Baneworth is my first, full-length novel.  As the cover art at left notes, it is an erotic re-telling of the 1840s "penny dreadful" Varney The Vampyre(aka The Feast of Blood). Too many years ago to count (or remember) I first heard of this work, a cheap but hugely popular vampire novel of its time, the Mid-Victorian Era. The combination of steam-powered printing presses, relatively cheap paper and almost universal sufferage gave rise to all 250-plus chapters of this epic. It really was the Twlight of its time. It is also a sprawling, inconsistent, often unintentionally-funny story with more than a hint of something more...profound. For one thing, it created a new trope in its genre -- the Reluctant Vampire. Sir Francis Varney is very much the literary ancestor of Barnabas Collins, Bill Compton, Edward Cullen and Nick Knight (as well as Angel/Angelus/Liam). As a work of writing, the thing is a mess. Frankly the whole thing is a testament to how popularity does not in and of itself mean quality.

The story intrigued me, however, so I've set about re-working it. The Bannerworth family of the first seventy chapters or so have been renamed (hence the title). Rather than wandering in different time zones, the story is now set firmly in the Regency. A character from much later is brought in, the story in general streamlined and frankly the ending will not be what it originally was.