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I’ve wanted to be a writer all my life, but it wasn’t until I read Twilight that my course was set. Now, this is the first time I’ve publicly admitted that my vampire series was inspired by Twilight, so before I go on, I have to clarify some things.
First, my vampires are nothing like the vampires in Twilight and the stories themselves share no similarities. While Twilight centers on a teenage girl who falls in love with a sparkling Romeo, The Crimson Corset is fierce, sexy, bloody, and definitely not for kids. In fact, vampires are about the only thing that Twilight and my Vampires of Crimson Cove series have in common. I write way too much sex and violence to even stand within a seven-mile radius of Twilight — but somehow, that’s what inspired me to write my vampire series (but unlike the undead heartthrobs of Twilight, I knew my vampires would be as terrifying as they were beautiful. Vampires are monsters, after all, and though they might also be beautiful and seductive, they must first and foremost — in my opinion — be scary.)
With that out of the way, it was a long and winding road beginning way back in 2005, but The Crimson Corset finally saw print in 2015 — but it isn’t the first book I got published. While The Crimson Corset was being rejected by agents and publishers the world over, in 2012 I co-authored another book — a now out-of-print horror novel about a serial killer — that gave me my first taste of the book-publishing industry. Then, in 2014, I wrote The Cliffhouse Haunting with Tamara Thorne, and it was during that time that I pulled The Crimson Corset (which at that time was titled The White Room) out of circulation and re-built it from the ground up. I’d learned a lot about the craft of writing by then and once the necessary changes were made, I had no trouble getting it published. So, while The Crimson Corset isn’t the first book to have my name on it, it’s the first book that had only my name on it — and for that, it will always have a special place in my dark little heart.
The Crimson Corset centers on Cade Colter, a seemingly ordinary young man with an extraordinary genetic disposition that renders his blood irresistible to vampires. I knew that Cade would be new to Crimson Cove and that, unbeknownst to him, under its small-town charm, the quaint tourist village was a writhing hotbed of vampire activity. This would create the “fish out of water” theme I was going for, but now, Cade needed a nemesis.
That’s when I came up with the undead proprietress of the Crimson Corset nightclub, Gretchen VanTreese. While initially written as a throwaway character, Gretchen was soon controlling the narrative, proving herself to be a powerhouse of nastiness in doll-like packaging. Gretchen is a sadist — a whip-wielding vampire dominatrix who uses the hidden rooms of the nightclub’s underground to torture her underlings — and I knew that when she caught wind of Cade’s presence in town, obtaining him would become her darkest ambition yet.
By now I’d learned of Cade’s rare ability to procreate with the undead, and it was this that would make him so invaluable to Gretchen, whose goal would be creating an army of human-vampire hybrids that would possess all of the strengths (and none of the weaknesses) of either race. But while watching Gretchen use all of her cunning (not to mention her powers of sex, persuasion, and manipulation) to capture Cade was fascinating, the concept lacked balance. I needed someone substantial to pit her against. An unsuspecting 23 year old mortal like Cade is simply no match for a centuries-old vampire.
That’s when I got the idea for the Eudemonians — a faction of peace-loving vampires on the other side of town who are hell-bent on preventing Gretchen from executing her deadly plans. Once I had Michael Ward and the other Eudemonians in place, I knew I had the foundation upon which I would build The Crimson Corset. I’ve always been interested in turning stereotypes on their heads, so foregoing the usual “damsel-in-distress” trope was a great opportunity for me to go the opposite direction: a dude in distress who falls into the dangerous trap of a woman as wicked and cruel as she is beautiful, powerful, and intelligent.
So clearly, The Crimson Corset is a far cry from Twilight, especially with its themes of obsession, lust, sex, addiction, and betrayal, and it wasn’t meant to follow those footsteps. Nor was it originally intended to be part of a series. In the years between The Crimson Corset’s 2015 release and The Silver Dagger (Book 2) in 2019, I wrote Dream Reaper and Sleep Savannah Sleep, as well as several collaborations with Tamara Thorne, including The Crimson Corset’s companion novel, Darling Girls. But my mind kept turning back to Crimson Cove, and when readers began discovering it, I knew I had to continue the sordid tale. Since then, I’ve written several more installments of the Vampires of Crimson Cove series — as of this writing, I’ve just finished book 6 (which actually is titled The White Room) and am in the early stages of book 7. And I don’t see myself stopping any time soon.
Since its inception, this series has evolved in ways that have kept me firmly and deeply in love with it. While the themes of sex, obsession, addiction, and betrayal reach far and wide across the series arc, each book digs its nails a little deeper into the heart of what I’m trying to get at — which isn’t the sex and violence, nor is it the deceit and betrayal, or even the high-stakes dramas along the way.
It’s the beauty and the brutality of the human condition I’m most interested in. I’m compelled by a need to learn more about the people who drive my stories, and the Vampires of Crimson Cove series has not only allowed me to explore my lifelong love of vampires, but to glimpse into the darkest recesses of the human psyche — and for that, I hope it goes on as long as the undead monsters who populate its pages.