Back in the mid-90s, I wrote a short story called "Roseblood." A year or so later it became my first published horror story, appearing in a little rag of horror zine called Impaler. Yeah, that Impaler. Apparently they liked my story enough with its loosely vampiric overtones to want it in their zine. I was proud of achieving this first step, and added a few more small press horror publication sales over the years since then. After a long drought in writing for a variety of reasons (honestly, I never stopped writing, but for a variety of reasons, I'd not submitted any short stories for publication anywhere for a while), I took a step into the self-publishing world about a decade ago and haven't looked back. In recent years, I've had a couple short story appearances in the popular Facebook group Books of Horror Community Horror Anthology, Vol. 1 thru 3. I'm quite proud of that. Still have work to do, getting more of my books in reader's hands, more reviews, and breaking into the indie horror small press market instead of self-publishing my books.
But honestly, it all started with this seductively deadly serial killer named Rose Valentine aka Roseblood. I revisited that short story several years ago, found it lacking in some ways like many early efforts, and considered rebooting it. Since "Roseblood" took place in the late 80s, I decided I wanted to write a more recent tale and alas, "A Rose's Prick on a Bleeding Heart" was born. I shared it with my editor and friend, Erin Al-Mehairi, who liked it but as always with her deft editorial eye, told me there could be more of even longer story here if fleshed out. She wanted to know more about Rose. I gave that serious consideration and it didn't take long for me to write the short novel Roseblood.
So for me, while not nearly as popular or bestselling as Mister Jack, Night of the Pumpkin God, or The Ravening, Roseblood has always been one of my favorite stories because Roseblood was the first. And Rose Valentine had more stories to tell, too.
When I began writing Bloodletting, the 2nd Roseblood novel, I already knew I'd probably write one more Roseblood book. Shortly after finishing Bloodletting, I'd already come up with a title and some story notes. The 3rd and final Roseblood novel will be called Bloodlust. I expect that to be finished sometime later this year and most likely see publication late 2022 or early 2023.
Book bloggers or reviewers, please do hit me up for digital ARCs as I'm happy to do so. Or if you've read any of my books, I'd appreciate a honest review posted on any of the usual venues. Thanks for reading my work as it means the world to me!
My ebooks and trade paperbacks are available here on bn.com! Signed copies can be purchased directly from me and payable via PayPal, too.
My ebooks for Kindle can be found here!