Fawns Blood

Vampires, vampire slayers, and a bloodthirsty underground resistance converge in a campy YA fantasy about being a queer teen in a world that wishes they did not exist.

Librarian and critically acclaimed author of Out of Salem puts a pulpy spin on vampire fiction, and bites back at anti-trans moral panic.

Fawn and Silver share nearly everything: coming out together as trans in their small Maryland town, clocking a copious number of hours in detention, and spending their sleepovers secretly making out. They’re also uniquely obsessed with vampires, who are being hunted, imprisoned, and executed for the danger they allegedly pose to human life.

Meanwhile in Seattle, Rachel's relationship to her girlfriend and her membership in her mother's vampire-slaying vigilante group is thrown into question when she's bitten by her mother's nemesis and awakes with a craving for blood. When Silver disappears and Fawn goes west in search of him, her and Rachel’s fates converge, both falling into the hands of Cain, an edgelord vampire known for his proselytizing for the drinking of human blood.

But in discovering hidden tunnels and secret bars, youth shelters and punk shows and safe houses, Fawn find herself in the middle of a vampire underground in Seattle—an organized resistance keeping each other alive through a network of blood distribution and protection from slayers.

Fawn’s Blood is a timely antidote to the anti-trans moral panic of today. Playing with tropes about monstrousness, predation, and villainy, this multi-voiced vampire novel offers a paranormal YA fantasy full of complicated queer characters—human and monster alike—all of whom are simply trying to survive in a world that wants them dead.

HAL SCHRIEVE is a children’s librarian in Manhattan and the best part of hir job is facilitating comics and creative writing workshops with young people. Ze is the author of the YA novels How to Get Over the End of the World and Out of Salem, which was longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. Hal’s comics are featured in We’re Still Here, an all-trans comics anthology, and the zine Very Online. Hir comic Vivian’s Ghost was on the shortlist for Comics Beat’s 2023 Cartoonist Studio Prize Award for Best Webcomic. Originally from Olympia, WA, Hal now lives in New York. Follow Hal at @howlmarin on Instagram and @hal_schrieve on Twitter.