It was Storm who introduced me to Ian, funnily enough: one writer I had been a fan of since I was a teenager introducing me to another such author. I had first met Storm back in 2000 at a signing of her novel Crown of Silence in the Andromeda bookstore in Birmingham. Too shy to speak, I asked her to sign my book and promptly left. I didn’t see Storm again until 2003 when I attended her Grissecon convention in Stafford (my first convention!), after which we became friends, and I did some work for her publishing company Immanion Press.

This particular story was one I read for the first time in between the book signing and the convention. It’s an intriguing vampire story, where a lecturer meets an attractive woman, who seems to be in tune with his intellectual interest in the occult. However, all his friends try to warn him off as she seems so odd. The characters seemed very recognisable, and it tickled me when I realised why. I believe I met them at Grissecon!

I picked this story because it is one that I have good memories of discovering and re-reading. Really, there are many avenues into Storm’s work. She wrote many stories set in the world of the Wraeththu, a race of hermaphrodite beings who rise to prominence in a post-apocalyptic world. There are gothic fantasies, creeping horrors, angels (Grigori, Nephilim…). There are science fiction stories, cyberpunk stories, and fairy tales. Her prose sparkles like rare gemstones. She was a very special writer indeed, and is much missed.

First published in The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women, ed. Steve Jones, 2001. Collected in Splinters of Truth, NewCon Press, 2016