Scotsman Derek Maclaine has fallen in love with his adopted West Virginia home and its burly native son, Matt Taylor. But a local mining company's recent efforts to destroy the land spell an end to all that Matt holds dear. Derek happens to be an immortal, a creature of the night, a vampire who does not know satiety. After many years without equal, Derek believes stopping a corporation of weak men will be easy. But Alpha Coal employs more than thugs: they are literally demonic. Derek must work together with a host of supernatural entities--werewolves and witches included--to preserve Appalachia from environmental ruin.
Author Biography:
Jeff Mann grew up in Covington, Virginia, and Hinton, West Virginia, receiving degrees in English and forestry from West Virginia University. His poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in many publications, including Arts and Letters, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Willow Springs, The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, Crab Orchard Review, and Appalachian Heritage. He has published three award-winning poetry chapbooks, Bliss, Mountain Fireflies, and Flint Shards from Sussex; five full-length books of poetry, Bones Washed with Wine, On the Tongue, Ash: Poems from Norse Mythology, A Romantic Mann, and Rebels; two collections of personal essays, Edge: Travels of an Appalachian Leather Bear and Binding the God: Ursine Essays from the Mountain South; three novellas, Devoured, included in Masters of Midnight: Erotic Tales of the Vampire, Camp Allegheny, included in History's Passion: Stories of Sex Before Stonewall, and The Saga of Einar and Gisli, included in On the Run: Tales of Gay Pursuit and Passion; five novels, Fog: A Novel of Desire and Reprisal, which won the Pauline Réage Novel Award, Purgatory: A Novel of the Civil War, which won a Rainbow Award, Cub, Country, and Salvation: A Novel of the Civil War, which won both a Lambda Literary Award and the Pauline Réage Novel Award; a book of poetry and memoir, Loving Mountains, Loving Men; and three volumes of short fiction, Desire and Devour: Stories of Blood and Sweat, Consent: Bondage Tales, and A History of Barbed Wire, which won a Lambda Literary Award. In 2013, he was inducted into the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival Hall of Fame. He teaches creative writing at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.
