Hard to believe it’s the end of 2019 already. It only seems like it was January about five minutes ago. The beginning of the year was kinda tricky for me. I knew I had a busy few months ahead so I was working my butt off writing and trying to hit what looked like an impossible deadline. Then I got the flu. Which was fairly awful. There are lots of great things about living alone but being incredibly ill and having to walk the dog and make food is less fun than it sounds. And completely wiped out my January. Then almost as soon as I was better, the seemingly minor niggles that the Word Dragon had been having since November, turned out to be something all together more sinister and thus started our weekly/bi-weekly trips to the vet as she got ever sicker and sicker…didn’t stop her from nomming all the treats in the place though.
The first book I wrote this year was the first one I’d written as part of a collaboration. I’d been incubating the idea for Devil Next Door for a couple of years after a friend posted a picture of a neighbor’s place with a white picket fence . I’m a bit fan of classic horror, I even did an elective in college, and the idea of playing the sandbox that John Carpenter created with Halloween, the idea of horror coming out of the dark to lurk in the pseudo-safety of suburbia, was just too delicious to pass up. And when the opportunity to write for Criminal Delights came up it just seemed to fit perfectly.
I love writing the dark stuff, and writing Remy and Luke was so much fun. The research freaked me out to be honest—I 100% cover all my cameras on my computers now in case you were wondering—but I managed to sneak some fun stuff in there too. Remy’s name is as close as I could get to Renfield without being too obvious, for reasons. And Luke Boucher? Luke for Lucifer and Boucher/Butcher—everything’s a clue if you look hard enough. I can’t help myself, it’s an illness.
But as much as I love these two, I’m not going to write a sequel (Stop. I can hear you laughing from here). As far as I can tell, they live happily ever after. I mean, they keep doing what they do but that makes them happy. Not so much the other guys but whatever. I’m going to leave them be.
Probably.
#1 – #2 – #3 –#4 – #5 – #6 – Coming in 2020
