The Bloodsuckers: Vampire Lawyers of Middle Tennessee (Volume 1)

By Keri Peardon

Scott Cunningham is a vampire just trying to make a living. After all, being undead isn't cheap. There's rent to pay, blood to buy, and child support due; it's an eternal treadmill. You would think it would be terribly boring, but as Scott is finding out, unlife as a lawyer in rural Tennessee is anything but.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Keri Peardon
• Release date: Apr 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476096766

Keri Peardon

Keri Peardon graduated from Hollins University in Roanoke, VA in 2001 with a B.A. in History and a strong background in creative writing. She is a life-long resident of Tennessee, and is currently employed as a legal assistant to a private-practice attorney. In addition to writing, she is active in medieval re-enacting.

Book preview

The Bloodsuckers:

Vampire Lawyers of Middle Tennessee

Volume 1

Premise – Episode 10

by

Keri M. Peardon

Copyright 2011 by Keri M. Peardon

First Smashwords Edition, April 2012

Second Smashwords Edition, July 2012

Third Smashwords Edition, February 2013

Visit the author at:

http://keripeardon.wordpress.com

All rights reserved. No one may sell, reprint, or republish this title under any circumstance or in any format. No one may copy any portion of this title, with the exception of brief quotes for the purposes of editorial reviews. No one may alter the title in any way, with the exception of the original purchaser, who has the limited right to convert the format, save a back-up copy, or print a copy for his ease of use.

This e-book has been provided free of charge by the author. It may be freely shared with others, provided the text is not altered in any way.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Premise

Episode 1: Hanging out the Shingle

Episode 2: Smokin’

Episode 3: The Makings of a Lawyer

Episode 4: Joining the Club

Episode 5: The Hazards of Being a Divorce Attorney

Episode 6: Cleaning Up

Episode 7: Business is Booming

Episode 8: Blood, Sweat, and Tears

Episode 9: Kicking Ass and Taking Names

Episode 10: Necrophilia

Coming Attractions

Introduction

One day, while hard at work in a law office, my boss said I should write a book about all the crazy people we have to deal with. Working on my Acceptance trilogy at the time, I had vampires on the brain, and I thought, Wouldn’t it be funny to have a sitcom where the lawyers are literally bloodsuckers?

The idea languished in my brain for a year or more because I had no idea how to start it. Then one day, I decided that I needed some sort of serial story to post on my blog to encourage readership, build up a fan base, and generally entice people to buy the stories I publish for cash (which you can find here: shameless plug). So I returned to my idea for a vampire lawyer sitcom and started writing whatever came into my brain.

I originally thought that I would have an entire law office full of vampires—each more eccentric than the last—and I would bounce back and forth between them. I’m fond of having multiple main characters and have always enjoyed authors like Harry Turtledove, who switch points-of-view between many characters.

However, that’s not how the story turned out. I started with one lawyer, Scott Cunningham, and the story stuck with him. If I were writing all of this as a single novel, I would go back to the beginning and tweak it so that there was no hint that the story might involve more than one main character. However, because this is a serial novel, what’s done is done; I won’t go back to reconcile the beginning with the end (namely because there’s no end in sight, so it would be a bit futile). So please bear in mind that you’re seeing a story evolve before your eyes, and if you go back to read the beginning, it won’t align perfectly with what comes later. This is just the organic nature of the imagination.

And I’m not ashamed to say I was influenced by the idea of Victorian penny dreadfuls, like the original Varney the Vampire. Literature exists to tell us something about ourselves and/or our society. Fiction exists to entertain us. This is, and ever will be, a work of fiction.

Keri Peardon

April 15, 2012

The Premise

Fallout

Two years ago, the Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant in Athens, Alabama exploded due to faulty construction materials. The Local Union of Ironworkers (No. 477) would have gone on record saying that this would have never happened if TVA had used union labor—like they used to—but unfortunately that union was obliterated in the holocaust that invariably follows an explosion of a nuclear power plant.

(Ref. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island)

In fact, all of northern Alabama was laid waste, and nothing survived except kudzu and houses and mobile homes insulated with asbestos—which, surprisingly, was quite a large number. (The asbestos industry—after consulting with the egg industry—is now remaking its image and extolling the virtues of having an asbestos-clad house if you live near a nuclear power plant ).

Unfortunately, though, the radiation fallout killed all of the survivors when they emerged from their homes to see what the hell was that noise? Sadly, there was a lot of other news going on in the world that week—like the protesters at the G8 Summit staging a naked sit-in—so the tragedy got about as much national attention as Nashville did after the 2009 flood.

(No reference; no news articles to cite)

In Tennessee, however, the radioactive fallout did a strange thing. In several rural counties in Middle Tennessee—between the Alabama border and just south of Nashville—the radiation caused random people to mutate into vampires. This was quite shocking, of course. Everyone stayed inside with their guns, waiting for the rioting to start. Consequently no one rioted, but no one left their property unguarded, either, and anyone brave enough to travel through that part of the state said it was as eerily lifeless as North Korea. It was only after the Tennessee Lottery ran a commercial for a new scratch-off ticket that commerce again resumed.

Once people had their beer, cigarettes, and lottery tickets, it became apparent that life was going to have to go on—even if some people were going on without life. People were still driving drunk, abusing