that? Oh, I know. But this is the twenty-first century. Everyone talks that way now. Even women and children. But never mind. What are you doing here? How did you get here? I see. Yes, I shall help you out of here. It must be frustrating for you. I can lend you sufficient energy for a very clear and stable manifestation. Hold my hand, now. Are you ready? On the count of three, then. One… two…”

THREE! The inside of my head suddenly felt the way it was supposed to. It was a great relief. I opened my eyes, then blinked them several times because they were kind of sore, like they get when you’re really sleepy. When I could see again, I found Mary at my right side.

And on my left was a man I had not expected to see again so soon.

The look he was giving me is what I think they call pensive. He was sort of smiling, but he also looked like he was afraid he was about to get into huge trouble over something.

I turned back and looked at Mary again. I opened my eyes up really wide and raised my eyebrows, which is how you ask “What?” without actually saying it.

“Vionna,” she said. “I’d like you to meet an old friend of mine.” She made her voice sound all formal, in a joking way, if you know what I mean.

“Miss Vionna Valis, may I present Mister Sherlock Holmes.”

“Sherlock Holmes,” I said.

“Yes,” said Mary. "His ghost, at any rate. Mister Holmes, this is my dear friend, Vionna Valis."

“Indeed,” said the ghost, nodding at me." I feel I know you already after what passed between us last night," he told me. If somebody had walked into the room at that moment, and that was all they heard, they might get some funny ideas.

Mary looked surprised. "You two... know one another?"

"Did you put that dream into my head?" I asked, ignoring Mary for the moment.

"I did," said Holmes. "Your mind is a great deal less chaotic when you are asleep. I was able to gather my wits and communicate with you in that fashion. Honestly, Miss, I was afraid I would never be able to get out of your head. You have a power about you... Well, thanks to Miss Kelly, I finally did. What I showed you last night was a series of events from 1888, more or less as they happened. I merely deleted my friend Watson and put you in his place."

"What dream?" Mary asked. "The one you were upset about earlier, Vionna?"

"Uh-huh. But I don't think it was really a dream at all."

"It wasn't," Holmes said. "There really isn't a word for what it was. It is simply something that I found myself able to do. I induced it, but I did not have full control over it. Miss Valis, you seemed to pick up on things of which I was unaware at the time. In some fashion, we may have actually gone back there, to that time and place."

"Yeah," I said. "Or one just like it. When I was there, I didn't know anything about my actual real life here in the present. I met you there, Mary, but I didn't know who you were."

Holmes smiled. "You perceived facts and made deductions that I was unable to, the first time I experienced those events. I believe you may have learned things I still do not know."

Sherlock Holmes turned his attention to Mary. “Miss Kelly,” he said, “I am so terribly sorry I was unable to prevent your murder, or lay my hands upon the fiend that slaughtered you. Of course, I knew you had returned, and I'm pleased to see that things have turned out so nicely for you. It’s good to see you."

“And you, sir,” Mary said. “As for the Ripper, trouble yourself no further. That is long in the past.”

“Indeed,” said the ghost. “But I cannot help feeling responsible for drawing you into my deeply-flawed plan, and for what happened to you as a result.”

“Mister Holmes,” Mary said, “I willingly entered into your plan. But there were factors of which both you and I were unaware. The Ripper was not at all what we thought he was. You could not have known, any more than I could have. We were unlucky, that is all. I would do it again without hesitation.”

The ghost made himself look super-humble and said something about how touched he was by her saying that.

“Mary,” I said into the silence that fell after he was done, “you never told me you knew Sherlock Holmes.”

“You never asked,” Mary replied. “I’ve done a great many things and known a great many people I’ve never had cause to bring up. You never told me you knew him!”

"I didn't until a couple of hours ago."

Mary turned to Holmes and said, "I am eager to hear the story of how you came here, and what your purpose is. I don’t believe you’re the sort to flit back from the afterlife for a lark.”

“No. In death, as in life, I am ruthlessly pragmatic. I think. I find that I can remember almost nothing about the other side right now. Undoubtedly this is a product of my descending from a higher sphere into a lower one.”

“I am familiar with the phenomenon,” said Mary.

”Yes, you would be, of course,” replied the ghost.

He turned to look at me. “Again, Miss Valis, I apologize for insinuating myself into your mind the way I did. It isn’t quite what I had intended. 

"I wanted to communicate my information to you without actually coming here myself. That is incredibly tricky, in the absence of a medium. But I applied myself to it, and I found you, Miss Kelly. And when I did, I discovered that your friend, Miss Valis, is a great deal more attuned to the 'wavelength' I was on, so I tried to communicate with her instead When I touched her mind, it drew me like iron filings to a magnet. I was pulled completely from the afterlife into her head! I managed to hang on to most of what I wanted to tell you, but it took a great deal of effort, and it cost me much of my ability to actually communicate the information.

"And now, most of the knowledge I had while I was still on the other side is now unavailable to me. What I know is this: There are vampires at work in this world right now, and their leader is Professor James Moriarty. He is, in fact, the reigning Lord of all vampires. I know that he plans some course of action that will have the direst consequences for mankind if it is successful, and I know that this game is even now afoot.

"How," Mary asked, after a minute or so, "did you know to come to us with this information? It seems you were in Vionna's head before Scudder told us his story."

"That, I fear, is difficult to explain. You lack the necessary frame of reference, as I myself do now that I am fully here. The best I can do is to say that time is not the rigid, linear construct most people believe it to be.

“And now here I am, and now I have told you all that I retain of my earlier knowledge. I’m grateful indeed that I don’t make a habit of crossing over this way. Robbed of one of my greatest assets—memory—I fear that I am worse than useless.”

“Nonsense,” said Mary. “That’s rubbish and you know it. Memory and intellect are not the same thing. As far as I can see, your fine mind—or its ectoplasmic analog—is in perfect working order. And I hope Vionna and I can count on you to employ it to the full on our behalf as we investigate these bizarre events.”

The ghost smiled. “I was rather hoping you’d say that, my dear Miss Kelly. I should like nothing better than to be of assistance to you and the charming Miss Valis. And let us hope that we may, once and for all, put an end to the seemingly endless machinations of Professor James Moriarty.”

ON AMAZON:
http://www.amazon.com/Vionna-Vampires-Moriarty-Lord-Book-ebook/dp/B00IXX9OB2/ref=la_B005WX2CKQ_1_6_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1409659532&sr=1-6

A WORD FROM VIONNA VALIS

THE KINDLE EDITION of  VIONNA AND THE VAMPIRES IS JUST $2.99!

GET IT HERE:

http://www.amazon.com/Vionna-Vampires-Moriarty-Lord-Book-ebook/dp/B00IXX9OB2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1409486417&sr=8-1&keywords=vionna+and+the+vampires

A few months ago, Chuck Miller allowed me to write a piece for his blog about a book called Vionna and the Vampires, which is all about an unbelievable experience that I, Vionna Vernet Valis, and my best friend and partner, Mary Jane Kelly, had. Well, now that book has now been published, and is now available on Amazon, and now I'm back to talk about it some more.

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