Some people relax with comedies or romance novels. I unwind with stories that make my skin crawl.

I don’t remember the first time I realized horror was my home genre. Maybe it was a late-night horror movie marathon, possibly something playing on TNT’s Monstervision with Job Bob Briggs in the late 90’s. Maybe it was one of the many times as a little kid that I’d sneak out of my room to hide and watch the movies my parents were watching… I specifically recall night terrors about Freddy Krueger after having watched Nightmare on Elm Street II when I was maybe 5 or 6 years old. Horrifying, but thrilling.

Wherever it started, it’s never really left me.

Horror, for me, has always been less about jump scares and more about atmosphere—that slow build of tension where you don’t know if you should lean closer or run. It’s the art of making the familiar strange: a new face in town who feels both intriguing and deeply wrong (The New Girl), or contemplating what might happen on a dark, empty highway at night when driving a shitty old car that could break down at any moment (Breakdown).

I love horror because it’s honest. It doesn’t pretend the world is safe. It knows that danger can hide behind a smile, that the road home might take you somewhere else entirely, and that sometimes the scariest thing is the truth. It reminds you that fear is part of being human. It lets you rehearse danger from the safety of a couch or a dimly lit bedroom.

When I write, I try to capture that same balance of dread and beauty. The kind of story where the air smells like rain before a storm, where you can almost hear something moving just out of sight. The kind of story that stays with you, even when you’ve convinced yourself it’s over.

If you’re new here, welcome. This blog will be a mix of behind-the-scenes glimpses into my books, thoughts on the craft of writing horror, and maybe the occasional unsettling story that didn’t fit anywhere else.

After all… there’s always another story waiting in the dark.

If you want to see where it all started, check out The New Girl.

Alternately, if you get what I mean by a shitty car and a dark road, check out Breakdown, the opening book to the Nighfall series, which continues in Overgrowth.

Another installment in the Nightfall series, titled Undergrowth, is currently in development.