Editor's Note:

You can blame this one on Blood Moon...

Vampires are sexy. A lot of good writers have earned a great deal of serious money telling us just that very thing. Anne Rice. Tanith Lee. Poppy Z Brite.

Vampires are glamorous. Dark, mysterious, romantic ... anguished and tormented, true, but so much the better. There's nothing like a bit of guilt and pain to give a story an edge. (You thought I was going to say "bite" - didn't you?)

And so, when I first heard that Quantum Leap had a vampire episode in the works, I was thrilled. I couldn't wait to see Sam Beckett wrestling with his own inner demons, fighting unholy desires and temptations, racked by fear and horror and remorse. And, with any luck, taking his shirt off a lot.

I was hoping for something sensuous, brooding, seductive and erotic.

What I got was a Hammer Horror spoof, complete with nonsensical plot, laughable English accents, and some Very Bad Acting Indeed. (Although, having said that, Joan likes it. So does Penny's mum.) Disappointed? Disappointed doesn't even begin to cover it!

I think Penny got the message. At any rate, she nobly stepped into the breach and, in due course, produced a Quantum Leap vampire story that has all the things that Blood Moon failed to deliver: plot, characterisation, drama, angst, more hurt/comfort than you can shake a stick at ... and buckets of blood all over the place. Yum!

Lost Souls is a full-length novel, and we had originally intended to submit it to Ginjer Buchanan, the editor in charge of the Quantum Leap novel programme at Berkley Books, for consideration for professional publication. However, after a lengthy, noisy and exhausting editing session, punctuated by frequent cries of "Ginjer'll never buy that!", we came to the reluctant conclusion that Ginjer would, in fact, never buy any of it, and it would make no sense to send the manuscript off to almost-certain rejection - particularly as the QL novel programme is set well into 1997 - when we could just go ahead and publish it ourselves.

And so we did. And here it is.

Enjoy!

HB. 1996.

Lost Souls in the Hunting Ground

Part One: To us forever are the gates of heaven shut ...

Part Two: ...for who shall open them to us again?

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© January 1996. Lost Souls in the Hunting Ground is an amateur and not-for-profit publication from AAA Press and does not intend to infringe upon the rights held by DonaldPBellisario, Belisarius Productions, Universal Studios, NBC Television, BBC Television, British Sky Broadcasting, or any other holders of Quantum Leap trademarks or copyrights. Moral rights in the material contained herein are reserved to Penelope Hill (text) and Joan Jobson (art), and no part of either should be reprinted without their express permission.

All characters herein are fictitious, and no resemblance to any actual person, living or undead, is intended or should be inferred.

Typing: Penelope Hill. Editing, proofreading and loud cries of encouragement: Hilary Broadribb. Artwork scanned and inserted into documents, and HTML conversion: Penelope Hill. The usual thanks to friends, partners and furbeasts; a special thank-you to Clive Barker, who did, eventually, give us Scott Bakula handsome, heroic and haunted. It was worth the wait.