BOOK BLOG - Drawing Blood by Poppy Z. Brite

Hey all, welcome back to another blog. Yes, I know, it’s been forever since I updated my Discipline and Punish blog, but that’s a very dense book and I’ve been busy recently. Sorry about it, hopefully in a month or two things will calm down and I can get back on it. Until then, enjoy me talking about more random fiction.

20/09/2025

Began reading this book yesterday after finding it in a secondhand bookstore, and I already am in love. It feels perfectly tailored to the things I like…a mix of 90s goth & alternative rock, weird people, Church of the Subgenius, murder, the supernatural, and the strange corners of the internet. I had heard glowing reviews of Brite’s writing and had known I would very likely enjoy his work but I didn’t realise how much! 

I don’t want to give away too much of the plot beyond what’s given on the blurb, but it’s about a young man whose father murdered his mother and younger brother when he was young, and left only him alive, returning to the town where it happened as an adult. I had actually thought that Drawing Blood was a vampire novel, given the title and the fact that most of the other Brite novels I had heard about were vampire books but it’s actually not! It is also set in the same continuity as his first book Lost Souls which I have not read but may have to track down once I finish this.

I think if you’re looking for something grungy, a little gross, and extremely 90s, then this is the book for you. I really am loving this one, I’ve got that feeling only a good book gives you, where whenever you’re not reading it you feel like reading it is the only thing you want to be doing!

When I said I was reading this book fast I sure wasn't joking! I'm about halfway through now, and still having a very good time with it. The more I think about it, the more the characters remind me of the sorts of people in Gregg Araki films. Maybe it's just because they come from the same milieu of 90s creatives, but from the left-of-centre occupations they hold (ranging from cartoonist, to hacker, to record store owner), the amount of weed present in the book, the music taste they possess, to the overt depictions of queer life, there's a lotta similarity between them. The characters in Drawing Blood are perhaps less postmodern than Araki's, a little more grounded in reality, but there's still stuff in common that I find extremely compelling. Again, feeling like it's tailored to the very things I enjoy in media.

There was, perhaps, one kind of strange veer off the track I had really expected. Spoiler warning here, I'm gonna get a little into plot occurrences beyond the blurb, so skip this paragraph if you want to keep it to a minimum. There's been a sort of meander towards romance between the main character (Trevor) and the other major character (Zach) which wasn't entirely unexpected, but I'm curious to see where it goes. It's really only just been introduced so I'm not gonna say much else about it. I think it either will be executed fantastically (perhaps even Araki-esque) or will fall flat, but honestly I don't think it will. We shall see! Either way, as I said, I'm enjoying the novel very much.

So the romance aspect ended up being quite a bit more prominent than I expected...but frankly, it shouldn't have been that unexpected given that I know a lot of Brite's work has romance and sex as dominant elements. I did think this book was more exclusively horror though. It certainly brings my Araki comparisons full circle though!

I’m almost done with the book now, but I thought I’d try and squeeze in an extra update before my final one. I think you guys can see how much longer it takes me to read non-fiction versus fiction books with these blogs with how short this one and the Geraldine blogs were compared to my Discipline and Punish one…anyways, this book is still GREAT! 

My fears with the romance overpowering the horror elements and risking a dip into a more…what I can only describe as “young adult” direction were unfounded, which was great! YA is fine, but definitely not my jam and I was dreading it was going to end up there, but it didn’t! I think it really achieves a sort of ‘coming-of-age’ feel without being YA which I really appreciate, and hope more books (and media generally) would do. 

There’s some gnarly and very gross moments that I think Brite writes fantastically - some of this stuff is really nasty!! The bathroom scene with Zach especially…no more spoilers from that but it was deeply YUCK, which is what I really enjoy in this sort of horror novel. Beyond the really gross out moments, there’s also some super funny scenes, sweet moments between Zach and Trevor, and just a lot of stuff that I find super fun (thinking especially of Zach singing with the band in the bar, amongst other moments)

Not to be too repetitive, but I really am enjoying this one, and would recommend it if you like horror and don’t mind a bit of romance mixed in with it either. If you’re into more straight up and down horror then this might not be for you but I’m gonna recommend it anyways, damnit!! Anywho, my next update is probably gonna be my final one since I’ve got under 100 pages left. Keep an eye out!