Vampires must be the ultimate die-heard creatures of all supernatural fiction genres. No matter how many vampire novels are published, more keep coming, and even though we hear that publishers are tired of them, the books keep getting published. Could it be that readers can’t have enough of these bloodthirsty fiends — either as vicious monsters or beautiful, sophisticated beings trapped in the darkness of their natures? Whether it’s kids, young adults or adults, people seem to love them.

I dislike gory novels where vampires are portrayed as demons from hell, as well as romance novels where they’re overly sugarcoated. The type of vampire fiction I enjoy would fall more under ‘general fiction’, as in the type of Anne Rice’s works where the creatures are pictured as real-life beings with a certain degree of education and sophistication, but still be the trapped, tortured souls who fall somewhere between good and evil. This type of fiction, though having elements of horror, doesn’t fall under the horror category. A closer description would be general fiction with elements of the paranormal or magic realism.

Having read so many vampire novels as I have, it is seldom that I find one that surprises me or that strays enough from the vampire conventions to appear original, and this is why I was pleasantly surprised to read Mortal Touch, by Inanna Arthen, published by By Light Unseen Media, a new press which solely focuses on serious vampire fiction and nonfiction.
For sure, Mortal Touch doesn’t follow the general vampire rules and conventions — for one thing, Arthen’s vampires don’t even have fangs. But without giving more away about the nature of Arthen’s immortal creatures (I’ll leave the pleasure of finding that out as you read the book), let’s go into some of the plot:

The protagonist, Regan Calloway, is a psychic who runs a little antique shop in a small town in New England. She has worked with the authorities as a psychic consultant before but now lives a pretty lonely, secluded life, mainly because of the trauma of past experiences when she dealt with murders and serial killers. Regan can ‘see’ and ‘feel’ things when she touches objects that have belong to either the victim or killer. Now, a new series of strange assaults is capturing the people’s attention and has the press and the police in turmoil.

Dr. Hiram Clauson, an old friend and colleague she used to work with during her past involvements with the police, calls her and asks her to help him interview the victims. At the same time, a mysterious so-called writer named Jonathan Vaughn has moved into the town and Regan’s beautiful yet mentally unstable best friend Veronica seems to be falling for him. Jonathan seems very reclusive and aloof and Veronica asks Regan to meet him in order to learn more about him with her psychic powers.