DamianSerbu.com

The Horror Writers Association hosts a blog for the month of October, Halloween Haunts. The contributions are so much fun to read as we march toward Halloween. My entry was published today, so please check out “The Queer Monster Within!”

Link: The Queer Monster Within.

The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror has a great blog event for the month of October! The blog spotlights various people explaining why they love the horror genre. I am honored to be included, with Friday, October 15th’s entry. Please follow the link below to check out my thoughts. And do stick around to check out the other people who contributed to the blog, with a rich diversity of opinions and ideas!

Damian Serbu on Why He Loves Horror!

The Wizard World Convention takes place this weekend at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, IL. If you’re in the Chicagoland area, I hope you will attend because . . . I am going to present there!

I am super excited to be a part of the Chicago Chapter of Horror Writers Association. At 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, October 16th, the chapter will host a panel at Wizard World Chicago on the craft of writing horror!

This should be a fun event for October! Prepare for Halloween by coming to discover where horror authors come up with their frightening ideas. There are a ton of other exciting events at the convention, too, so check it out: Wizard World Convention Information.

For those of you worried about safety protocols, I am, too! This will be my first public appearance since the pandemic began. The convention REQUIRES all attendees and participants to wear a mask at all times over the nose and mouth. No chin diapers. No lame excuses to forego wearing a mask. Protect yourselves and protect others.

Ready to get your gay vampire/ghost/witch freak on for October?! You should be.

The links to each novel will take you to the place where your can pick what format you prefer and click into the place to buy it!

The Vampire’s Angel

The Vampire’s Quest

The Vampire’s Witch

The Vampire’s Protege

The Bachmann Family Secret

Santa Is a Vampire

Santa’s Kinky Elf, Simon

I am sharing another great read from a fellow NineStar Press author with you today! I hope you will dive into Thomas Grant Bruso’s Summer Storms and enjoy it as much as I did!!

Summer Storms by Thomas Grant Bruso: Sixteen-year-old Earl Layman is going stir-crazy. Secluded with the flu inside the four walls of his home and only the escape of his video games to help him through, Earl is struggling to keep his sanity.

That is until he notices the boy next door, seventeen-year-old Rex Chambers, raking leaves in the adjacent yard.

Earl’s summer is about to change. Before another torrential rainstorm hits the small upstate New York town of Betham County, they meet during an awkward cell phone exchange. As they start to connect through occasional texts, Earl and Rex enter the throes of adolescent lust.

In the early stages of forging a lasting connection, their family situations threaten to destroy all they are working for.

BUY LINK: SUMMER STORMS!

Today, I am super excited to share Eddie Newton’s TRUTH TO LIGHT with you!!! A mystery involving a secret organization which threatens everything Sofia thinks she understands about the world . . . and in the midst of the thrilling tale, she comes to find herself. Another gem from a NineStar author that I loved!!

What is she willing to sacrifice to hide the truth?

Sofía Hernandez has been looking for her truth all her life. She was adopted as a baby and never knew her birth parents. She was assigned male, and that wasn’t the truth either. So when she gets a phone call from someone offering to clear up the mysteries in her life, she starts on an adventure that leads to revelations she can hardly believe are true.

Sofía’s birth sister reaches out and reveals a world full of greater mysteries than Sofía ever could have imagined. A secret organization called the Illuminati created a universal lie about the population of Earth, concealing the true nature of the world. The Illuminati hides the real Wider World behind a magical glamour, concealing the existence of ghosts, aliens, monsters, angels, demons, and more.

Truth to Light is a novel that explores what it means to be true to yourself and what truth can mean to different people. Sofia is a transgender woman who must deal with changes both within and without. Her transformation will need to accommodate not only her own identity, but the very nature of the world around her.

Buy it here: TRUTH TO LIGHT

Hi, All!

Paul and I love the summer – the warm weather and longer days here in the Midwest, eating on our deck almost every night, and great weather for morning exercise! Thankfully, as a horror/speculative fiction fan and writer, I also embrace the change of seasons and look forward to fall. Halloween! Witches! Ghosts! Vampires! Enjoying those thing eases the loss of summer for me.

I decided it was time to give updates on my currents WIPs (Works in Progress):

–The Vampire’s War sits in the hands of my beta readers, who will soon return their feedback to me for further editing. I hope to submit the manuscript to my publisher by the end of this month. Fingers crossed!

–The Easter Bunny Is a Werewolf brings back Simon the Elf, who at the behest of Santa is hanging out with the Easter Bunny to learn his sordid tale (pun intended). This project is getting my priority focus, so look for another dark satire in the not too distant future!

-Sci Fi invasion: I am dabbling in my first sci fi story – a young adult novel about an alien invasion. I can’t tell you more yet, and I don’t even have a title for it! But it’s been a lot of fun to work on something different from anything I’ve written thus far.

-Little Red Riding Hood – I am also working on a retelling of this fairytale as a young adult novel. Fun note: I originally wrote this as a middle grade work, then realized I suck at middle grade. As I contemplated some necessary revisions, the muse kept pointing to the ways I should instead transform what I have into a young adult novel – and away I go!

As always, thank you so much for your interest in my writing!!!

NineStar Press released another totally awesome novel that I wanted to share with you! I love a good futuristic space story!!

Corporations control every sector of society from law enforcement to automated manufacturing. The economic and social divides are chasms.

Jobs are scarce for an undocumented slug like Arad Ansari, and life on Earth’s Grey District A-5 colony is even harder. With no other options, he plies his youthful looks to hustle enough money to stay fed even without a roof over his head. So when Captain Torrins of the Midas Ascending offers him employment as his personal cabin boy, Arad takes the opportunity despite his reservations. Because what other choice does a desperate, poverty-stricken man with no prospects have?

When corporate military forces demand payment for Torrin’s and the crew’s sins, Arad is left alone and adrift in unknown space. After years of smothering on the crowded streets of Grey District, a ship of his own should be an unexpected windfall, but it doesn’t take long to discover what—or rather, who—were originally being smuggled on board.

More than human, more than an animal, Roku is a blend of both, a marvel of genetics and highly illegal. His past is a mystery, even to himself, a story told only through his nightmares. Despite a dubious introduction, an unspoken bond forms between him and Arad while they try to repair the ship before supplies run dry or corporate forces track them down.

Time is not on their side.

Overcoming their pasts and learning to trust one another are the keys to Arad and Roku’s survival, and they have to succeed to find their place together in the universe.

CLICK HERE TO BUY!

Kevin Klehr is a fellow NineStar Press author and stopped by to share news about his upcoming release! I hope you will add it to your late summer reading list and enjoy!

If you met your dream lover, would you ever stay awake?
You can now PRE-ORDER an eBook copy and read The Midnight Man THREE DAYS BEFORE RELEASE!

The Midnight Man

I wanted to let everyone know that I finished the first draft of The Vampire’s War! This novel will be the fifth installment in the Realm of the Vampire Council series! I am excited to enter the next phase with my vampires once again.

I enjoy reading how other authors go about their writing process, so thought I would share my methodology regarding The Vampire’s War with you.

Stage One: With my vampire novels, I first outline them. In the case of The Vampire’s War, I edited the outline until draft three felt ready to go.

Stage Two: Now I begin writing! Each time I return to the project, I revise whatever I wrote in my previous session. Also, when I complete a chapter, I edit the entire chapter one time before moving to the next one.

Stage Three: When I finish the manuscript as described in stage two, I edit the entire novel one time. For The Vampire’s War, this edit took a little more time than most of my novels because a major change happened in the middle of my writing. You see, the vampires decided to alter a key part of the outline about half way through my writing. I therefore had to be extra careful in editing to reflect this change in anything I wrote about before the vampires screwed with my outline. Fuckers – they love to mess with me.

Stage Four: This is where The Vampire’s War resides right now. I ship the draft off to my trusted beta readers. Time for them to find my mistakes and flaws, recommend changes, and then get the draft back to me so I can edit accordingly!

Once I finish tweaking The Vampire’s War with their suggestions I will cross my fingers and send it off to my publisher! Of course I will keep you posted.