Valentine Vampire 98

My short story Valentine Vampire is a romantic version of the Chicago Valentine’s Day Massacre, result of a rivalry between the gangs of Al Capone and Bugs Moran.

My connection to the historical event is this.

My grandmother was on the second floor near a window when the guns went off in what was usually a quiet, peaceful neighborhood. On February 14, 1929, she and everyone else in the area heard the shotguns and submachine guns in a Clark St. garage two blocks away. They had to wait for the newspapers to learn the details of what was soon labeled The St. Valentine's Day Massacre. The story was passed along through the next two generations of her family and eventually worked its way into my fiction.

I used it as the background of Valentine Vampire, a short story about a character in Vampire Career, the first novel in my Turning Vampire series.

Also, Charley Royal, a character in the Sunspinner series, claims he was there, but Charley sometimes exaggerates.