On the Dragon Award 2019

I've had people come up to me and ask what they should do about voting for my books for a Dragon Award.

Yes, really. It's odd. I don't recall the last time that happened. Maybe when I had two vampire books out in the same nomination period?

Anyway, I have people who want to nominate both Hell Spawn and Death Cult in horror. Which is, of course, problematic. I'd joke about "What happened to Infernal Affairs," but one thing at a time.

Personally? To answer the question, I do recommend Hell Spawn for best horror. In fact, if you were to nominated anything, I'd nominate that.

Now, if you're of the opinion that Death Cult is at least as good, if not better, then how about we split the difference?

Hell Spawn is horror. There's no real question about that. But is Death Cult? Frankly, are zombies even horror? Personally I find them boring, but that could just be me. Let's just say that there weren't as many zombies in Death Cult than I thought there would be. It could be argued that this is less of a horror novel and more of a supernatural thriller.

Which I suppose puts this either in "military" or "fantasy / paranormal."

And to be honest, yes, this is my best guess on the matter. And yes, I do wish to push this book for the Dragons this year. To be honest, I wouldn't know when to start, since the eligibility schedule runs from July 2018 to June 30th 2019. I'd say let's start in July, when the eligibility period runs out, but let's face it, I don't think that's really practical.

With my luck, this will be the only year that the Saint Tommy series will be eligible for. I may not get back to it. Book #6 will be coming out in April. I may get back to it in a future year, though I'm not sure how practical it would be to try to nominate book #7 (if there is one)

But for the record, I'm going to have a more in-depth conversation on Dragon award nominations later on .... hopefully this week.

NOMINATE HERE.

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Castalia House reviews Hell Spawn

Over at Castalia House, Jon Mollison reviewed Hell Spawn.

Played entirely straight, the result is an urban fantasy for people who don’t like urban fantasy. Instead of the usual kitchen sink approach as seen in the “Iron Druid” series and countless magic-girl of the week series, Finn steeps the universe of Saint Tommy entirely in a Catholic worldview where Earth represents a battleground between heaven and hell. Though the dual nature of the conflict – good versus evil – lacks the political complexity of the kitchen sink approach, it also grounds the novel with a unified system that carries with it the weight of two thousand years of refining, evolution, and tradition. There are real rules to what can be done and how things operate, and that grounding in a single understanding of the rules of the game allows the action to proceed at a faster clip, and with considerably higher stakes than most examples of the genre.

Considering how popular Iron Druid is, I'll take that review.

Which is not to say that this is a book for Catholics only. The matter of fact presentation of the faith that lies at the core of this work never veers into preachiness or ham fisted apologia. Hand wave away the protagonist’s explanations for his powers – most of the supporting characters do – and you’re still left with a gritty tale of a serial killer targeting a cop. Head-canon the supernatural abilities into a secular expression of natural law, and you’re left with a dark superhero tale that makes the nineties grimdark culture seem tame by comparison.

I ...  yeah. I cop to it. This went dark. But it's nice to see that Mollison finds I did it well.

One word of warning on that note – and Declan Finn’s unflinching willingness to show the nature and effects of evil, this novel goes into some ark places where even the most bloody-minded Hollywood producers fear to tread. The setting being New York City, the usual political theater enters the investigation

I don't know why, this part just pleases me.

Declan writes with an economy of words that packs a lot of impact into this relatively short novel. Never quite dipping down into the close-mouthed unwillingness to describe even the most recurring characters or locales, he nonetheless manages to present just enough information to keep things visually stimulating without dragging the action down.

The rest of the review is here, enjoy.

Hell Spawn can be found here.

Be well.

Playlist: Death Cult

Death Cult, the sequel to the Dragon Award Horror winner for 2019, Hell Spawn, is out and it's live.

.... Yes, I am that confident.

When I'm writing, I use music.

Lately, I've discovered Spotify, and it's opened up my music tastes.

For example, much of the book had a running theme.....

From Sabaton

Though I have to admit, I picked that deliberately. I had already tripped over Sabaton.  Trust me, had I known of The Last Stand while writing The Pius Trilogy, I would have had endless references to it throughout the novels.

And then, during the final shootout, I had Spotify on random.

And during this epic fight with the forces of Hell, I got .... this.

You can just imagine what the finale looks like.

Death Cult is out, it's live, and you can buy it here.

Death Cult, Chapter 3: Adventures in Investigation

Death Cult is officially released... if not this minute, then in about 3 hours, because Amazon is on Pacific time, the losers....

Anyway....

After Hell Spawn was finished, I knew that I needed to wrap up some loose ends.

But I didn't want to end the book with a lot of explaining. It would basically be a process interview.

But hey, wouldn't it make great recap in book 2?

I think it does.

Chapter 3: Adventures in Investigation

Both Alex and I were dressed to impress at the station. Okay, one of us was. I wore a solid black suit, with a police-blue clip-on tie (clip on because we don’t want to be throttled with our own neck wear) and overcoat. Alex’s suit was gray and wrinkled, with a skinny brown tie that may have been black in a former life. That life had long since faded.

Alex seemed to have finally calmed down. Along the way, I had helped a woman with her spilled groceries, then helped her walk a block out of the way. I didn’t think it was that far out of the way, but Alex seemed to be annoyed about it. (Seriously, it was one block, and the groceries were under twenty pounds.)

We walked into the police station together and had to walk around a stack of glass. I waved to the glazier. “Hey, Eric. This your last day?”

Eric Mahoney, a middle-aged, beefy fellow in a hard hat, scowled. “If I’m lucky. Seriously, what was it that made you people trash all of the glass in the building?”

“The perp got out of control,” Alex explained.

“Yeah, yeah, so you guys keep telling me.” Eric rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Seriously, one little guy on PCP, and he strings himself up? Did he have to work really hard to smash everything? And the vending machine, really? That, too?”

It was another moment I couldn’t exactly explain to him. The “junkie” had been a man named Hayes, who had been the first host of the demons within Christopher Curran. It was how the demon had targeted me before jumping into the serial killer.

“Pardon us, Eric.” I stepped around the glass, worried about the placement.

At which point, we ran into Internal Affairs.

* * *

The worst part about being me – a living Saint (for lack of a better term)-- was hiding it.

Obviously, I don’t mean that one has to lie about one’s good deeds. That would be idiotic. Just look at Mother Theresa. She didn’t hide what she did from day to day. And someone who is truly a saint is humble enough to acknowledge all the flaws of which we are aware, and hence usually do not advertise how good we are—because we know better. We know better, because we know what happens in our heads.

The problematic part of being a “living Saint” (which is oxymoronic, as all Saints are dead by definition) is being a Wonder Worker. Basically, a Wonder Worker has miracles performed through them. You wouldn’t think this was a problem … but when you’re a law enforcement officer, saying “I healed my wife of the knife wound to the throat” or “I bilocated a copy of myself onto the other side of the barricade” doesn’t exactly fit neatly into the average daily DD5 report NYPD officers have to fill out.

And if you have earned enough brownie points to actually be a Wonder Worker, lying isn’t a valid option. While being honest is good and virtuous, it is the sort of thing that gives you a first-class ticket to the funny farm.

So when Internal Affairs asks a question where the real answer involves you being in two places at once, it becomes imperative to become creative.

The two IA investigators who had been assigned to my were McNally and Horowitz, usually referred to as Statler and Waldorf. Don’t ask me which one was supposed to be which.

No, before you get confused, this wasn’t even about the event in my home. This wasn’t about my family shooting their way out for our own survival. No, this was about the “Rykers’ Riot” of two months before.

“How did you get past the police blockade to an island with only one path?”

“I was really fast,” was my answer. And I had been. I had to move really fast once my bilocated self materialized on the other side of the bridge, and the blockade. I didn’t want to be caught in the sights of the machineguns on the armored cars.

“Uh huh,” McNally huffed. “You going to tell me you just beamed on the other side of the fence?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t say that, you did.” It was also a fairly good description, too.

“And your wife?” Horowitz asked. “We took a closer look at your body camera video. Christopher Curran slashed her throat open. And yet she didn’t die? Care to explain that?”

I shrugged. “I always got the impression that any wound above the collar bone bled profusely. Artery in the arm, the throat, anything in the head. You’ll have to ask the paramedics. I’m not a doctor.” Notice, I didn’t lie. I just stated random facts and hoped they didn’t notice I didn’t even pretend to offer an explanation.

“How about the blood left at the scene around Curran’s body?” McNally asked. “There were at least two massive blood patches on the walls and floor around the body. How did that happen?”

My eyebrow went up. The question was phrased awkwardly, and strangely. Even better: no one had ever requisitioned my DNA for a crime scene. At most, they might have typed it. Unless someone routed through my trash for samples, they didn’t have proof that it was my blood.

Normally, I wouldn’t be too concerned with my blood at the scene. They saw me leaving Rikers Island. Everyone knew I was there. Everyone presumed that I personally put down the riot … somehow.

The official story involved me going in, breaking up some fights, and disrupting the pace and inertia of the riot. With the major players of the riot put out of commission, the riot dispersed. This was more or less what happened. If you replace “major players of the riot” with “the possessed.”

Part of the problem was that I had bilocated … in the end, I had actually done a four-way split, all but one of me dying in the line of duty. The bodies had faded away, but the blood remained. The two big pools of blood were mine, where I had been impaled with prison bars that had been made into spears. I didn’t know if my DNA would be the same coming from a duplicate, but I didn’t want to bet one way or another. Hopefully, no one outside of my wife would ever see me without my shirt on – every wound that killed me had stayed on my body as a scar.

“It was a prison riot. I presume there will be blood.” Especially since I had to slide through at least one hallway full of it, and none of it was mine.

“How did he die?”

“He fell on some bars, like a tiger trap. All I had to do was step out of his way when he came at me.”

“And you got no blood on you? At all?”

I shrugged, not answering. Again, that would require explaining that the body that walked out of Rikers wasn’t the body that walked in. Nor had I gotten into any direct fights the last time I bilocated.

Don’t worry if you’re confused. So was I, and I had been there and done that.

There were more questions, but I managed to stave them off with relative ease. I suspect that I had Help from Above with my little deceptions. While Christopher Curran and his personal demons had made no attempt to be subtle about their rampage, God was more low key.

“I’m surprised you didn’t want to ask me about the incident in my home.”

McNally smiled. “Just you wait.”

“We’ll get there,” Horowitz said.

* * *

I sat at my desk in the back corner of the bullpen, planting my back against solid wall. I had no interest in getting taken by surprise. Alex was in on my clean little secret but I didn’t want to share if I could avoid it. I’d prefer to keep it between me and my confessor, but witnessing some of my abilities had dragged Alex and my wife into it. Jeremy just thought I was a superhero, but he’d thought that before I performed miracles. Unfortunately, Enemies from the Other Side also seemed to know about me. Apparently, sending demons back to Hell just allowed them to communicate better via infernal interoffice memos.

“How do you want to play this?” Alex asked. “As much as you’d like a piece of the case, I’m not sure you can. Or should.”

He had a point. There was a good reason officer-involved crimes weren’t investigated by said officer. I was the target of some obviously bad people and putting me out there was waving a red flag with crosshairs on it.

“I mean, what do we want to say?” Alex continued. “That Curran was really just part of some sort of cult and now they’re out to get you?”

I frowned. “Thing is … you might not be too far from the truth.”

Alex blinked as though I had struck him. “What? You saying there really is one?”

I leaned forward. While I was certain of my fellow officers’ apathy towards what I had to say, I didn’t want to take the chance of being overheard. “When Curran was gloating, he—it—told me that it had been summoned. Which means somebody, an actual person, deliberately brought the demon to Earth.”

Alex frowned, then leaned back in his chair. “You have nothing else?”

I shook my head. He leaned back further, lifting the front legs off of the ground. “Well, I see why you didn’t follow up with it. I’m not sure there were any leads to follow up with.”

I nodded. It was the exact reason why I didn’t want to bother. “Until now. With the symbols on the guys who broke in, there should at least be some sort of trail behind them.”

Alex held up a hand to slow me down. “Curran was a politically protected monster. Are you sure we want to play these games again?”

I frowned. Considering the lobby behind Christopher Curran and his day job as an abortionist, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that whoever was behind him had similar protection.

Alex continued. “I mean, if I’m not mistaken, when you get at least four people with demonic symbols everywhere, this counts as a cult. We could call the FBI and give it to them. After all, he was a serial killer, and this cult seems to connect to him. They do serial killers. These guys are at the very least serial killer adjacent. Why not give it to them?”

I nodded to concede his point. “That is all true. Except, who in the FBI do you think could stop them? What if they have another Curran up their sleeves? Unless you know if the FBI has their own squad to handle the occult for real.”

Alex said nothing but continued to frown, chewing that one over. We had all hoped that the nightmare was behind us. Unfortunately, I couldn’t imagine a situation where anyone else could have handled it without at least the exact same knowledge, resources and abilities that we’d had back then. And we were lucky. Maybe the Feds could have brought more manpower to bear. Or perhaps they would have shot Curran, had the demon jump bodies, and we would still be trying to figure out who and what the next perpetrator was.

Alex finally said, “How would you pitch it?”

I sighed. “The tats on our John Does tell us that it’s connected to the Curran case, and we were the leads. The fact that Curran’s buddies have targeted me just means that the case wasn’t actually closed yet, we just didn’t know it. They don’t take investigators off of an open case just because someone shoots at us.”

Alex shook his head. “That could be used against us. You didn’t make any friends by the time we were done with the Curran case. There’s rocking the boat, and then there’s hitting the boat with an iceberg. You, my friend, are an iceberg. And there’s a difference between being the target of a lone psycho and being the target of a cult bent on your death. I mean, heck, they could screw up and get me by mistake.”

* * *

Our Lieutenant eventually agreed with me. I think he was less swayed by the “open case” aspect of my argument and more swayed by the political angle that I was already involved. I had already pissed off everyone there was to piss off and having bigwig politicos be angry at one officer was better than being pissed off at the entire precinct.

Alex scoffed and said, “What am I? Chopped liver?”

When our Lieutenant added, “I know they’re the wrong tattoos but have you considered MS-13? I’m sure they’re still upset at you.”

I knew exactly where we were going to go that day.

Continue reading here.

Death Cult, Chapter 2: Clean up

The official release of Death Cult is in 24 hours.

Hopefully, you're looking forward to it as much as I am, especially after reading chapter one yesterday.

I did say that it started a little faster than book 1 did. Heh heh heh.

Now, one of the things that caused me to place Tommy Nolan in Glen Oaks is that it fit. It was a relatively enclosed community, with it's own small security force. It wasn't anything big, but it was enough to call the cops in case of emergencies.

.... Fat lot of good that did in Hell Spawn.

But sadly, after everything I put him through in Hell Spawn... yeah, there was no way in Hell that any community, no matter how open, no matter how relaxed they are, no way in Hell would Nolan be allowed to stay.

Then there's this.

Yesterday's post was chapter 1, so if you're behind, just click and you're right there.

Chapter 2: Clean Up

I waited outside my house as the street once more became a parking lot for police cars. The Glen Oaks Village Office, which ran this little community, had objected to the previous three times that this had happened. It scared the neighbors. It’s why this was the last day we would live there. At the very least, we would not have to be threatened with eviction. We were leaving in the morning.

A new car pulled up, parking at a fire hydrant just outside the crime-scene tape. Out strode an older man built like a bean pole. His cheap suit flapped on his thin frame like a scarecrow in a strong wind. He was bald right up the center, with a tonsure of gray hair around the back and sides. His jowls were covered in gray whiskers, as though some grew faster than others. There was a handlebar mustache that was barely on this side of neat. He was too old to be a millennial, but they sure loved his hair. Sorta the way he loved his mustache.

And I worked with him.

“So, Tom, if your place has been shot up twice, do they charge you double safety deposit?” my partner Alex Packard called out as he strolled up my walkway.

I gave him a casual shrug … as casual as one could be wearing a bathrobe outside in the coldest January on record.

“You forget,” I told him, “this is number three. There was MS-13, then the car through the front window, and maybe the Molotov to the front door. So, number four, really. Remember, there’s a reason we were ‘invited’ to leave.”

Alex nodded. “Yup. You’re hard on the upholstery.”

I rolled my eyes. Also the people of Glen Oaks Village weren’t all that friendly. Never mind that I had solved the murder of one of their own residents. Perhaps they just wanted to purge everyone involved in the incident. “Don’t ask me, I’m just the target. Take it up with the forces of Hell.”

Alex held up his hands. “No thanks. Last time was enough. More than.”

I couldn’t blame him. Christopher Curran and the legion of nightmares inside of him had come close to wrecking my family, my job, and my city. No one wanted to relive that spot of trouble. That included me, my partner, my wife, my son, the entire NYPD Emergency Services Unit, and the total population of Rikers Island.

I walked back into the house, and Alex came in with me. Uniforms were talking to Mariel and Jeremy. We were still out of earshot when Alex asked, “How’d they get in? Any sign of entry?”

I nodded to the uniforms. “They haven’t found anything during the search. Neither have I. Three guys came in, no signs of how.” I shrugged. “If these guys succeeded in killing us off, you wouldn’t know where to begin.” I frowned, thinking it over. “If they could get out as spotlessly as they came in, they could have made me look like a family annihilator.”

Alex gave a wrinkled smile and shook his head. “Nah. No one who knew you would buy that for a second. We’d start the investigation immediately by assembling a list of everyone you pissed off. Starting last week, and working backwards. I’d be done compiling the list sometime before I die of natural causes.”

I shrugged again as I considered all of the various and sundry people I had rubbed the wrong way during the Curran case. I had made enemies out of at least two movements and the employees of the “Women’s Health Corps,” and probably the ACLU. When the newspapers made me front page news, I had become fodder for every nutjob with an agenda and too much time on their hands, as well as every anti-cop. It was responsible for one of the three attacks on my home the previous year.

“Probably right.”

Alex chuckled. “I guess you’ll have plenty of time to move. No way anyone will let you work on this case.”

I gave him a small smile. I had thought of that. “We’ll see.”

Alex nodded to himself, probably working out his own angle on getting me on the case. “Have you checked them out for any identifying marks?”

I had to shake my head. “Didn’t get the chance. By the time I had the scene secured and got Mariel and Jeremy out, the unis were pulling up. They took over, and I haven’t been allowed near one of them—the bodies or the prisoner.”

“Understood.”

Alex wandered over into the dining room. Mariel was seated against the wall, since the table had already been packed up and away to the new house. Jeremy sprawled out partially on her lap, partially hanging off. He had fallen asleep. I guess after last time, when a demon-possessed serial killer held him at knife point, this was relatively boring.

Alex gave a little wave. “Hey Mariel. How’re you doing?”

Mariel gave him a wan smile. “I’ve been better.” She readjusted Jeremy and looked back to the uni, who finished making her notes, gave a quick nod, and wandered off.

Alex grabbed a chair and turned it around so he could straddle it. “So, walk me through it, from the top.”

It was over in fifteen minutes, after we retold the entire incident about six times. For an incident that took about thirty to sixty seconds, you’d be surprised how long it can take in the retelling. We went over our plans, the rehearsals, the guns. Explaining Jeremy’s gun was a problem. It was in my name, and Jeremy had used it. It was less a police issue and more a “New York City hates guns” issue. It wasn’t mandatory that every gun had to be locked away unless it was being used, though it often felt like it. I had to make certain to avoid all mention that the three of us considered it “Jeremy’s gun” in the reports. Don’t ask me to explain the city’s hatred of guns. The only good argument against guns in the city came from a visiting Texan who took one look at the crowded city streets and deemed them too unsafe for anyone to fire in self defense, because if the bullet went through the target, somebody else was going to get hit.

By the time Alex, Mariel, and I were done with that conversation, the meat wagon had arrived. Medical Examiner Holland strolled in. Two bruisers carried a stretcher behind her. If I didn’t know any better, I would have said that they were her personal security while she was on the job. But carrying dead weight around all day was probably better than a gym membership for building muscle.

Alex laughed at the stretcher. “You’re going to need another one for upstairs.”

The uniform looked up from the note pad, confused. “Another two.”

I looked over, startled. There had been two shots coming into the bedroom, and I would have sworn that the one in Jeremy’s room wasn’t that bad. “You have three dead up there?”

The uni arched a brow. “Why? Should there be more?”

“No. But one guy should be alive.”

“Really?” She shrugged. “I guess that’s why that one guy was handcuffed to the radiator.”

I frowned. That last perpetrator hadn’t been bleeding excessively, so it made no sense why he died. I looked to Holland. “Sorry, Sinead. More work for you.”

She laughed. “They made the mistake of breaking into your place. Their fault, not yours.”

They tramped upstairs and came down with the first body within ten minutes. I waved them to a stop. Now that the body was moved from where it fell, I figured it was time to follow through on something Alex mentioned.

Alex and I approached, and Holland nodded. “I thought you’d want a closer look.”

“If only to see if I knew the guy.”

Holland gave one of her sly smiled. “Oh, there’s something here you know.”

Holland pulled down the sheet. It was the corpse with the bullet graze on the forehead and one in the ear. He was shirtless, a feature I hadn’t seen in the dark. His upper chest was covered with a full artistic rendering of a man getting his heart ripped out and held up to the sun. It was the image of an Aztec ritual of human sacrifice.

It was also one of the many symbols left in blood at two of the crimes scenes of Christopher Curran, while he was possessed by a legion of demons.

I didn’t even look away when I asked my partner, “Think I can be on the case now, Alex?”

Alex winced. “Maybe. You can replace me. I don’t think I want any part of it.”

I nodded. I didn’t, either. But I didn’t think I would have a choice. The demon had promised, that the people who summoned it wouldn’t be happy with me. I had no reason to doubt it.

He frowned as the body was covered up and carried away. “You know what? I have a problem.”

“I thought you quit drinking.” I joked.

“Ha. Ha,” he stated flatly. He shook his head. “No. I mean that Curran …” He looked around and made certain that no one was close enough to hear him. His voice dropped to a whisper as he said, “You could smell him coming? Right? But you didn’t mention a thing about catching a whiff of these guys. Did they just walk in without you noticing until they were almost on you?”

I nodded with a frown. I had noticed what Alex meant. As part of being a Saint … Argh. Wonder Worker. I’m not a saint, I’m not dead yet. Why can’t we get better names for these things? … One of my abilities was to literally smell evil. I had caught the scent of the demons within Christopher Curran, even before I knew what they were, and even back when they were in a different human being. Like a blood hound, I could even smell the lingering stench of evil left behind at a crime scene, and follow it like a bloodhound. I’d even smelled it coming off a human once, as well as an entire building. But these killers had only given off a faint scent. Being connected to the demon should have caused a smell like a stink bomb.

What fresh Hell is this?

Death Cult can be purchased at Amazon right here.

Death Cult Chapter 1: Blowback from Hell

This is it.

Death Cult's official release is this Tuesday, December 11th.

But you don't have to wait that long.

Because here it is, Chapter 1.

Be warned, this one starts a little faster than book 1.

Chapter 1: Blowback from Hell

I was awoken from sleep to the sounds of my son screaming.

I pulled my service weapon from under my pillow. It wasn't procedure, but I'd had a strange year. My wife Mariel had also drawn her handgun. Large, human shapes appeared in our bedroom doorway. No one had shouted police, nor had they given any indication of who they were.

In short, we shot first, and aimed high. The first one went down easily. Mariel's bullet grazed his head, twisting it around. It made his ear the 10 ring, which I hit. The second one took three bullets in the chest and barely lost a step. The fourth bullet made him drop forward.

By this time, we were both on our feet and heading for Jeremy’s room. We hadn't practiced this often, but it had been a rough few months, and we were already hardwired.

I wheeled into the doorway of Jeremy’s room at a crouch. Mariel was at my back, watching for any other incoming from the stairs.

The man held my ten year old son off the ground with one arm, a gun to his head. The man was tall and narrow, swathed in brown leather. His hair was slicked back and slightly mussed from holding my struggling son.

Jeremy held his plushy Ninja Turtle, and seemed to be clutching it with both hands, though I couldn’t see his right hand. When we thought he was too old for stuffed animals, he argued that one is never too old for Donatello.

The man cocked his Beretta, and I knew there would be no discussion.

All I said was, “Please don’t hurt my family.”

The turtle exploded. So did the man’s knee. He lurched to one side. Most importantly, his gun went one way, and Jeremy dropped to the floor and rolled out from between me and the perp.

I fired. I didn’t shoot to kill, since I wanted him alive. (IA liked living perps). I was prepared for this, so I stitched a line of bullets into his gun shoulder. His arm dropped, and the gun tumbled from his fingers. I charged off the floor and caught him with a flying knee. He didn’t scream once, even when we crashed into the radiator and his other knee buckled.

I ended up on top of him, but he wasn’t discouraged. He threw an uppercut, driving his fist deep into my gut. The impact lifted me off the floor. I’d been lucky, he caught me on the exhale, otherwise the fight would have been over. (Trust me. You don’t want the wind knocked out of you. Ever) The terrible strength was familiar from the first, and only, supernatural creature I’d battled. It was why I shot for his shoulder joint. I knew firsthand that immobilizing the joint would disable even someone on PCP…Or one possessed by a demon.

With the first hit, I knew I didn’t want a second. I jammed the muzzle of my pistol into the crook of his elbow as he cocked his fist back for another blow. Then I blew his elbow out with a nine-mm jacketed round.

Without a sound, he stopped struggling.

I pushed myself to my feet and backed up, gun ready.

I didn’t take my eyes off the invader. “Mariel. Is Jeremy okay?”

“He is. I have him.”

I nodded and backed up. I kicked the exploded turtle to one side. I’d worked out plans with my wife and son, since the previous monster had tried to kill them both. We just executed scenario 1, variation B. One meant attack in the home. “B” was always a variation with Jeremy held, with his turtle. On my signal, Jeremy was to distract the felon holding him hostage.

The signal was Please don’t hurt my family.

At that point, Jeremy was to fire the .22-caliber pistol hidden inside Donatello.

Yes, a pistol for a ten-year-old. It wasn’t uncommon for seven-year-olds in some areas to have a .22 rifle, and wait a spell before a pistol. But it was mostly a matter of maturity. After Jeremy had directly encountered a demonic infestation, and a possessed serial killer and never throwing the first punch in all the schoolyard fights that followed, despite more than sufficient provocation. He didn’t even have nightmares. Think he’s mature enough?

We secured the threat, called it in, and got backup (even though village security was probably on it already).

As we went through the motions, one thing kept bugging me. The invader we captured had had his knee, shoulder, and elbow utterly destroyed. I’d slammed into him, adding my weight to his on his knee, and driving the wounded knee into the radiator.

He had never even screamed. Not once.

Buy Death Cult now.

Writing MS-13 as villain

When I first started writing Hell Spawn, I figured that I wasn't using any controversial bad guys when I threw in MS-13 as a throwaway character. I had heard of them back when I was taking a course on Organized Crime in 2003, and I then tripped over them in Vince Flynn's Consent to Kill.

I mean, these were bad guys that were one step away from being on a terrorist watch list, and they were a street gang that owned rocket propelled grenades. They had freaking military training. Their motto was "rape, control, kill." These are wonderful, made to order minions for an action-adventure film -- you know, one of the faceless thugs that Ahhhnuld mowed down in droves.

And MS-13 .... was basically going to be a random encounter. There would be no follow up from them. At all. They were one random encounter in the outline.

During my writing, I felt I needed another random encounter. The one in the outline was several chapters away, and there's been a ton of exposition in this book. Hey, let's have a small little encounter on the street...

Hey, maybe that little encounter leads to the big encounter in a few chapters! That would be solid.

And, suddenly, MS-13 became a running subthreat and mini-boss in Hell Spawn. Dang. That spiraled.

Anyway, a month after I finished the book, MS-13 had murdered several people not rock-throwing distance away from me, I though, "Hey, I'm ahead of the curve by a little." More often than not, someone does something that mirrors my books far too close for my comfort. If MS-13 were an emerging threat in real life, maybe they would be in the media by the time Hell Spawn released in September. That would be really, really lucky.

I finished writing Hell Spawn in November of 2017.

The state of the union in January 2018 featured MS-13, and Trump even had the parents of some of their victims at the State of the Union.....

So maybe they would make national headlines a little sooner than I thought.

But hey, they were already there. And they're MS-13. They've been bad guys for 15 years. Even CSI: Miami had their own, thinly veiled knockoff of MS-13.

Apparently, they're slightly more controversial than that now.

But they've become surprisingly large in the story thread. They're no where near main bad guy status, but boy, do they provide good shootouts.

And just wait until you see what they do in Death Cult. Heh heh heh.

Death Cult's official release is next week, so you might want to pre-order it now.

Writing Death Cult

Death Cult is coming out in about a week.

I should probably mention it a little bit.

Obviously, as a sequel to Hell Spawn, my publisher wanted me to speed things up a little. We didn't need five pages of introduction. After all, on the one hand, Hell Spawn only came out a month ago, no one is going to forget my characters.  And on the other hand, anyone who's a little late to the party will buy book one, read it, and buy book 2.

Trust me, they're gonna buy book 2. Because Hell Spawn was awesome.

But I had to up the ante, and I had to rewrite part of the end to Hell Spawn so I could best segue into it. This is a rewrite I don't even think that Russell and Jagi know about, because I had Death Cult coming to me as I wrapped up the bit with the demon.

Because there's two ways demons go trolling around the world.

One: someone is open to it by being open to it. When your brain becomes an open house, you never know what will wander in. The original case upon which the Exorcist was based had someone playing with oujia boards and such. Leading to my line in Demons are Forever: you don't play with demonic crap, demonic crap does not play with you.

Two: summon demon. Hilarity ensues.

While the killer in Hell Spawn is certainly the type for #1, it had been suggested by my wife that book #2 should have a cult involved.

Well now, wouldn't it just be easy to tie the two together?

Which led to book 3 being tied in with all of them, based off of a suggestion by another friend.  I didn't quite mean to make it a series where everything was tied together, but it happened.

And, frankly, it's awesome.

Yes, I will grant you, Death Cult, like Hell Spawn, were not much in the way of a mystery. They were horror novels with a police procedural thrown in. And I made certain to have a lot of dead ends, but even the dead ends fit together at the end of the day. If not in Hell Spawn  or Death Cult, then in Infernal Affairs.

Shadows of London (TBD... or renamed) is book four, and that's a completely different story.

But still, this wasn't much in a way of a mystery, but I have been reliably informed by my editor (and later, early readers from the kickstarter) that not only are these things awesome and bad ass, but also "creepy as f**k."

So, yeah, I was happy with this one.

One of the major problems was developing a villain after the demon of Hell Spawn. How do you top a demon-driven serial killer? Any villain we get is going to be fairly limp in comparison...

That's an easy step one: make it more than one villain. Make it a group.

.... No, that's not a spoiler, just look at the title.

Ooooh, how about we make it people who raised the demon? Wouldn't that be fun? (No, that's not a spoiler, it has no impact on Hell Spawn, and if you've read it already, you know it happened)

Of course, there are plenty of suspects already before the book even begins. Hell Spawn saw our hero piss off many many people. He wasn't even trying. He was just doing his job. And when Tommy Nolan says he does his job without fear or favor, he means that he doesn't fear anybody, and if he knows you're guilty, he's not doing you a favor.

This will lead to pissing off plenty of people if you get too close to the entitled elite. And this is New York City, anyone who makes more than seven figures probably feels entitled. Probably comes from paying so much in taxes (or paying the accountants to hide the cash).  Either way, there are plenty of people who want Nolan's guts for garters.

It's strange making a character who's hated because he's good, and not because he's a weapon of mass destruction....Though frankly I think my biggest accomplishment was getting Nolan to be a good man without being obnoxious. Or worse, too "Hallmark special."

I think I pulled it off. So far, the reviews on Hell Spawn agree with me.

Anyway, Death Cult is coming. Pre-order you copy now.  And if you haven't read Hell Spawn yet, I think this is one hype train you'll want to join early, because this series isn't going to slow down anytime soon.

Casting Saint Tommy, NYPD, Hell Spawn

So, Hell Spawn has come out. Now it's time to play one of my favorite family games growing up.

The game is "But who would you get for the movie?"

Yes, most readers have had that experience, haven't we? Wondering who of our favorite characters would be played by. Who would match them best. I've done this game with A Pius Man several times. For some reason, I never got around to doing it for Love at First Bite, though one of my acquaintances did. These tend to be photograph heavy.

Anyway, I've been playing that game since I was 10 years old and reading Jurassic Park.... yes, I was ten and reading Jurassic Park. Trust me, I would not have gotten Jeff Goldblum for Ian Malcolm. Too many Ums. We won't go into how the head of InGen became Santa Claus in the films from an evil old bastard in the book....

Anyway, Hell Spawn....

The Big Three

One of the specs that Russell wanted when I originally pitched him was that he wanted fewer characters than my usual. Reading through my vampire series, you can see how fast things grow. I end up with a host of colorful characters, who are unique and .... well, they stand out. Though some of them fell by the wayside more than I expected, even there.

With Saint Tommy, NYPD, I was going to make an effort to cut back on the number of characters. I tried to have two characters take up 90% of the screentime.

I needed three, and some supporting characters. One I didn't even see coming.

Detective Tommy Nolan

This was, perhaps, the first person I cast. And strangely enough, his looks have morphed in my head over time, along with his rank. I had always pictured him as a bachelor patrolman played by, of all people, Dylan McDermott. I had him clearly in my head: black hair, sky blue eyes, long and lanky in blues (ignore how short McDermott is next to Clint Eastwood in In the Line of Fire, he's actually 6'0"). Yes, I know he's too old at this point, I'm talking about ideal casting with a time machine.

And then, for no reason whatsoever, it changed after Russell got back to me with approval of the pitch for the series. Something Russell said made me think "Detective." From there, the character morphed. Obviously, his powers and abilities didn't shift all that much, but the person I saw in my head changed. Taking him out of a uniform and into a suit changed the character....

Don't even ask me why. I've only ever seen McDermott act in suits. You'd think putting the character into one would have made him fit better.

But no, Nolan became ... more virtuous, and less uptight. Don't even ask me why. He became calmer. I won't say mellow. Perhaps "zen." He spoke better. He was thoughtful. Considerate of his words. His elocution improved.

The short version .... he became Will Estes, best known for Jamie Reagan from Blue Bloods.

Yeah, don't ask me why putting him in a suit and tie made him change actors in my head ... especially when he's best known for wearing a uniform.

Don't ask, my brain is strange.

But you'd be surprised how much of a distinctive voice a character has when you run it through a specific voice filter. If it doesn't sound right, it'll stick out. Will Estes fits the role more for the way he talks than for anything else.

And trust me, this is as big a surprised to you as it is to me.

Thankfully, I don't actually have to describe him all that much in the books. After all, it's first person narration. Heh.

The Killer

This is more of a police procedural than anything else. There's less "who done it" than going through the motions from point A to B to C. There were some episodes of Castle a lot like this, where the entire episode went by, and you may have seen the killer for a minute or two in the opening scene. It was almost Scooby Doo in their execution, only the killer was even less vivid.

I'm not going to tell you an awful lot about the character, because, well, there needs to be some mystery.

The killer, however, is ... dark. Cold. Evil. I'd almost want to give him to Jim Caviezel. Given how Caviezel works, he'd probably take it. Given how Hollywood casting gave the 6'5" Jack Reacher to 5'5" Tom Cruise, they'd probably offer it to him first.

But I also made him short. At least, shorter than average. Say he's around 5'6."

But I wouldn't say no to Jim Caviezel, because I can see him doing three of the characters on this list if you pushed it a little.

But going by the description in the novel, we need short. And short actors are easier to find than you might think.

Considering how creepy this sucker is, if I was using a time machine, I'd go back to 1996, and grab Brad Dourif, who has played every crazy person in Hollywood since Chucky.

Frankie Muniz is short enough .... and I liked him on that episode of Criminal Minds. (If you see one episode of Criminal Minds, see that one. If you see two, add the one with Alex O'Loughlin.)

Everyone knows Michael J. Fox... but Parkinsons is a deal breaker.

Seth Green... I don't know if he can do Satanic evil.

.... Hmm, now here's three contenders. Daniel Radcliffe, Elijah Wood, and Martin Freeman.

And I'm good with and of the three of them.

Radcliffe playing against type would be entertaining.

I'm told that Elijah Wood stands out as a psycho in, I think, Sin City.

And Martin Freeman can do whatever he likes as far as I'm concerned.

Alex Packard

A fellow named Al Packard was a friend of the family when I was growing up. To be honest, I never knew if Al was short for Alexander, Alphonse, Alfred, or Alfredo. He was smart. A fast talker in both word and thought. His conversations could come out in fast, clipped, machinegun fire storm of bullets. He was bald for as long as I could remember, and I distinctly remembered his mustache, though he shaved it off in later years.

When I was developing a partner, I wanted someone different from Nolan. Think Jerry Orbach from Law and Order. Cynical. World weary.

So we need an older actor, bald, who can rock a mustache, and can give us a gamut of emotions from cynical to "Holy Crap, what was that?"

Hmm, a good actor, even a character actor ....  bald, older, mustache.....

I think JK Simmons can pull it off.

Supporting Cast

A lot of these people I have bouncing around the story. They are largely supporting cast, since I didn't want to get anyone too big a part unless they were our hero or our villain. Packard just wouldn't stay quiet, and he wouldn't go away. He wouldn't even shut up. And putting him in the hospital would be a little cliche. Don't believe me, watch a Dirty Harry film sometime. Tommy Nolan isn't Clint Eastwood, much to the gratitude of his partner.

Mariel Nolan

One of the other things that surprised me when Tommy became a detective was, suddenly, he had a wife and child. No, seriously brain, where did they come from? I have no idea. For some reason, she popped up, fully formed in my head. Also, she looked like a friend of mine. No, I won't post a picture. It was odd.

But I will say she's a brunette, brown eyes, round face, almost Italian looking. Her hair goes down to the top of her shoulder blades.  Hmm.... Bridget Moynahan? Maybe. Her face isn't round enough. Though it's odd to realize that she goes back to Coyote Ugly and The Recruit.

Frankly, I'm looking for someone like Maria Bello or Alyssa Milano. Only, you know, someone who could act or didn't age out of the part 20 years ago. (Okay, Bello can act, and she hasn't aged much since Mister and Mrs Smith nearly 30 years ago. But still, let's not push it if we can avoid it.)

.... Huh. Wait, I know. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Can act.

I don't think Eliza Dusku is doing anything right now....

Okay, Eliza Dusku is running a production company at the moment, and she's producing a film she's not even starring in. And, technically, she's about eight years older than the character is, but I'm not going to be nitpicky. She fits.


Daniel David DiLeo, "D"

I do like me my funny names.

D was a character developed largely because I wanted two things. I wanted to show that Nolan was merciful, someone who could get along with anybody as long as they were willing to afford him the same respect. Also, Tommy needed someone with street contacts.

It was hard designing someone like that. Your average street criminal uses cops for initiation and target practice. Kill a cop, get your merit badge. So he needed to be a better class of criminal.

Do I use the mafia? It's tempting, but I've already used the mafia in Love at First Bite.


What I needed was someone who could be classified as organized crime, but enough street to fit into the precinct I'm looking for.

So, black fellow. White collar crime after graduating from street crime.

In my head, I wanted a young Yaphett Koto, Live and Let Die era. Big, but not fat. Businesslike but not with a business cut. And while I mentioned I would be casting with a time machine, I'm not going to reach back that far into the past.

We need someone who can pass for a criminal, yet be dignified. A -- pardon the expression -- white collar criminal who will smack you for saying "gangsta" because it's pronounced "gangster, now pull up your damn pants."

I guess there's Lawrence Fishburne, who every seems to believe as a street criminal, even though he talks Shakespeare.  Again, too old. If only there was a younger clone of him.

Oh wait....

Meet Lawrence Fishburne's son, Langston. Or should I say his clone. He played a younger version of his father for Ant-Man and the Wasp, and damn does he look like his father, especially in that film. it's only in this lighting that I can see it's not the same person. Did they CGI Langston to look like his dad? No idea.

But he'll do.

ADA William Carlton

I did not see this one coming. During the investigation, Detective Nolan will step on a few toes. Lawyers will be called in. Or in this case, the lawyers will summon Nolan and Packard to Manhattan. Yes, Queens has an ADA, but politics is a thing.

Don't ask me how, he's been a recurring character in all three novels so far.

For some reason, and I don't know why, but he also came out like someone I knew. Someone with legal training, well spoken, big, with a bushy beard....

Okay, in my head, he came out as John C Wright.

I actually asked people who knew him. We ended up with two actors.

Brian Blessed, or John Rhys-Davies.



Sinead Holland

When I was writing up the outline on the novel, I knew I needed a medical examiner. There were creepy and unnerving details that were only available during an autopsy.

It's strange when I teach my editor (who's probably better educated than I am) a new word.

The word is disarticulation.


At the time, I was listening to a lot of the group Within Temptation.

Their lead singer is Sharon den Adel.

One of their hit songs is called Sinead.

The next part of the YouTube playlist was Peter Holland.

That's pretty much all you need to know of that character design.

As for actress .... no idea. Den Adel is from Europe, so she has an accent. And in her videos, she handles English well, but I have no idea how much of that is practice. She's not an actress. And I don't think an ESL star, no matter how much practice she has, wants to handle technical medical vocabulary.

I mentioned Alyssa Milano earlier. Maybe her? Or Maria Bello. They're both in the right age for that, and there are some similarities to den Adel.

We'll see.

Rene Ormeno

When I was talking with my family about this plot, I believe it was my father who created a random encounter.

As I was writing a scene, I needed, well, another random encounter.

And this throw away random character not only justified the encounter suggested to me, but also ended up with a character who lasted all three book.

Enter Rene Ormeno. I won't go into him too much, but let's just say that he leaves a mark. With a 2x4. Latino male, well built, early 30s.

I originally wanted Bruce Ramsay for Ormeno. Fans of Babylon 5 might know him better as the possessed in Babylon 5: The Lost Tales film. I would have had him for the killer, but there's a scene in Death Cult he would be perfect for. I like his voice modulation. But he's a little too white to play an MS-13 shot caller.

As much of a badass as Danny Trejo is, according to IMDB, he's 74 years old.... Yikes. (He's got 20 projects coming out in the next 14 months, but he's older than my father. Oy!)


I'd say Robert LaSardo, but he's been been "MS-13 knockoff #5" since he guest starred on CSI: Miami.

Sadly, most of the actors I can think of for this role are either too old (Trejo, Banderas, Bardem, Leguizamo) comedy relief (Michael Pena) too short (Moises Arias, who's 4'11")or Jay Hernandez... that guy on the Magnum knockoff.

Then again, as Ormeno is a member of MS-13, with a face full of tattoos, Hernandez could pull it off, if he didn't mind playing the bad guy.

Father Richard Freeman

I knew I would need a priest in this story, if only because, well, saints and demons and whatnot. More importantly, I needed someone who either knew supernatural crap or could readily lay his hands on it.

At the time, my friends AM Freeman and Richard Paolinelli were on Facebook.

Now you know the secret to my naming convention system. I smash together whoever is lying around.

Father Freeman is slender and graying and ... screw it, I want to but Jim Caveizel in here somewhere. Here will do.




Whew that was a lot of stuff.

Anyway, that's pretty much it. There's one character left, but we'll talk that over when Death Cult happens.

Be well all, and I look forward to seeing your reviews on Hell Spawn.

I think you're going to like it.