The focus of this blog is Leonbergers but sometimes I post about books that are not about Leonbergers but that are books that I want to promote. This past week we were on a family vacation in New Orleans. We’ve been to New Orleans many times before but this time we focused on the supernatural, magic if you will, ghosts, vampires, voodoo, and pirates. In the evenings I read a fairly new book about vampires, Vermillion Highways by David Lee Summers and Lee Clark Zumpe. I bought the book on Amazon, I loved the book and I wrote a review for it.
As far as I know it exists only as a paperback on Amazon. Publisher : Hiraethsff (January 14, 2026), ASIN : B0GHDTMVZ3, ISBN-13 : 979-8295554971, 116 pages, Item Weight : 5.7 ounces, Dimensions : 6 x 0.24 x 9 inches, it cost $13.95 on US Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
Amazon’s Description of Vermillion Highways
Two of the finest minds in the genres have combined their resources and imaginations to come up with some of the gothiest (and, sometimes, ) goofiest vampire short fiction this side of Transylvania. David Lee Summers, of Tales of the Talisman and Scarlet Order fame, and Lee Clark Zumpe, mild-mannered reporter for a daily metro-Floridian newspaper and author of the Lovecraftian anthology Whispers from the Intoxicating Abyss, take you on a journey through tales that fit everywhere between Type O positive and Type AB negative. Vermillion Highways is a must-read even if you don’t care for the suckers.
My Five Star Review of Vermillion Highways
Lighthearted and Captivating Vampire Stories
We just returned from a family trip to New Orleans. To make the trip extra interesting we had a theme for our trip, vampires and voodoo. Naturally we visited vampire themed places, and we drank blood (pretend blood). In addition, in the evenings I read this book.
Vermillion Highways is a short collection (114 pages) of 40 short stories about vampires written by two great authors with humor and vivid imaginations. Each author contributed 20 stories. Some stories are around 10 pages long, and some stories are not even half a page. The stories are sometimes scary but for the most part they are just entertaining, imaginative, fun and comical. They are good stories with surprises and odd twists. At first, I was questioning whether you can really write good stories that are that short, but you can. If done right the very-short story format, or the flash fiction format, works.
I appreciated the flexible and more realistic take on vampires in this book. If you don’t strictly adhere to the orthodox depiction of vampires, you can write better stories. In this book vampires can sustain themselves by drinking blood from blood bags, or from people without necessarily turning them into vampires. It is the desperate or mean vampires that attack and kill people. The sun is not good for vampires, but it does not make them burst into flames, and they don’t sparkle in the sunlight either. A little bit of sunlight is manageable, like for albinos. They also don’t turn into bats, they can’t fly, they are not purely evil, and crosses are not as effective against vampires as you may think. However, they can live for thousands of years, and they have some special magical powers, such as mind compulsion and great physical strength. I prefer it when vampires are depicted this way.
In summary, this vampire book may not be very scary, but it is an entertaining and fun read. I highly recommend this lighthearted, modern and easy to read vampire book.
About David Lee Summer
I don’t have the author information for Lee Clark Zumpe but I do for David Lee Summers.
David Lee Summers is an author, editor and astronomer living somewhere between the western and final frontiers in Southern New Mexico. He is the author of twelve novels. His short stories and poems have appeared in numerous magazines including Cemetery Dance, Realms of Fantasy, Star*Line, and The Santa Clara Review.
David also edited Tales of the Talisman Magazine for ten years. When he’s not writing, he operates telescopes at Kitt Peak National Observatory.
Click here to visit his website
Click here to visit his blog
Click here to see one of my review for The Astronomer’s Crypt another of David Lee Summer’s books.
Leonberger Life 
Thanks very much for the review, Thomas.
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Thank you so much Lynette
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