Brokeula

A broke vampire's last ditch effort to escape the blood sucking monster of capitalism through an ill-conceived multi-level marketing scheme. James Sugre has never been this broke before in his centuries of living. Down and out, he's had a terrible string of luck investing in companies crippled by fraud and always late to the next crypto-fad. He spends most of his time in his coffin, too broke to go out in public. As the video game industry reaches record-breaking heights, Sugre tries his luck one more time with his own game studio. When he encounters a game developer and self-professed fan of vampire lore named Lauren, Sugre becomes hopeful that his luck might finally be on the up-and-up. But the market is rocky, and nothing is as stable as "un-death." Sugre learns the hard way that a dollar is worth more than a drop of blood. Trading immortality for cash, Sugre and Lauren create a—not entirely legal—business of turning humans into vampires for a fee. The business expands, but Vampire Nation has to protect their own investments, and Sugre learns the hard truth of the system he can't escape.

Michael J. Seidlinger is the Filipino-American author of Anybody Home?, On Submission, The Body Harvest, and other books. He has written for, among others, Wired, Buzzfeed, Polygon, and Publishers Weekly. You can find him at michaeljseidlinger.com.