Blood Moon Over Betonville follows a gifted but troubled FBI profiler who investigates a boneyard of human remains in the town of his childhood, where an ancient curse, a mysterious beast, and buried family secrets threaten to destroy everything he thought he knew. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

When I was a boy, I took a bike ride on a trail through a forest behind my house and encountered an old, forgotten cemetery. Something about the place scared me beyond words and I pedaled home furiously without stopping. Though there wasn’t a strange creature there to greet me, I had a nightmare that night of a beast cresting the ridgeline behind the graveyard. The creature’s great form was black as the night sky before the setting sun; its howl rattled my soul, waking me from the dream.

I thought it would be interesting to couple those experiences together as a starting point for the story. Of course, in Blood Moon Over Betonville, we don’t know if the beast was real or imagined in the opening chapter but certainly it’s a metaphor for the protagonist’s tragic childhood and the torment he carries into adulthood.

How did you develop Tom Milner’s personality and his ability to understand the minds of killers, and how have the traumatic experiences of his childhood impacted his relationships and his approach to investigating crimes? 

To a large degree, Tom’s personality is shaped by the events of his childhood. There’s a constant tension in his life. His drive to solve crimes and avenge his mother’s death takes an enormous toll. Losing his mother along with his father’s inability to rise to the challenge leave Tom with crippling feelings of abandonment, which makes it difficult for him to have close relationships. They can’t leave him if he leaves them first.

Though it’s been well-documented that many serial killers lack the capacity for empathy, often what turns them into monsters is experiencing an extremely traumatic childhood. Tom isn’t a sociopath, but his understanding of the mark left behind by tragedy and trauma at an impressionable age gives him a unique insight into their minds. He also has some other special gifts that defy rational explanation.

How did you develop Betonville’s history and its reputation for unusual occurrences?

Betonville was modeled after Coudersport, a small town in western Pennsylvania. For about a year, I lived there with my family when I was a child. The town was in a beautiful setting, surrounded by state and national forests. The people were very warm and welcoming. But it was also a place which had an undefinable, mysterious quality to it. It was where I had my cemetery scare and accompanying night terror. It was the same place that rained blood on walks to school (see Chapter One for more about that). And living in an antique home, where generations of lives had been lived, there was always a sense that you were never completely alone, especially in the house’s dark corners. So, I expanded on this feeling to create the town’s history and reputation.

What do you find most compelling about horror that combines physical danger with psychological and emotional conflict?

The threat of physical danger is a staple of modern-day horror, but for me, it’s the psychological and emotional conflict that makes stories compelling. We find him at the beginning nearly broken and in self-imposed isolation. A war rages for Tom’s psyche. Only when he completes his emotional journey, finding love and friendship and coming to terms with his true nature, can he be ready to face the demon. And whether he rises or falls, for the first time in his life, he won’t be alone.   

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