Anno Dracula 1999 Daikaiju

My new novel, Anno Dracula 1999 Daikaiju, will be published by Titan Books in October.

‘It is the eve of the new millennium, and vampire princess Christina Light is throwing a party in Tokyo, attended by the leaders of the worlds of technology, finance and culture. But the party is crashed by less enlightened souls.

The distinguished guests are held hostage by yakuza assassins and Transylvanian mercenaries, and vampire schoolgirl Nezumi – agent of the Diogenes Club – finds herself pitted against the world’s deadliest creatures…’

You can order it from Forbidden Planet here.  They will have signed books.

Here are the listings on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.

The cover is by Martin Stiff at Amazing 15.

Here’s a taster extract …

Unknown Male – Richard Jeperson (GEIST 97)

The sky above the city was the colour of arterial blood splashed across a shower curtain.

Nightfall in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Richard was in downtown Tokyo.

One song shrilled from every speaker. A remix of Prince’s ‘1999’ by the girl group Cham-Cham. The single might as well have been pressed on tissue paper. Its zeitgeist window was an arrow-slit. The multi-tracked rinky-dink organ riff made his fillings throb.

Lu lu too sousand zeiro zeiro Pātī wa owari – oops! – jikan ga nai…

Holograms of the flounce-sleeved bubblegum trio wavered above mini projectors concealed in the oddest places. Drinking fountains, food stall hotplates, rubbish bins. Two phantom soprani and a vampire contralto. Miniature dancing ghosts.

Kon’ya wa pātī siyou 1999 fuu ni…

Mima, the vam in Cham-Cham, was a crossover artist. Her pearly fangs were kawaii – cute. Many warm girls (and not a few boys) wore plastic choppers and purple wigs to copy her. She started underground in the bloodletting bars of the Bund, then mainstreamed into the warm wide world. The pretty, unthreatening face of Asian vampirism. Poster child for the handover. In peppy public service ads underwritten by Red Label Sprünt, Mima ran through FAQs with a funky anime bat. ‘Give you strawberry kisses when the Wall comes down,’ she sang. That sawtooth smile wasn’t wholly reassuring.

The song would get heavy play at Christina Light’s party. Blatant was ‘in’ this season. Every season, really. Cham-Cham ‘1999’ was as inevitable as ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Should Richard have Nezumi commandeer the karaoke mike and warble ‘Three Wheels on My Wagon’ till dawn? It would not be worth the diplomatic fallout. The Diogenes Club didn’t want to have to explain itself to Peter Mandelson. The Prime Minion could turn into fog and seep through keyholes.

A velvet rope hung across the footpath to the checkpoint. Security measures were in place until midnight.

A yōkai steward waddled over to inspect invitations.

‘Richard Jeperson,’ he declared. ‘I’m on the list. I’m on a lot of lists. Best Dressed, Most Eligible, Most Likely To…’