Book excerpt: Blending aspects of vampire myths with other supernatural and psychological archetypes, Revenance depicts a young female punk musician's awakening from death into a surreal, supernatural realm of horror and passion. Revived from a deadly accident by an alluring vampire, she learns from her Awakener how to survive by feasting upon the ill and hopeless. As she quenches her insatiable thirst for blood, she vicariously experiences the hopes and fears of her despairing victims, reliving through them the joy and anguish of human existence. Journeying through the nocturnal NYC netherworld of the addicted, the abandoned, and the tormented, she reconnects with her former friend, drug-addicted musician Spitz Nevus, and explores the self-destructive obsessions plaguing humans as well as vampires. She also recalls her own childhood and adolescent encounters with otherworldly entities, the Tooth Fairy and Morbidy Graham, who, in tainting her innocence, awakened feral instincts that shape her immortal future.