Before I continue my story from yesterday, here is a portion of the cover for the upcoming book about the 1st demon. I had to play around with the subtitle. My original idea would have given too much away so I settled on this subtitle. The full cover will be revealed soon.

Barefoot, I stood in ankle deep sawdust soaked with blood. The deer’s eyes, devoid of lids and glaring from a skinless skull stared at me in deep sorrow. I fought back nausea as my brother soaked the deer head’s skin in another tank prior to mounting it on a solid form matching the deer head’s shape.

I ran out of his taxidermy shop, past my house, to the front yard. Already with the coming night fireflies blinked in the distant trees. I gasped for breath and slowly recovered. At age eight, growing up on a farm, I had seen my share of animal death. But the sight of those lifeless eyes would haunt me for years. Just that afternoon I had watched “Dracula” on the 3:30 Dialing For Dollars Movie. My mother drove a school bus and she dropped me off at the house on her way to finish her rounds in time to watch the movie, whatever its subject. I was to write down the “count, amount, and direction” in case we got a call during a commercial. If they called and we gave that information and the current amount, we would win hundreds of dollars. Watching the Dialing For Dollars Movie was a sacred trust.

But Dracula? The images terrified me and now, as the sun set on the distant horizon above our farm, I felt the cold stare not of the eyes of a dead deer but the cruel hypnotic stare of Count Dracula and I ran screaming into the house. We had no garlic. But I made a crude cross out of popsicle sticks and placed it beside my bed. I don’t think I slept that night.

Thus began my fascination with vampires. 

So back to that question from yesterday’s post: Would there be twelve other demons? When I wrote “The 13th Demon” I had the possibility of one sequel in mind just to complete the story of Joshua Knight. But, twelve more demons?

I love book series. Spencer, Kay Scarpetta, Elvis Cole, just to name a few. However, in the years I have spent reading book series I have always noticed something. Along about the fourth or fifth book, it was as if the author ran out of ideas how to more the main character forward. Often, this resulted in bringing the character back to their less than “mature” state that developed over several books. Not a problem if this digression was intentional and worked within the story.

Before I considered writing a book series, I had to know if there was enough “story” about Jonathan Steel for twelve more books. So I did two things. First, I prayed about it. 

Second, I sat down and outlined possible future book ideas with the central theme being one of the apologetic facts I had learned. I concluded its as doable. There were far too many good ideas.

But, what about Jonathan Steel? Did he have enough story to justify twelve more books? Fortunately, I had created a character with amnesia. That would give me a lot of latitude in telling stories centered around his slowly recovering memory. I could do this without cheating on his growth and maturity over many books.

And so, I sat down before I went any further and I wrote the next to the last book where he would completely recover his memory. I had to know his entire backstory. This gave me a goal to work toward. And then I wrote the last scene of the last book. All of the elements of a puzzle put together by the time we got there. I now had the final tapestry. All I had to do was fill in the details.

I was sitting in my office at the hospital. At that time, the hospital had only dial up internet connection. I decided the second book would be about vampires and their history and why we are fascinated with them. I would make Joshua join a vampire “clan” and Jonathan would have to rescue him. I had recently read a frightening book on prions, “Deadly Feasts” by Richard Rhodes (https://a.co/d/01b7ia7A) and I thought prions would be an interesting scientific fact as the threat in my story.

While searching for information on vampires, a page showed up in my browser. Totally blank and then something formed in the center of the image. A demonic face appeared, fangs exposed, eyes bulging. It hissed and snapped its jaws at me. And then, the most astonishing thing happened. It came OUT of the screen. Not just an illusion! The image bulged out of the screen, overlapping the edges as if it was becoming REAL! I slammed the laptop shut, my heart racing! What had just happened? In a panic, I removed the battery (they were removable at that time) totally resetting the computer and picked up the phone to call my co-author and pastor, Mark Sutton. I told him what had happened and to my surprise, totally believed me.

“Bruce, you’re writing about spiritual warfare. Satan doesn’t want these books to come out and he is trying to stop you. This just proves, that no matter what, these stories should be told.”

And so it began!

I’ll continue the saga of “The Chronicles of Jonathan Steel” tomorrow. For now, here is the cover of the re-edited version of the twelfth Demon, “Demon 12: Wolf Dragon” now available everywhere in print and ebook format. Note the figures in the background. They came directly from a chapter in the book that recounts, with historical accuracy, the horrid reign of Vlad the Impaler!

You don’t have to sleep with garlic tonight. Just embrace the cross.