ESCAPE AND BE ENTERTAINED by the mind of Michael Goldcraft. Enter his fictional landscape where good faces evil and science replaces mythology. Goldcraft takes us into the contemporary world of today where folklore fiends are proven present-day realities.
Panama City, Florida was a quiet, content, coastal tourist community until that autumn day in 1997 when a 234-year-old man drifted into town. It was just going to be another pause in his global peregrinations: moving from town to town, country to country, continent to continent. The man looked thirty-five, darkly handsome, tanned, well built, somewhat reclusive. He took up residence in an earthen chamber in a historic cemetery…and then he went to work! He commenced continuation of a life-style honed and perfected by over two hundred years of predatory practice. He began to kill.
The man’s name is Harrison Van Gilter. And he is no myth. Endowed with a genetic make-up including a transfer of DNA between two other species via an unknown virus, Van Gilter was – and still is – a living, breathing, human vampyre. He is intelligent, charming, some might say subtly seductive. With an aura described as “animal magnetism” he stalks his victims with a disarming smile and sweet words.
But Harrison Van Gilter is nothing more – and nothing less – than a predatory serial killer gifted with a superb intelligence, cunning, a calculated coldness, and a constant need to take into his own circulatory system the blood of other human beings. Blood that provides a constant, critical supply of hemoglobin to sustain his vampyre existence. Because, in all genetic games of chance, there is a trade-off or even trade-offs. For all his robust physical endowments, Harrison must have human blood…or die.
However, two years earlier, in August, 1995, something and someone tipped the cosmic scales. An anthropologist, Dr. Steven Atticus, made a discovery. In a cold Canadian lake he found a preserved corpse. It was that of a 1000-year-old Viking priest: the progenitor of the vampyre race. For two years, Steven studied his find, reported it at scientific meetings, and pondered whether this anomaly – this first human vampire – could have reproduced. And, Atticus defined the difference between vampyres and vampires. The former are progeny of vampyre/vampire parents. They are born vampyres. They are “full bloods.” The latter are victims of brutal attacks. Those who survive – and there are very few – often become infected with the “vampire virus” and transition into vampires. These hapless predators are often filled with guilt, but must kill or die themselves. They now need blood too!
And in the late fall of 1997, two worlds collided when Steven read of a purported vampire slaying victims in a most inhuman way. That was when Dr. Atticus left his laboratory at Tenque University, Amsterdam, and traveled to Panama City, Florida.
Working as a member of a law enforcement task force, the hunt began: a hunt to stop a unique serial killer. Led by FBI special agent Mark Pierce and PCPD Lt. John Willoughby, the task force raced to find clues in an attempt to capture a biological reality. The task force must incarcerate or kill a human vampyre!
Michael Goldcraft’s intriguing tale is: The Darke Lyfe Trilogy. His three novels – two of which have won first place recognition at the Royal Palm Literary Awards, Florida Writers Association – include: Tome I, Ascent of Evil; Tome II, Inherited Evil, and the conclusion (which takes place in 2012) Tome III, Arcanum of Evil.
Enter the mind of Michael Goldcraft. Escape, imagine, and be entertained! You won’t be disappointed…you will be surprised!
Michael Goldcraft, writer 