Fawn’s Blood is Hal’s newest YA novel, published September 16, 2025 by 7 Stories Press. It follows Fawn, a trans runaway looking for her best friend Silver, and Rachel, a teen slayer recently bitten by a vampire. Buy Fawn’s Blood here
“Vampire stories are always gay but rarely are they so trans. Schrieve’s tale of teen rebellion, friendship, and bloodsucking is ripe with hope for a better world—a world in which networks of mutual aid relationships support outsider communities, and people give and receive trust, pleasure, and magic outside of heterosexuality and government control. Buffy fans, this book will knock your socks off!” —Maia Kobabe, ALA Alex Award-winning author and illustrator of Gender Queer: A Memoir
“Some writers give us a couple of characters, but Hal Schrieve gives us a whole community. Hir characters breathe; they seethe; they’re driven by rage and longing; and they’re indelible. Fawn’s Blood is unafraid of complexity and mess, and unafraid of love too. This is the queer vampire novel we deserve.” —Isaac Fellman, Lambda Literary Award-winning author of Dead Collections and The Breath of the Sun
“Horror is always a metaphor, and in Fawn’s Blood that metaphor has teeth. Funny, hopeful, sad, and engrossing, Hal Schrieve has given us a bloodstained window to a better future.”
– —Kyle Lukoff National Book Award finalist, author of A World Worth Saving
“Much like queer people, vampires flock together—though neither usually turns into bats (but you never know with vampires). Rachel definitely doesn’t know, because until being nonconsensually turned into a vampire eight months ago, her only experience had been staking them with her mom. Fawn thinks she knows, but only because her best friend Silver is so obsessed with vampires, he faked his death to become one. When Fawn hitchhikes her way across the country to find Silver, she goes from vampire ally to selling her blood for survival and crosses paths with Rachel, who is increasingly reluctant about her role in taking down the vampire community. Driven by compelling, intense characters and featuring more action than romance, this vampire story is interwoven with a truly compelling exploration of the hidden, sometimes gritty nuances of queer culture, both old and modern. The exploration of character nuance is immense but largely restricted to the vampire and vampire-adjacent characters, which results in antagonists being delightfully uncomplicated in their campy villainy. Although clearly ambitious, this story nails all its marks.”
— Austin Ferraro, Booklist
Read my interview with Sophie Drukman-Feldstein at Uncharted Mag Here!
Listen to my interview with LibraryPunk Podcast here!
PAST EVENTS:
September 15 2025, 7PM: Launch of Fawn’s Blood at Hive Mind Books, Brooklyn NY
September 17 2025, 7PM, Starr Barr: A Night of Trans Vampire/Monster Stories, Brooklyn NY
September 22 2025, 6:30 PM, All She Wrote Books with Fin Leary, Somerville MA
September 25 2025, 6PM: Browser’s Bookshop, Olympia, WA
September 26 2025, 7PM: Third Place Books, Seattle, WA
October 19 2025, 7PM: The Common Press, London, UK (Talking Vampires and Transness WITH LEO FOX AND KY LAWRENCE!)
October 21 2025: Queer Vampire Night at The Lighthouse Bookshop, Edinburgh, Scotland
October 23 2025: Category Is Books, Glasgow, Scotland!
Hal Schrieve 