WATERTOWER HILL PUBLISHING
Patrick Fontes
Patrick Fontes grew up in Fresno, 4th generation working class, where he currently lives and teaches. The sinews, grime, harsh environment, punk rock, and Fresno’s working-class ethos have made him the person he is today.​
He received a PhD in US History from Stanford University, with an emphasis on the Mexican American experience.​Patrick is an avid and published photographer. His current photography passion is street photography: www.patfontesart.com.
In 2017 Floricanto Press published his first novel Maria’s Purgatorio, a gritty, urban-gothic tale set in the underbelly of a modern California city. Bone & Ink Press published his first poetry collection in 2019, titled Mountains of Rust.​ Currently, Patrick is a professor of US History at Clovis Community College and also teaches Chicano Studies at Fresno State University.​
Growing up in a harsh Fresno in the 1970s-1980s gifted Patrick an appreciation for the marginalized and those living on the periphery of society’s norms. Punk Rock, a love for cultural undergrounds, and a passionate drive to uncover voices, lives, and faces forgotten or ignored by our modern culture have all contributed to his literary approach and style. He seeks to reveal the hidden, the shadows, the forgotten, the terrified, the disturbed.​
He received a first-hand education in horror, as a little boy in the 1970s when his parents took him to see all the greats at the drive-in: The Exorcist, The Shining, Salem’s Lot, The Omen, Dawn of the Dead. Those films terrorized his innocent mind for years to come, giving him nightmares nearly every night till adulthood, playing tricks on his imagination as he heard and saw things moving in his room during the darkest hours. His twenty-something parents were careless, but their negligence planted in him the seeds of his love for horror, which grew into a deep, dark forest of enchanting possession.
When the sun descends and night settles over the land, dark and dangerous things - hungry things- begin to stir.
At their vineyard on the outskirts of the city, the members of the De Alba Coven wake and prepare for feasting and ritual. Within the rundown buildings of the warehouse district, the Los Gatos Coven wreak havoc on the drug-addicted homeless population. And in the mountains beyond, the Black Forest Clan are engaged in a feast of their own.
As the night progresses, the three bloodthirsty groups - vampires and werewolves, the oldest of sworn enemies - move slowly but surely toward each other and the inevitable battle that must ensue when grievances and grudges both new and ancient are brought to a head on the dark and dirty streets of Fresno, California.