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!”
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.
Sixteen-year-old Claire wants her father back. His death left her only memories and an empty locket. After six difficult years in foster care, her vocabulary no longer includes “hope” and “trust”.
Everything changes when Justin rides his magical horse into her path and takes her under his wing. Like the rest of the elite men who serve as Spirit Knights, he hunts restless ghosts that devour the living.
When an evil spirit threatens Claire’s life, she’ll need Justin’s help to survive. And how could she bear the Knights’ mark on her soul? Everybody knows Girls Can’t Be Knights.
When Joshua Grant vanishes days before his wedding, his fiancée Remy is left with only bruises, scratch marks and a hastily written note. Heartbroken, she sets off alone to find him and begins a long journey where strange things begin to happen.
As Joshua descends into his new immortal life he indulges his thirst for blood and explores his superhuman strength and amazing new talents while becoming embroiled in coven politics which threaten to destroy him. But Remy discovers a strength of her own on her quest to bring Joshua home.
Fate toys with mortals and immortals alike, as two hearts torn apart by darkness face ordeals which test them to their limits.
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.
