I thought that I was onto something when I was diverting my attention with a new short story. This story is set in (relatively) near-future Brighton where an emergent species coexist alongside us homo sapiens sapiens. Borrowing from the existing taxonomy, I decided to try homo sapiens sanguinius, bloodsucking, thinking man.

In this story, these people experience a pandemic due to a government experiment gone awry. Any similarities to Covid-19 is purely coincidental. And I’ve got a bridge for sale.

These people are known idiomatically as hemo sapiens and pejoratively as vampires. They are like humans in all ways except they also need to drink blood through their fangs, their only outwardly distinguishing feature. No other vampire lore need apply. Being a new species, mating is iffy, but I won’t address that anyway. It’s supposed to be a short story.

Myself, I am not into vampire stories or urban fantasy, yet here I go–and I’m not sure where it will go. I’m not sure I think in short story. Lots of reductive editing. Time will tell.

If you’ve got any comments to share on hemo sapiens or writing short stories, feel free to leave them below.