Title A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i Series --- Author Alaya Dawn Johnson Cover Art --- Publisher --- First Printing Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2014 Category Vampires Warnings None Main Characters Key, Tetsuo Main Elements Vampires Website A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i

Approx. 9,500 words

Novelette originally published in Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2014.

Winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novelette 2014.

The story is free to read online at the link provided.

In this story, vampires have taken over the world and are keeping humans at feeding and raising them in breeing facitilies. This is the story of Key, who was sixteen when the war started, and who discovered a vampire in her shed. She had the chance to kill him, and he had the chance to kill her. But they didn't.

While the war took place, he took care of her, and she fell in love with him. She kept hoping he would turn her into a vampire. A story of siding with the enemy because you wanted to live too much, because you didn't want to die. A story of where the enemy, or at least one of them, wasn't necessarily evil, but certainly was still the enemy. Where Key becomes the caretaker of humans, so that she herself would not be food. Taking care of them, making sure they are healthy, but not for their own benefit but for the benefit of those that prey upon them. And then when Key's wish is finally fulfilled, could she keep the promise she made to other humans, the promise she would not hurt them, we she was no longer human enough to care.

And the underlying theme of fruit, it's flavours, and the memories they evoke. We take such things for granted but when they are gone, something as simple as a kiwi might seem incredibly precious.

I enjoyed this story, and was perfect for the start of October, the month of Halloween.