As my latest book, Dead Lovers, settles into the world, I wanted to share a bit about its origins. It is actually a little more complex than a title offered up by a high school prophecy many years ago.
How far to go back and how much to include…? I suppose it would help to explain why I was even ever thinking of a vampire story.
Ingredient One: Vampires on the Brain
Probably a decade or so ago, my kid sister Spink (my nickname for her) wrote a vampire romance. I was very proud of her for accomplishing that. It did need a substantial edit. I offered to help and I got through a few chapters before realizing that the story needed some tightening and maybe expansion in some areas. At that time, I didn’t have the bandwidth to help with the amount of work it needed and she didn’t do anything further with it either.
When I really started to get into a groove writing, I kept coming across Spink’s book in my digital filing system. I thought maybe it would be fun to help her finally get it published. I read over it again and felt that it was missing something. Nothing was WRONG per se, but the story didn’t have a freshness to it that would make it stand out. I mean, it was still a fun story, but standing out helps. I began thinking about vampire origins and doing some light research.
I started to have an idea about a Christian vampire story, but it was completely different than anything my sister had written. In fact, my idea made vampires seem unsavory and unpalatable. You can’t get much more different than that when compared with mainstream fiction.
Ingredient Two: High School Prophecy
My friend Kathy and I decided to support one another in our creative endeavors. We considered that might just mean helping share the load of posting on social media, working on our own versions of projects together, and whatever else we might come up with. It wasn’t long before the thought of our high school prophecy reared up. If you don’t know, mine said I would write a book called Dead Lovers and that Kathy would write a sequel to it.
When Kathy and I wrote Hope & Josie all those years ago and teamed up on The Wendy’s Experiment, we also toyed with the idea of writing our Dead Lovers books. In those days, we were considering creating it as a short story collection.
When it came up this time, I immediately thought of my vampire story idea. I could make it work with that title. I could even make it kinda cute and fun. I didn’t tell Kathy what the idea was, but I told her I had one and that I would start working on it. That was February or early March 2026.
Pressure Cooker
It just so happened that ProWritingAid had a NovBegin contest with a deadline or March 31, 2026. I used that deadline to crank out a 15-page first chapter of Dead Lovers. While it didn’t go very far in the contest, it got my juices flowing to finish the book.
And, Finally, a Slow Cook to Finish
When it comes to writing long fiction, I am a plotter and I had Dead Lovers outlined from the get-go. I didn’t finish the first draft until maybe the end of June, early July. Why?
Well, I had been reading and researching some dark things around the vampire topic and it began to affect the story in interesting ways. I was reading books on spiritual battles and ended up reading some satanic ritual abuse survivor memoirs. I watched a ton of podcasts and YouTube videos. And, of course, I was in my Bible a lot.
I had several great beta readers for the first draft and I quickly realized that I needed to go a little deeper than I had and utilize some of the stuff I read. Because I was trying to keep the subject matter palatable, I didn’t go too far into the dark stuff. Some of what I read and listened to was hard going and not for the faint of heart.
When Kathy read it, she was like, “How am I supposed to write a sequel to this?” (Ha-ha!)
I finished what I felt would be the final revision the first week in September. After feedback from a few beta readers, I knew I was at the final draft stage and could make a plan for release. It felt good. It feels good.
A Little Garnish
To ease Kathy’s ability to write a sequel, I leaned into another idea she and I had to create a fictional world where we each could take turns writing novellas within. This is now embodied in a little town called Dullington, USA. Her prophecy never said the sequel had to directly follow my characters. She’s pretty much has a clean slate to work from story-wise. We’re clever like that. 🙂
If you haven’t read it, you can get Dead Lovers on Amazon:
