Joe Garden - The New Vampires Handbook: A Guide for the Recently Turned Creature of the Night

IF YOU ARE READING THIS , you are a vampire.

There were countless other books in the store, yet you arrived at this one. Drawn to its warm glow, lured by the faint whiff of blood mixed in with the ink, you were brought to this handbook by your new vampiric senses. If you keep reading, you will find that these senses are good for a great deal more than book browsing. In fact, a whole new world of near-unlimited power is on the dark horizon. This guide will show you that world.

As youve realized by now, being turned into a vampire is the easy part. Actually becoming a vampire is far more difficult.

Unfortunately, many of the newly turned are saddled with lazy or contemptuous mentors, and instead of receiving knowledge passed down from sage master to eager apprentice, many of our kind find themselves alone. Some have been abandoned by thrill-seeking vampiric procreators who slink off after the instant gratification of turning another ends and they are confronted by the burden of guiding a new creature of the night. Others remain perpetual neophytes because they had the misfortune of being turned by another novice with no advice to offer.

If you find yourself in such wretched circumstances, do not despair. I am here to help. My friend, this is a book you truly cannot live forever without.

But who am I? Why am I worthy of providing this guidance? You are right to ask. Allow me to tell you about myself.

I was born Milos Prockofijev. In the year 1542 I was a tailor and clothier in Pozsony, a town at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains in what is now Bratislava, Slovakia. It was a dark time in my country. The Turks had just overrun the Kingdom of Hungary and our region was flooded with Turkish handicrafts. The workmanship was not all that impressive, but nonetheless they became all the rage and none of the foreign invaders wanted a local hand-tailoring their garments. Suddenly it was atma-this and kemha-that and soon poor Prockofijev couldnt even give away his fine Pozsonian goods. My livelihood was slowly draining away. That was, until the evening Zlatan entered my shop.

Zlatan was a striking, mysterious gentleman, and by the passementerie detailing and golden braids on the flap of his mente, I could tell he was a man of extraordinary wealth. He strolled about the floor, delicately handling my fabrics, before turning to me with a broad, tight-lipped smile.

You are a fine craftsman, and I admire your work, he said. How would you like to leave your life here and become my exclusive tailor? Im looking for someone long-term. I contemplated his offer. Zlatan had an impressive frame, and I imagined the many refined creations I could stitch for him. Pozsony no longer held anything for me, so I agreed to accompany him into the night.

Zlatan led me to his villa and asked that I fit him for an evening cloak. As I was sizing his neck, he unexpectedly placed his hand to my wrist and asked for my measuring tape. I complied, and curiously, he began measuring my neck. Before we proceed, he whispered, I have something to give you that I believe will be a perfect fit.

Zlatan opened his mouth, and in an instant a pair of daggerlike fangs extended past his lips and plunged into my neck. With that, I donned the immortal coil.

No longer was I the tailor Milos Prockofijev. I became the Vampire Milos Prockofijev.

A new vampire has many questions. I was no different but had a fine teacher in Zlatan. At night he taught me how to seduce, how to feed, how to move at astonishing speeds without tearing my pants. The next few centuries were wonderful. Zlatan and I feasted on the whole of Europe and beyond.

And then in 1897, the novel Dracula was released.

Suddenly, things changed. Mortals in urban areas who were previously oblivious to our activities began to obsess about ageless beings with terrifying fangs who walked in the night. There wasnt a tavern we could enter that didnt immediately fill with whispers. Several times Zlatan and I were even chased by mobs too large for us to kill.

Over the next decade, public awareness of vampires in Europe rose to dangerous levels and I thought it a perfect time to explore the fresh culling grounds of America. Zlatan, though, would not join me. His attachment to the Old World was too strong. He gave his blessing for me to leave his stewardship but made me promise to share my knowledge with the American vampires I created, as he had shared his with me. Before leaving, I wove him an ornate black tapestry to commemorate our time together.

I arrived on Ellis Island on April 17, 1907, where my name was changed from Milos Prockofijev to Miles Proctor. Perhaps a little banal, but it certainly aided in my assimilation. In America, I discovered many new enthusiasms: capitalism, automobiles, the Charleston. However, there was one discovery I did not enjoy making, and that was the sheer number of vampires who had been turned so poorly, with so little guidance, that they had virtually no idea how to thrive.

I met Frankie, a vampire turned in Virginia at the dawn of the Civil War, who still did not know with certainty if a crucifix could harm him. I met Celeste, an exquisite vampire turned only years before by an egocentric theater understudy too preoccupied with his career to answer even the most basic of her questions. I met Bill Jackson, a 115-year-old machinist from Pennsylvania, who erroneously believed it was possible for a vampire to stand on the ceiling. And I have met thousands more like them since.

Many of their queries were practical: What can I feed on? What can hurt me? How do I stay financially solvent? Others were more personal: Am I capable of love? Am I still a sexual being in the human sense? Should I feel remorse? All lessons I had learned within my first fifty years with Zlatan.

For decades, these lost immortals had begged their so-called mentors for knowledge, to little or no avail. Through no fault of their own, their ineptitude had often landed them in dangerous situations. I did my best to give them pointers, but one vampire can take on only so many subjects.

I knew then what I had to do. I took it upon myself to write this bookthe book you are now holding in your cold, undead hands. After just over seventy-five years of writing, rewriting, and Sact-checking, it is done.

Make no mistake, the tome you hold has powerand so do you. It is time for you to take charge of that power and begin to wield it.

It does not matter who you were as a human. It does not matter if you look old or young. It does not matter if you came to the fold willingly or not. If you are holding this book, from this night forward, you can face eternity with confidence.

I am giving you nearly five hundred years of firsthand insight and experience. Use it to assuage your fears and concerns. Use it to become the spectacular creature you most certainly are.