Blood Bound Books has started a loyalty program that involves FREE BOOKS! If you like horror and/or my work, you might be interested in participating. Basically, you need to buy one of their books (they’ve also released a few novels), leave an Amazon review, and let them know–and they’ll reward you with a free book of your choice. You can read about the details and stipulations here.

If you enjoy my stories, I would of course appreciate a mention in your review. 🙂

I’ve been meaning to write a sort of introduction to/ overview of my published fiction, and this seems like a perfect time to discuss the stories that have appeared in BBB anthologies. Several are now out of print, so I’ve started with the most recent. Without further ado…

• “Shine On, Harvest Moon” in Blood Rites: An Invitation to Horror: My story lacks supernatural elements and might not technically fit the definition of “horror,” but it’s typically dark. It’s a tale about hayrides, high school, fire, and vengeance. This invite-only anthology features 23 authors writing across the horror spectrum, and I recommend it as a good starting point for BBB’s publications.
• “Beth Short and the Carnivals of the Damned” in Rock and Roll Is Dead: Dark Tales Inspired by Music: Muses for this story included the Black Dahlia murder case, a creepy man I encountered in Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah’s St. Patrick’s Day celebration, Slipknot’s “Vermilion, Part 1,” and Wumpscut’s “Angel” (I could only credit one song, so this is the one I chose).
• “The Ice Weavers” and “Fertilizer” in Seasons in the Abyss: This flash-fiction anthology is divided into sections for each season. My stories appear in the winter and spring sections, respectively. “The Ice Weavers” is about spiders, while “Fertilizer” addresses the issue of priestly pedophiles. The anthology is OOP, but you can find copies for around $20.
• “The Bitter Taste of Rapture” in Night Terrors: This anthology was, I believe, one of the first two or three that Blood Bound Books ever released. It’s OOP, and copies are fairly expensive. I wrote this succubus story when I lived in Pennsylvania, and part of it’s set in a quarry-turned-swimming hole near Bellefonte. My inspirations: the lush greenery of early summer and the Dimmu Borgir song “A Succubus in Rapture.”
• “The City Consumed by Divine Fire and Buried Beneath the Sand” in Unspeakable: A New Breed of Terror: This is another early BBB anthology that’s now OOP, difficult to find, and expensive. My story, inspired by the Dismal Euphony song “Days of Sodom,” asks: What if the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah still exist, locked in a permanent state of damnation and brutal licentiousness in some forgotten corner of the desert? (It’s important to note that I don’t interpret this biblical story as a condemnation of homosexuality, but rather an indictment of those who view other humans as objects of violent exploitation.) I actually submitted this story for another anthology, but the editors asked if they could include it in Unspeakable instead. I’d never thought of it as a creature story, and it isn’t, in a conventional sense, but that’s part of why they wanted it for Unspeakable.

A note: I’ve read a lot of horror stories (not the fictional kind) about publishers, and I feel very fortunate that my early experiences have been with Blood Bound Books. They treat their authors with respect and integrity, and working with them has been an extremely positive experience.

If you enjoy my fiction, please check out my novel The Dark Jests of Lost Ghosts, set in a Savannah you might not know existed….

Monique Bos is an up–and–coming horror author with an individual voice that combines a nightmarishly dark vibe with an “if this happened, it would happen just like this” sense of realism. Poetic, disturbing, surprising, and far from cliched.
–Bob Pendarvis