For Stefan Székely it is a fate worse than death: To be dead yet stuck with his dead parents. After 13 years Stefan can endure it no longer. He wants a castle of his own.
First he must visit his family’s bank in Budapest. But with endless strife across Europe, Stefan hardly recognizes Budapest, capital of the new Hungarian Federation. Nevertheless, he embarks on his reign as a vampire playboy – until he gets a stern warning from the local vampire gang.
Will Stefan fight for his right to party like it’s 2027? Or will an encounter with a stranger change everything? As clashes between vampire gangs and State Security escalate, Stefan discovers he might be the key to changing the fate of Europe forever. If he can survive three bloody nights in Budapest.
For Stefan Székely it is a fate worse than death: To be a vampire yet stuck with his vampire parents. After 13 years Stefan can endure it no more. He wants a castle of his own. But first he must visit his family’s bank in Budapest.
With endless strife rumbling across Europe, Stefan hardly recognizes Budapest, now capital of the Hungarian Federation. The world has changed. Nevertheless, he embarks on the reign of terror he always denied himself, living the vampire playboy lifestyle. Until he gets a stern warning from the local vampire gang. He is not welcome – unless he plays by their rules.
Should Stefan fight for his right to party like it’s 2027? Or will an unexpected encounter with a stranger change everything? As clashes between vampire gangs and State Security escalate, Stefan realizes he just might be the key to changing the fate of Europe forever! . . . If he can survive three bloody nights in Budapest.
Budapest at sunrise
In 2014 my medically accurate vampire novel A DRY PATCH OF SKIN came out to a couple rave reviews. My main purpose then was to counter the hysteria of the Twilight experience with some medical research crossed with an understanding of established legends. I wanted to tell a realistic vampire tale. I even set the story in my own city and the action in the story followed the actual days and months I was writing the story. The story and my writing of the story ended the same week. Of course, I revised and edited after that.
Then I thought . . . what might possibly happen next? So I chose a gap of, say, 13 years (the number seems significant in horror stories). Now, where did I leave my protagonist? How is he doing? What could have happened since the end of the first book? What has changed in the world during these 13 years? How would what’s different in the world affect his own corner of the world? How would he cope with these changes?
As I started on another vampire story I quickly realized that I had to also write essentially a science-fiction story. A futuristic story. If I were setting the story 13 years after the end of the previous novel, then this sequel would be set in 2027. And it would be somewhere in Europe, which is where our hero was at the end of the first book.
What do I know of 2027? Not much. Like many science fictioneers writing about the future, I took the present circumstances, the way things are now (good and bad), and extrapolated how they might progress. Remember that novel by George Orwell, 1984? It was published in 1948 just as fears of a Communist takeover gripped Europe. It was supposed to be a warning. Orwell imagined how the concerns of his present might play out in the future.
With the current strife in Europe, mass immigration, refugees coming to Europe from the Middle East and Africa, the increase in crime, warfare between left and right political groups, I could see all these happenings extending, continuing and growing through the following decade. The moral question that arises is whether an author should follow his/her own beliefs; that is, how the world should be, a Utopian view – or choose a path of development which would be the best setting for the story, however the society might become – or try to take an honest look at current events and let things fall where they might, for good or ill.
I chose both. If I have to make a choice, I will lean toward what makes a good story over what my own beliefs might be. For the sake of this story and for the way I think society will continue to progress/digress or develop or evolve over the next 10 years, I’m letting the European conflicts play out in the sequel: my now less-medically accurate vampire novel, titled SUNRISE.
In this sequel, the new Hungarian Federationis a strictly run Euro-centrist society. The State Security apparatus runs a tidy ship and getting in is very problematic. Staying in if you are a “diseased” resident such as a vampire is dangerous. However, our hero, Stefan Székely, is already within the boundaries of the Hungarian Federation at his family’s estate in the former Croatia; therefore, I, the author, must deal with the vagaries of that location. It was not an unpleasant effort. I love to travel vicariously.
Needless to say, our hero has difficulties – or there wouldn’t be a story. Yet as I charged through the final chapters and then undertook the revision stage, the look and feel, the horrors, and the dystopian ambiance seemed right. Will Stefan escape from the repressive Hungarian Federation? Or will powers greater than himself and the vampire gangs of Budapest have the final say?
In SUNRISE the world gets darker before the light shines again. Book 3, to be titled SUNSET, picks up the story even further into the future. By then, we are in full-fledged Dystopia territory. But, hey! I’m sure everything will work out just fine…if you transform into a vampire in time.
Simon, Fey and Rebecca. An ordinary family trying to cope after the death of the girls’ mother. One day, Rebecca ‘gives’ her imaginary friend, Nathaniel, to her Simon, telling her father he can keep Nathaniel ‘forever’…
Then the phone appears. Then the lies begin. And the pain. And the faces in the photographs…
Simon asks Rebecca who Nathaniel really is. She tells him he prefers to be known by his nickname, ‘Mr. Boogie’…
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Specially commissioned by Universal for the release of the movie sequel ‘Sinister 2‘, Suffer the Little Children is “genuinely terrifying!”
All the best stories begin that way. Once upon a time, Jack climbed a beanstalk. Cinderella did go to the ball.
Once upon a time, his parents died.
When your parents are killed in front of you on the one day of the year when all crime is legal, what do you do?
You prepare for next year. You prepare for payback…
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Specially commissioned by NBC Universal for the release of the film The Purge: Anarchy, Mr. Composure is “simply superb” with the best plot twist ever!”
What if you could steal the final moments from the dying? What if you had the darkest secret, but couldn’t think what it might be? What if you entered the forest in the deep of the night. Who is the melting man? And are your neighbours really whom they appear to be?
So many questions.
To find the answers, you must enter a darker place. Thirteen stories. Thirteen poems. Thirteen more doorways.
Darker Places is the follow up to the acclaimed Dark Places and can be found on Amazon and Smashwords.
Dead, dead, dead. Say it enough times and it becomes just another word.
What would you do? Could you kill a killer? Does the death of one appease the deaths of a hundred? What about that hundred against a thousand?
What if you had no choice?
Meet Sin. No, not that sort of sin, but Sin, crazy as a loon (you ask Sister Moon), and proud of it. Sin locks himself away in an asylum and, every so often, gets violent. That’s only so they’ll give him those nice drugs, though. The ones that help him forget.
It’s a pity they don’t work.
Sin, you see, has a serious problem. Well, it’s not so much his problem, as ours – yours, mine and everyone else’s. People die around Sin. He doesn’t like it and there’s nothing he can do about it. But someone else knows, and Sin has to stop them… and himself…
Flip and catch…
Find the ‘dark, disturbing and amazing’ #1 Psychological Horror Sin on Amazon and in audiobook form, narrated by Grammy nominated R.D. Watson on Audible or iTunes.
A DRY PATCH OF SKIN – The only medically accurate vampire story available today!
The truth about being a vampire: It is not cool, not sexy. It’s a painful, miserable existence.
Good reason to avoid that situation, thinks Stefan Székely. He’s too busy falling in love with TV reporter Penny Park, anyway. Until one day she notices a dry patch of skin on his face.
At first it’s annoying, nothing to worry about, some weird skin disease he can treat with lotions. However, as his affliction worsens, Stefan fears that his unsightly problem will ruin his relationship with Penny.
If only that was all Stefan has to worry about! He soon realizes there is a lot more at stake than his handsome face. To save himself, Stefan must go in search of a cure for the disease which is literally destroying him inch by inch. If only his parents had told him of his family’s legacy.
METANOIA
Definition: n. a spiritual conversion or awakening; a fundamental change of character
Etymology: Greek ‘change one’s mind, repent’
Marli Anderson has just one task: assassinate Oscar La Monde, the man she once loved.
As assassin for hire for the prestigious Merrick’s Inc., she is sent back to her home town to kill the man she now loathes beyond all others—her husband. Considering they are on opposing sides of the uprising, Marli anticipates an easy task; ‘closure’ they call it. The fact that she can exact her revenge for his past discretions is just the icing on the cake.
When she arrives, the town has changed. The man she hated is unexpectedly welcoming. And the town’s folk—well, they’re just… different. Someone or something has transformed them all into a bunch of zombies. They appear to be harmless – but are they?
As she begins to uncover details of who may be behind the townsfolk’s’ metamorphosis, Marli is left fighting for the truth. Will she and Oscar be able to unravel the web of deception before it’s too late?
Should she trust her heart or her head? Which is less likely to get her killed?
Either way, METANOIA is a heart-stopping zombie apocalypse adventure that will keep you guessing at every twist and turn until the very end.
There is darkness and madness in each of us. We must do battle with our own demons.
What if those demons opened the door in the back of your mind and stepped out. What if they became real? If the night, the shadows, the reflections and Death himself walked among us? And what if they were watching you? Waiting? Thirsting…?But…
As a young man, Doctor James Lewis championed for animal rights and transformed the nation. Six decades later his friends and neighbors are eating each other. Can Jim and his great-granddaughter Emily stop the carnage before they become tasty snacks?
Would you have the courage to do what had to be done?
Emeline Hart is faced with this horrifying decision when the miraculous Haum vaccine changes into something hideous. When the mutations start, there is no way to hide the fact that the world is now filled with people who are no longer dying of cancer, heart disease or diabetes. Instead, they become werewolves, vampires and trolls.
In the midst of this, Emeline must search for her missing brother and unravel the conspiracy of events surrounding his disappearance.
The heart pounding action intensifies as medical science goes wrong in EMELINE AND THE MUTANTS.
Three years without a word from the magical half of the planet, and suddenly there was a demon in Vara’s bedroom. Samanith, the representative of the sinister Kendrick & Clarke Temp Agency, had come to offer her a simple baby-sitting position. What Sam neglected to mention was that the ‘baby’ was a headstrong teenage girl, heir to a fortune, the only daughter of the Agency’s most influential client, and she had been bitten by a werewolf.
Dogged by guilt over her father’s mysterious disappearance, which she suspects has been caused by the demons to keep her in line, Vara finds herself facing her brooding former boyfriend, currently working as the heiress’s bodyguard. He still harbors a grudge over their breakup and has resolved to make her job an unpleasant one.
Will Vara survive the rabid wolf instincts growing inside the teenage heiress who hungers for her magic? Or the lecherous tabloid reporter determined to turn the situation into a front page scandal? Or the pack of wolf hunters who want the heiress dead, and possibly Vara too, and all because she had been HIRED BY A DEMON.
THE RING OF LOST Souls is a work of fiction, set in an existing location. Larundel is one part of the larger Mont Park facility situated on the outskirts of the city of Melbourne. It was considered one of the most progressive mental institutions in its time. This facility is currently listed under Heritage Victoria for its unique Tudor design as well as parts of its extensive landscaped garden. Larundel was built in the 1940’s in a bid to expand facilities at Mont Park. Due to the timing of World War Two, it came to house soldiers, who could no longer cope with the vulgarities of war.
