Introducing Monsters: A Bloody Love Story

Gray Moon Rising is out of my hands and with the editing team, so I'm not worrying about it anymore. I will no longer freak out about whether such-and-such was written correctly, or if I did the best I could with whatever scene is worrying me at the moment. For the next week, until it gets back to me, everything is golden.

So now I'm working on other things.

As you all know by now, I've been seriously writing since middle school (although I wrote quite a few short stories before that, too--just not seriously). I wrote a lot of completely unreadable material between the ages of 12, when I finished my first book, and 24, when I am now polishing the sixth full-length novel that SM Reine will publish.

I also wrote some things that are not so terrible. For instance, "Something Wrong," which appears in the Here Be Monsters anthology, was originally drafted at the wee age of 15. (That ebook is free, by the way, and I highly encourage you to pick up a copy. Lots of good stories there.) It's ridiculously pleasing to me that almost every good review on the anthology cites my story. Nobody looks at it and says, "Well, that was definitely written by a sophomore in high school." This is the kind of thing they say:

A neat mix of dark stories and well, morbidly dark stories... I'm looking at you SOMETHING WRONG author S.M. Reine.

There's some serious stand-alone pieces that are gems, most notably: "Something Wrong," by S. M. Reine, and "Figs," by Jeremy C. Shipp. Either one of these stories would be worth downloading the book--and reading it.

The best story hands down is Something Wrong. After reading it (twice in a row!), I knew this anthology wouldn't let me down.

Although I enjoyed each and every tale, I especially liked S.M Reine's 'Something wrong' for its simplistic, yet elegant prose.

Aw, shucks, guys. You'll turn a girl's head with talk like that. ;) Anyway, seriously, pick up a copy of the anthology. It's awesome.
  
So you can probably tell that when I was 15/16 years old, I had a Thing for horror. That was when I went through my big Stephen King phase and discovered HP Lovecraft. (My love affair with Edgar Allan Poe started much, much younger.) I also had a Thing for the early Anita Blake books, which are not horror, but have some horror potential. And I'm not talking about the dreadful sex scenes that started gushing in the latter half of the series.

With those dark inspirations, my writing at the time was also pretty dark. Even my idea of a romance was primarily focused around the concepts of trust and surrender, and the idea you could never really have a perfect love. So when I tried to write a romantic thriller at that age, it ended up being: 1.) dark, 2.) violent, and 3.) completely unromantic, and 4.) very bloody. Pretty typical for me, I guess.

What came out is what I've now titled Monsters: A Bloody Love Story.

  
Even though it's one of my older stories, I think it's pretty good. Obviously. I wouldn't waste your time with it if I thought it stunk like gym socks. ;) I've given it a rigorous editing to shake out the spiders, too.

It's probably best categorized as a paranormal thriller, since it's an action-packed roller coaster of vampires shooting the crap out of each other, but there's one or two darky dark bits, so I don't recommend it for my younger readers. Even though I wrote it when I was young. Yeah, I don't know.

Monsters will be out very soon--like, in the next weekish. Almost certainly before Gray Moon Rising, funnily enough. But for now, here's the blurb:  

Julieta’s never been quite right. She likes the company of corpses. She studied vampires in college. She dreams of darkness and cold metal and blood. She thinks that becoming engaged to Michael—beautiful, warm, godlike Michael—might be her salvation. But then he vanishes, and she buys a gun to take his place. 
  
Alec is nothing like Michael. He’s an assassin, and he shows Julieta how to be the perfect monster. It’s not love, but killing vampires together is almost better. When Julieta is taken by a coven of vampires, Alec is the only one who can save her, and what they face leaves them only one question: Who is the better monster?


What do you guys think?