Dead End Dating: A Novel of Vampire Love

For those of you who don ' t already know me, my name is the Countess Lilliana Arabella Guinevere du Marchette (yeah, I know), but my friends call me Lil.

I mean, really, what were my folks thinking It ' s hard enough being a single, jobless, five-hundred-year-old female vampire in this day and age without the whole pretentious French royalty thing and an ancient lame-ass name that doesn ' t even fit in the box on a Visa application. Talk about another cross to bear. (Oops, poor word choice. My bad.)

Let ' s just say life is tough for any woman, and death isn ' t much better. We ' re still expected to live up to this whole Night-Feeding Barbie image ' perfect figure, perfect hair, perfect clothes, perfect incisors ' and procreate, hunt for the family, and make sure little Morticia doesn ' t color on the walls and baby Vlad doesn ' t eat the eyes off his Count Dracula doll. Talk about stress.

For the typical committed female vampire, that is.

I, on the other hand, haven ' t had a decent date in the past one hundred years, much less found Count Right, so my life is a bit simpler. Notice I say ' simpler ' rather than lonelier. Because I am not, repeat not, lonely.

I ' m a single, hot, happening vampire with a flair for accessorizing, a handful of super-sweet friends ' literally ' and a very expensive therapist. ' Nuff said.

Now where was I Oh, yeah ' me making my own way in the world. First on my list is finding an apartment. A girl can live with her parents for only so many centuries without having a nervous breakdown. Second is getting a job. Neither of which should pose a problem for someone like me. Pure vampires (those born rather than made) are an ambitious, take-charge-and-make-things-happen race, and so most of us are filthy rich. If I were so inclined, I could easily use my family ' s green to find a suitable apartment in Manhattan (complete with a live-in maid, which is almost worth being eternally indebted to my folks considering the fact that I hate to clean) and go to work for my father managing his New York University location of Midnight Moe ' s.