Disappeared: MANTEQUERO BOOK 2 by Jenny Twist

justice and went on to murder a further nine people, inflicting horrible wounds and partially eating their corpses.
    As recently as the summer of 1910, Francisco Leone, a healer, kidnapped and killed a seven year old boy with the sole purpose of extracting his blood and fat, for use in the cure of a third man suffering from tuberculosis.
     
    But of the legend itself there is very little, so I felt justified in inventing my own mantequero.
     
    In the first story, simply called Mantequero, I didn’t attempt to add much to the legend, merely suggesting that the creature appears at dusk. But of all the short stories I have written, this has evoked more requests for a sequel than any other.
At first I couldn’t see how I could write a sequel, since I had written myself into a corner with the first story. Then a dear friend suggested a possible way out and I was inspired to write it.
     
    My problem was that this sequel got out of hand. It just kept growing and growing and instead of a short story it has become a novella. I wasn’t going to get away without fleshing out the legend a bit more.
    I do not approve of making stuff like this up. If you write about a legend you should jolly well stick to the sources. But there aren’t any. This is, I think, an example of oral myth which has never been properly documented.
I’ve spoken to my friends in the villages here and they know very little about it (or they’re not telling). It could be that the mantequero belongs exclusively to the Alpujarran region of Spain. Or even that he has been forgotten now that modern technology has put all those other lovely stories in reach of the Spanish peasant farming communities.
    So I have cheated. Where I have felt something must be explained, I have drawn on existing vampire myth.
    If I have veered too far away from the real mantequero myth I apologise in advance.
    But I think it works as a story and I really hope it will satisfy those readers who wanted more.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
     
    Jenny Twist was born in York and brought up in the West Yorkshire mill town of Heckmondwike, the eldest grandchild of a huge extended family. 
    She left school at fifteen and went to work in an asbestos factory. After working in various jobs, including bacon-packer and escapologist’s assistant (she was The Lovely Tanya), she returned to full-time education and did a BA in history at Manchester and post-graduate studies at Oxford.
    She stayed in Oxford working as a recruitment consultant for many years and it was there that she met and married her husband, Vic.
    In 2001 they retired and moved to Southern Spain where they live with their rather eccentric dog and cat. Besides writing, she enjoys reading, knitting and attempting to do fiendishly difficult logic puzzles.
    She has written two novels - Domingo’s Angel – a love story set in Franco’s Spain and harking back to the Spanish Civil War and beyond - and All in the Mind – a contemporary novel about an old woman who mysteriously begins to get younger
    She has also written an anthology of short stories - Take One At Bedtime – and co-written the anthology Bedtime Shadows – with the inimitable Tara Fox Hall.
    She has contributed short stories to many other anthologies, of which two – Doppelganger and Uncle Vernon have recently been released as short ebooks.
    Her first self-published ebook, Away With the Fairies was released in September 2012. Her second,
    Mantequero was originally published in Winter Wonders by Whimsical Publishing and was released as an independent publication in January 2014 as a short ebook.
     
    Visit Jenny on her Facebook page. She loves talking to her readers.
    https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jenny-Twist-Author/291166404240446
     
    Or you can follow her on her website:
    https://sites.google.com/site/jennytwistauthor/home
     
    Goodreads Author Page
    http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4848320.Jenny_Twist
     
    Amazon Author Page
    US: amazon.com/author/jennytwist
    UK: