the satanic brides of dracula

Ricordi Nero by Lente Scura on ArtStation

You might know I love vampires, but you might not know how much.

I was a huge fan of them during my formative years, but slowly lost interest after the movie adaptation of Interview With the Vampire saw my favourite villain really succumb to romance in a way they hadn't before. Sure, the romance had always been there, but the vampire was a creepy thing.

Now, it was all Buffy and sad emo guys. Let's just say Twilight really broke my soul.

What I fell in love with, particularly with the movies, was the Victorian look of Hammer Horror and the like. Melodramatic horror with a taste for vicious creep and a whiff of exploitation.

I miss that. I miss when the vampire squeezed into your house and then squeezed every last drop of blood from your writhing body.

I was prompted to write this after the failure of Universal's misguided attempts to reboot their classic horror monsters. For me, Hollywood really shouldn't do reboots unless they understand the source material and it's clear from Tom Cruise's travesty that they don't. I thought to myself: I could do better, I'm sure of it.

Instead of leaving it at that, ideas churned in my head to a point I couldn't ignore them.

This book has spat out of my brain faster than anything I've ever written. It took less than three weeks to spill the first draft and editing is cruising along in a way Tom would be jealous of.

I had intended to write one book per classic monster, but naturally I couldn't do things how I intended and fell in love with the idea of writing about one of the most criminally underused monsters in horror - Dracula's brides. They're often ignored. Mostly flashes of white for about 30 seconds in your average Dracula flick while the story moves onto his supposed "true" love. What a crock. He has three wives. Why did he want a fourth?

I then wrote this book and accidentally discovered a series full of vampires, demons, and a plan to unleash Hell on Earth during the late 19th Century!

Classic.

When I started, I thought I could have this as an April or May release and began sourcing a cover. Unfortunately, with it finishing, I had to cancel the artist I'd managed to get as they weren't available immediately. I looked around, getting more and more despondent. Thinking I'd need to suck it up and release the book after April.

But then I stumbled on an image which made me swallow real hard. Harder than if you paid me a hundred bucks to swallow hard.

I found Lente Scura's art and it just blew me away with how completely appropriate it is for the cover. There's a nice sense of classic art combined with something psychologically dark. It reminds me of some of the pulp horror covers of the Golden age of 1970. I love that. When I saw this one, I was absolutely overwhelmed with a need to use it, but didn't anticipate getting it. I find a lot of people don't respond on DeviantArt anymore and I hadn't any experience with ArtStation.

I'm sure you can agree, just by looking at this image that it's sublime. Perfect for a vampire novel!

In the end, I've been incredibly lucky at a time of year which is mostly ridiculous to be trying to source artwork and, on Christmas Day, I have signed a contract for the piece to be used as a cover for my next book, which will be released in January!

So, you will have two books from me! A violent Nysta story and a love letter to Hammer Horror.

Out Now:

Rise of the Fel Queen #1: The Satanic Brides of Dracula
Read it NOW on Amazon Now