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
The author information for Lee Clark Zumpe can be found here and the author information for David Lee Summers is below.
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.
This is the book “Vermillion Highways” in the original and cheaper pdf format and this is the ePub format.
Leonberger Life 
Thanks very much for the review, Thomas.
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Thank you so much Lynette
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Vampires have been done to death (so to speak) but people can still come up with creative and entertaining tales. Thanks for the reveiw.
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Thank you Denise. That is one reason I like something different, creative rather than same old, and this entertaining book is creative and fresh with lots of fun short stories.
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Thank you for the nice review and I’m delighted the book enhanced your visit to New Orleans! Lee and I had fun assembling the book. I will make a couple of notes for folks looking for digital copies along with more information about Lee:
An EPUB version (for most e-readers) is available at: https://www.hiraethsffh.com/product-page/vermillion-highways-by-zumpe-summers-2
A PDF version (my preferred, since it maintains the formatting of the original) is available at: https://www.hiraethsffh.com/product-page/vermillion-highways-by-zumpe-summers-1
Finally, here’s a good bibliography and bio for Lee: https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?69601
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Sorry David, I did not see your comment until now, one week later. Word Press recommends a maximum of two links per comment and that is what I follow. I updated my post according to what you said in your comment and with your links. I will certainly keep reading more of your fun and entertaining books and I will keep your other links in mind next time I write a review for any of your books. As for the comments, splitting comments with more than two links into more than one comment on my blog might be a good idea.
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No problem, Thomas. I appreciate the post update. Hiraeth is the only publisher I currently work with that only publishes the ebooks on their own site. My other publishers do widely distribute their ebooks. I’ll do my best to keep the two-link limitation in mind for future comments. That said, I so rarely share links in my comments I may well forget by the next time I feel the need to share links!
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Thank you so much David. Next time I’ll share one of your books I will come back to this post and check the links and check spam in case a comment when in there. I guess with all the spammers WordPress just tell you to set the maximum links to two because spammers typically put lots of links in their comments.
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What a fun trip, Thomas. This gave me a chuckle.. “o 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).”
I’m not a fan of vampires but after the academy awards watched Sinners the other night not knowing vampires was the theme. Worst movie ever IMHO. My husband fell asleep and I watched it all and he finished it the next morning saying “stupidest movie ever”.. I wasn’t freaked just couldn’t follow it.. not sure what the hype was about.
With that said this book sounds light a great book. Kudos to David. Great cover❣️
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Thank you so much Cindy. We certainly had a good time. I did not see the movie Sinners so I don’t have an opinion on it. However, it is easy to make movies (or write books) about mythical creatures that are stupid. Sorry to hear Sinners was stupid. David Lee Summers is a scientist/astronomer so he will not write a book that is stupid. I agree, it is a great cover. The planet on the cover is because some stories took place on Mars, which I did not mention.
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Oh so great to hear.. I’ve gotta get there. Don’t bother watching or do tell if you do and interpret it for me 😂❣️
Good to hear no stupid in David’s place.. ha
Have a great day❣️
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Thank you Cindy. I can add that New Orleans have a great aquarium/insectarium/rainforest in addition to lots of jazz bars, and pubs with music, the magical/paranormal stuff of course, and there is music and people in costumes. It is best to find out what there is beforehand and then pick what to visit. Have a great day you too.
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It’s been a loooong time.. I need to get back there❣️
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Well New Orleans was destroyed by hurricane Katrina and it has taken a long time for it to come back. It is still not entirely back and it is still smaller than New Orleans pre-Katrina. However, the tourists are coming back so now is a good time to visit.
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Hi Thomas, this sounds like a great family trip. Did the baby and his parents come along? The book sounds right up my street. I like vampire fiction.
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Yes it was a fun family trip. The original plan was to go skiing in Breckenridge but our favorite ski-in-ski-out hotel was book up and after arguing about where else to go we decided to do something different for this spring break. Our oldest son, his wife, and baby Jack did not come because traveling is just difficult for them right now. They visited us a few weeks ago and that is good enough for now. . However, we will go visit them soon again. Our daughter and our younger son and his girlfriend came with us. I like vampire fiction if it is not too unrealistic so this book right up my street too.
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A super review, Thomas. Congratulations to David.
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Thank you so much for your kind words John.
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😁 You are welcome, Thomas.
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Thank you John
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Lulu: “Ooh, our Dada has a vampire book! His vampires are not very nice though and are definitely not anti-heroes. I have not read it because I heard something bad happens to a dog in it. Also I can’t read.”
Java Bean: “Ayyy, neither can I!”
Charlee: “None of us can read, and yet we comment on blogs all the time.”
Chaplin: “How do we manage that, exactly?”
Oona: “MAGIC.”
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Lulu, that sounds like a very scary book. I think my vampire book was less scary but funny. Lulu, Java Bean, Charlee, Chaplin and Oona, you are all magical animals.
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Hi Thomas
Thanks for this review. The book sounds great, full of texts we like.
The Fab Four of Cley
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
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Thank you so much Klausbernd
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