Monday, June 19, 2017

Diving South for Horror

I'm baaaaaack!

It seems like just yesterday I was sitting at my desk in my St. Louis apartment, jotting down notes about people I wanted to interview, places I wanted to visit before I left, and preparations for a new book.

It's strange to say a little over two months ago, I was picking up keys to a new apartment - this one in Dallas. Just like that, my lovelies, life changes. My only regret to date is that my desk is still unpacked, shoved into a corner, and I'm writing this particular entry on top of a bright yellow end table. The show must go on, right? And after a month of definitely not working on edits, here I am: Guiltily still plying through online articles about haunted dolls, and spending too much time watching paranormal evidence videos. #slacker

But marching on into summer, I've got but two writing projects: Red Mother Dead (which I'm hoping will be out late this year), and another series in the works.



Red Mother Dead, if I haven't mentioned it, is the first standalone after the Diary Trilogy ended. And while the very utterance of vampires conjures up images of Rob Pattinson sparkling like he'd been clubbing all night, this story is straight up horror with a large romantic element.

RMD picks up the story of Brit: a single and somewhat lonely housekeeper with major anal retentive tendencies. She's had some bumps in her young life, but keeps a firm hold on the appearance (and cleanliness) of the estate.

Enter Jack, her former high school crush, who is widowed with a young son, and suddenly the daily stability and predictability is squashed...because Jack has brought something with him that casts a darkness over the household. And it's not the sexy Twilight kind.



The influence:

I saw a documentary years ago about allegedly real-life vampires. One tale, in particular, really, really bothered me. It was about a young girl who "died," only she allegedly visited her father afterwards - terrifying him with a decaying face and trying to bite and feed off him. It brought me back to what vampires really are: our worst fears. The end of the story - which brought a village together to essentially destroy the girl's body - folded up neatly with the father mentioning how his deep love for his child had been tainted by what she had become. He swore he would try the rest of his life to find that love again, but the memory of something insidious speaking in the same voice and wearing the same face as his child would always haunt him.



A few pages of character plot-lines later, and RMD was well on its way. But with its own twist.

Stay tuned for excerpts! Thanks for following! You can check out a brief book trailer here (though the book cover is no longer the same).