The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon – review

Author: Barry Maher

First published: 2025

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: It’s 1982. Steve Witowski, a failed songwriter on the run from the law, finds himself caught in a supernatural thriller after an apparently innocent act of heroism—saving a woman from a vicious assault by a seemingly unstoppable wino. The woman, Victoria, is just part of a mystery Steve can’t unravel. Even as he’s looting the decomposing dead for the secrets of a self-proclaimed sorcerer. Even as he plummets into a nightmare of fire and blood and murder. Even then, Steve remains certain the sorcerer’s spells, the occult rituals—the supposed demons and supernatural horror—are simply delusion and fantasy. Steve is wrong.

Victoria, who has just bought a dilapidated church with a haunting past, entangles Steve in a deadly game of dark magic and rituals. As, unknown to him, the demon grows desperate, Steve plunges deeper into a world of crypts, grave robbing, and long-forgotten secrets, all while trying to escape his own haunted past. But when the face of the man Steve killed appears on his arm, the line between reality and nightmare begins to blur.

This supernatural novel will leave you on the edge of your seat, with wickedly funny dark humor and, ultimately, pulse-pounding suspense, as Steve and Victoria navigate a twisted adventure full of occult horror, supernatural suspense, and shocking revelations.

The review: The author of The Great Dick emailed me and asked if I would like to review the volume. I am always open to receiving books for review, but did explain that the blog is strictly vampire genre. Barry responded that “The demon is definitely an entity who feeds on people’s energy, the victims are left dead or devastated.” So, whilst demonic, we have what sounded like an energy vampire – though the demonic elements are low key until the ending.

However, the book is a blast and a page turner. I thoroughly enjoyed the read. The main character and narrator, Steve Witowski, is an utterly flawed but brilliantly conceived and revealed character and it is a testament to the sharp, pithy writing that the character keeps the reader enthralled. 

A tale of cults (or at least the aftermath of a cult) and a hunt for secrets, when we do get the reveal of the central creature, born of demonic ritual (using cadaverous flesh), things take a crazy turn. That we see little to start with is down to Steve not being aware of some of the activity in the background – though he is exposed to weirdness from the beginning. 

There is, to be fair, mention of vampires when we get “‘You think you’re a fucking vampire?’ ‘Vampire?’ She laughed. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Steve. The blood’s mine.’” So they are mentioned in passing, but the central creature is a form of energy vampire, as mentioned, and described as “a psychic parasite” at one point. The victims were left cognitively destitute but some are killed through the process. Though the creation process was different for this creature, I was conceptually reminded of Hanns Heinz Ewers' Alraune. This is a great novel and an excellent opening to a promising series. 8.5 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Handbook of the Vampire: ‘Beyond Humanity’: An Expedition Charting Non-Human Identities

Written for Handbook of the Vampire by Adam Owsinki the Chapter Page can be found here.

This was always going to be a tough one for me to look at objectively as it examines those folks who claim to really be vampires. Now, I am cool with people being who they want to be, and I will say it is well written by the author, but my honest opinion is that such folk may have a belief that they are vampires (though some clearly are role players) but the reality is that they are creating a construct and they do not physically need blood. The author ties them in to the general “Otherkin” heading – which involves claims of all sorts of internal identities and, at least, addresses the point that claims within such communities are more often driven by media than by folklore and there is an inherent tendency to adopt things that were simply invented by an artist when plying their craft.

The author breaks down several types of vampires, namely psychic, sanguine, false sanguine, vegetarian, hybrid and lifestylers. The latter, of course, are role playing, they are creating an aesthetic drawn from favourite media vehicles. I was interested to see the author trace psychic vampires, or the use of the name at least, to Anton LeVay but what he described, as the author concedes, were not actual energy sucking vampires. I think it safe to say LeVay could have replaced "psychic vampire" for "narcissist". Although she (Dion Fortune) didn’t use the phrase "psychic vampire", I think Owsinki would have been better reaching as far back as Dion Fortune and her Psychic Self-Defence volume, which speaks of a belief in actual energy feeders.

When it comes to sanguine and false sanguine vampires, then the distinction the author draws is that false sanguine vampires are the so-called vampire killers. Sometimes dubbed vampires in the press, sometimes modelling themselves on vampires, the actual cases do go much further back than touched on – certainly one cannot forget such killers as Peter Kürten and Fritz Haarmann in the 1920s or the 19th century, press-dubbed, Vampire of Montparnasse Sergeant François Bertrand. His crimes included corpse mutilation and necrophilia. That these are “false” vampires is a bias in argument that sees the positive in ethical sanguine vampires equating to a truth, where arguably those who display unethical and criminal activity are closer to some versions of the folkloric vampire. Having mentioned Bertrand it would be remiss not to mention that this chapter does not touch on sexuality as a driver for building a vampire identity, yet those who associate blood consumption and sexuality have been reported on, for an early instance we could look to Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis (1886) though the word vampire is not conflated with the phenomena in that volume.

Of all of them, the term vegetarian vampire is perhaps the strangest and the author mentions the fact that consumption of animal blood (rather than human) is starkly out with actual vegetarianism. I have used the term myself, describing fictional vampires with ethical concerns about their feeding, of course.

As mentioned, this was well written and for those with a genuine interest in the phenomena it is a good primer that maintains a sympathetic view to non-human identification. Having tried, in the past, to be open to people self-identifying as vampires, I find I do struggle as it feels like a mental construct patched together from films but it appears that the construct does good for the individual concerned, and so long as dangerous activities are ethical and consensual, who am I to judge?

Vampires of Avonmouth – review

Author: Tim Kindberg

Published: 2020

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Avonmouth, 2087. David has had to exile himself from his beloved daughter.

Everything changes when a ship arrives from West Africa, carrying a vampire who hungers not for blood but mental energy. David finds himself falling in love with the woman she hunts – despite himself. For he is carrying his own monstrous secret inside.

And it wants to get out.

A gothic science fiction story of mental enslavement – by systems of oppression, and by parts of our own selves.

The Review: Vampires of Avonmouth is a science fiction novel that has a cyberpunk mentality, in a world where humans are fitted with beads at a young age – an interface between themselves and the virtual – and corporations push products directly to the mind amongst streams of sensa keeping the populace distracted and docile. The sci-fi is solid and also has a welcome streak of noir running through it

Most of the Between (between the Poles) is as described, although Westaf is more independent, though still as bound to tech. David is a cop looking for renegades when he is abducted. When he comes to, weeks later, with no memory of the intervening time, he can feel another presence in his mind, though it is compartmentalised, caged. However, when he sees his daughter and feels love, that cage begins to open. To save her (and himself), he exiles himself from her and ends up in Avonmouth.city, in UK.land, where he is an ID cop, searching for ID infractions amongst the flesh (humans). In this world data is all – death is referred to as a total loss of data.

He has discovered that the presence in his mind is a vodu – a vampire. He doesn’t know how it was implanted or why it has been imprisoned by his mind rather than taking him over. In Accra.city, in his previous life, the authorities had been mystified by the appearance of dolls – humans who lost their minds, bar the most basic automatic processes, and would (one and all) seek to climb the nearest structure as high as they could and stay there until they eventually fell as their strength failed. Now he knows that they were victims of vodus. His life is thrown back into turmoil when a ship (an anachronism in itself) floats into port, piloted by an unlikely crew with false ids and carrying a woman fully taken over by a vodu – a woman the system allows to walk free and vanish amongst the throng of flesh and bodai (ai driven androids).

So vampire lore in this is interesting as they are psychic vampires, eating the minds of the victims (actually taking them and storing them in what is described as mental sarcophagi, devouring them at leisure). They posses a host and reproduce every 200 years by implanting their offspring into a new victim. The tell-tale signs are in the eyes, David wears shades to hide them, a standing out and blueness to the veins in the forearms and a sharpening of the teeth (though they don’t bite). The host body becomes physically impressively strong. The vampire lore’s internal logic worked well and gave us an unusual variant both naturally occurring and artificially conceived.

This is an excellently written novel, drawing a dystopian world ravaged by ecological disaster – the temperature of UK.land is unbearably hot – 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. The warning is that it is a sci-fi and therefore if that isn’t your bag this may not be for you, but if you like good sci-fi and vampires this is a must. 9 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK