Bloodbound: West of Nowhere follows a human-turned-vampire as he navigates a complicated relationship with his partner as he begins to realize his newly-acquired powers may be more than he bargained for. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

In improvisation, students are taught the “Yes, and” technique. If your scene partner says you’re a racing driver with a limp, you take the character prompt and you add something extra to top it. In creating Bloodbound, I wanted my vampires to break as many tropes as possible and then add my own special twist, create my own universe and lore. 

I decided to make Hunter a cambion, that is to say, have him be the offspring of a demon and a human, because I thought that might be a neat twist on your standard vampire story – what if the human wasn’t just a human when he was turned? Then I had to determine what kind of demon might be in his lineage. And from that came my own “Yes, and:” Did it necessarily have to be a single demon? What if there’s more than one in his bloodline, and all of those individual traits, when mixed with the new vampire blood, could yield interesting results? 

We start exploring this at the end of Book 1, Reawakening, and develop it further into what we call “Mind’s Eye” in this book. Hunter can use a heightened telepathic ability to find a person’s deepest, darkest fears – imagined, maybe a real-life trauma. He can then alter the immediate space around him (and his target) to project a recreation of that dream or that memory. It’s like putting on a VR device without the goofy-looking equipment.

But it’s certainly not the only thing he’ll be able to do…

Do you have a favorite scene in this installment of the Bloodbound series? One that was especially fun to craft? 

It’s a tie for two scenes. One is my homage to the Wayside School series of children’s books by Louis Sachar, which I could easily point to as the books that inspired me to write. In that lore, the school is a skyscraper, one classroom on each floor. There’s no 19th story, and there’s a series of chapters, each labeled Chapter 19, in which a character is stuck on the nonexistent 19th floor. I have a segment in West of Nowhere in which my characters are stuck in a time loop, and the first portion of that chapter repeats a few times with minor differences – including a different chapter title with a repeating number – before a character realizes what’s going on and breaks the loop.

The second is a trope-breaker: Vampire fans may know the old lore that one must be invited into a stranger’s residence in order to go inside. We have a scene in which it’s explained that “Welcome” mats count as implied permission by way of printed word. I got a giggle while writing it and I hope it’s met with a few by the reader!

What intrigues you about the horror and supernatural genres?

Horror is universal – we all have fears, both rational and irrational, and they can all manifest in beautiful, bizarre ways. I think the trick, the challenge, is how to craft the visual in a way that may touch different people in radically different ways. It’s the same reason why supernatural stories attract me: that genre is an extension of a creator’s aspirations, and that could cause so many different reactions from an audience who consumes that story and then thinks: ‘What would I do, how would I react, if I could do this?’

Can you give us a peek inside book 3? Where will it take readers? 

Book 3 is called Alternate Tracks, and it explores the concept and tropes of alternate timelines and planes of existence. Hunter will discover a few more of his latent demonic powers, a possible ally or enemy,  and we’ll have a pile of mobile goo that can drain the lifeblood and moisture from any being it touches heading toward South Padre Island during Spring Break!

Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon