''Drawing Blood'' is a 1993 horror novel by American writer

Poppy Z. Brite William Joseph Martin (born May 25, 1967), formerly Poppy Z. Brite, is an American author. He initially achieved fame in the Gothic fiction, gothic horror genre of literature in the early 1990s by publishing a string of successful novels and shor ...

. Something of a

haunted house A haunted house, spook house or ghost house in ghostlore is a house or other building often perceived as being inhabited by disembodied spirits of the deceased who may have been former residents or were otherwise connected with the property ...

tale, the novel was originally titled ''Birdland'' but the publisher retitled it to make a thin connection to Brite's first novel, '' Lost Souls'', a

vampire A vampire is a mythical creature that subsists by feeding on the Vitalism, vital essence (generally in the form of blood) of the living. In European folklore, vampires are undead, undead humanoid creatures that often visited loved ones and c ...

tale.

Synopsis

The novel concerns Trevor McGee, a

comic book artist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comics illustrators/artists in that they produce both the literary ...

and sole survivor of a family murder-suicide, and Zachary Bosch, a

bisexual Bisexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior toward both males and females. It may also be defined as the attraction to more than one gender, to people of both the same and different gender, or the attraction t ...

hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who achieves goals and solves problems by non-standard means. The term has become associated in popular culture with a security hackersomeone with knowledge of bug (computing), bugs or exp ...

, and their arrival at McGee's old family home in Missing Mile,

North Carolina North Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia (U.S. stat ...

, a fictional town featured in Brite's previous novel, '' Lost Souls''. Twenty-five-year-old Trevor McGee is haunted by an event in his past in which his underground artist father, Bobby, brutally murdered Trevor's mother and younger brother with a hammer before killing himself, leaving Trevor alive. Young Trevor was placed in an unhappy state home, where he discovered his own talent for drawing but remained alone, obsessed with the question of why he was allowed to live. Now as an adult, he travels back to Missing Mile, North Carolina, to search for answers in the abandoned house where the murders took place. In

New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...

, Zachary Bosch is a nineteen-year-old computer

on the run from the law after his online misdeeds attract the notice of the

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...

. Traveling through the South, he too finds himself in Missing Mile, where he meets and falls in love with Trevor. The two young men slowly become more entwined, even as Zach starts to questions Trevor's grip on reality. Their love affair culminates when one night, while tripping on

psilocybin mushrooms Psilocybin mushrooms, or psilocybin-containing mushrooms, commonly known as magic mushrooms or as shrooms, are a type of hallucinogenic mushroom and a polyphyletic informal group of fungi that contain the prodrug psilocybin, which turns into t ...

, Trevor has an out-of-body experience where he is propelled into the past and speaks to his father on the night of the murders. He realizes that somehow the presence of his adult self in the past caused his father to spare the life of five-year-old Trevor, meaning that he is the cause of his own endless quest. Upon waking, Trevor attempts to murder Zach, but Zach manages to talk him down until Trevor breaks his own drawing hand in order to keep himself from harming Zach. Back in New Orleans, Zach's friend Eddy has figured out Zach's location based on clues Zach planted for her in the local newspaper. Realizing that the FBI must have done the same, she races to North Carolina to warn Zach that the police are in town searching for him. Trevor offers to go on the run with Zach. Their friends in Missing Mile help smuggle the two lovers out of town where they board a private aircraft to

Jamaica Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean Sea and the West Indies. At , it is the third-largest island—after Cuba and Hispaniola—of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean. Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, west of Hispaniola (the is ...

. Finally safe, they begin a new life together. The characters Trevor and Zachary reappear in Brite's short story "Vine of the Soul", published in 1998 in '' Disco 2000'', edited by Sarah Champion.

Collectibles

When a man set himself on fire in the

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

location of a commercial mailbox company, copies of this novel were saturated with the smell of burnt flesh. They were sold by book dealer Barry R. Levin as collectibles.David Streitfeld, "A Real Stinker: Book Dealer's Offering Is Under Wraps for a Reason," ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

'', August 29, 1994.

References

{{Poppy Z. Brite 1993 American novels 1993 science fiction novels 1990s LGBTQ novels American LGBTQ novels Bisexual fiction Novels by Poppy Z. Brite Novels set in North Carolina LGBTQ speculative fiction novels LGBTQ-related horror literature Novels about bisexual topics Delacorte Press books