Vampires of Avonmouth

"Atmospheric and inventive" - Heather Child.

"Set in a strange near-future ... in a way reminiscent of the best episodes of Black Mirror" - goodreads review.

"A heady mix of legend, witchcraft, AI" - goodreads review.

2087, Avonmouth.city. Everything changes for David when a ship arrives from West Africa, carrying a vampire who hungers not for blood but mental energy. As she hunts those around him, David joins forces with her ultimate prey - the woman he falls in love with, despite himself. For David is carrying his own monstrous secret inside. If they fail, she will lose her mind. Literally.

This gothic science fiction story is an action-packed exploration of mental enslavement - by systems of oppression, and by parts of our own selves.

"Just like that? The victim's mind vanished?"

"No, Detective, she takes them with her. Every mind she has extracted will be laid out within her own consciousness, in so many mental sarcophagi existing in the eternal nightmare of her being. For feeding on."

Get the book

Vampires of Avonmouth is available in Bristol at East Bristol Books, Paper Tales and Peoples Republic of Stokes Croft.

Ebook available from smashwords and others, print from World of Books, Blackwells and others, ebook and print from amazon.

You can find reviews of Vampires of Avonmouth at goodreads and amazon.

Contact the author

Email Tim here.

News

Donations from sales of the book raised £116 for foodbank charity The Trussell Trust.

There's a brand new review by Sam Tyler at SF Book.

We've released the second in a series of interviews of Tim talking about the book in Avonmouth. Click here or watch the series of videos in the Recordings section below.

Talks, articles and reviews

Check out the reviews on goodreads and amazon. Plus...

Sam Tyler's review at SF Book says the novel, with its "feel of Bladerunner", "transports you to a dark vision of the future where technology has taken our souls, but a vampire is after our minds."

John Clute has written an entry about Vampires of Avonmouth (and its author) in the Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction.

Vampire blogger Taliesin Meets The Vampires gave Vampires of Avonmouth a 9/10. "...an excellently written novel, drawing a dystopian world ravaged by ecological disaster ... and a humanity enslaved by its own technology and blissfully unaware. It is a world alien to ours and yet recognisable also. The characters are well drawn, with clear, distinct voices and the plot rolls along at a good pace." Read the full review here. It contains only minor spoilers: nothing the reader wouldn't learn early on in the book.

My guest post Changing One's Self, Playing Many Parts, about how the book came about, appears in Whispering Stories.

A Dystopian Thriller, A.A. Abbott, January 2021.

Vampires Come to Avonmouth in New Novel, Bristol 24/7, January 2021

Events

We held the book's online launch at 7pm on 18th March.

Watch this space or subscribe to the newsletter to receive notifications of other events.

Subscribe to my occasional Vampires of Avonmouth newsletter for extra snippets and details of forthcoming readings and other events.

Glossary

Some of the words used in the novel reflect the political, technological and cultural changes that have occurred by 2087. This glossary is a closer look at their meanings.

Recordings

The second in a series of short videos of Tim talking about the book in the setting of Avonmouth. How Avonmouth's Spiller's grain silo became a vampire's castle. Filmed by Cameron Medford-Hawkins and Louis Fleury:

The first in a series of short videos of Tim talking about the book in the setting of Avonmouth. Filmed by Cameron Medford-Hawkins and Louis Fleury:

Tim talked about the book as part of his presentation on AI Politics for the Pervasive Media Studio on Friday 11 June, 2021. Watch the recorded talk on YouTube.

Tim talked to Richard Adams of TECHnique podcast about his gothic vision of a future of loneliness and isolation, brought on by vampiric technologies - with the exception of West Africa, that is. Available on apple and soundcloud.

The recording of the book's online launch, March 18th 2021. I was in conversation with Edson Burton:

I spoke to Miranda Rae for The Word on Ujima Radio, 5th Feb, 2021. We talked vampires, adinkra symbols and AI. Listen to it as a podcast.

My interview with Steve Yabsley on BBC Radio Bristol on 30th Jan, 2021. Find out more about Bristol's two winners of the Nobel Prize for Physics, Paul Dirac and Peter Higgs, after whom the two scientists in Vampires of Avonmouth are named: