​I I feel monster and serial killer stories work best when the reader has a front row seat to the action. This is especially popular in extreme horror where the author describes every blood spatter and scream. While this is an effective method and respect authors who use it, I found it difficult to emulate. I have a character named John Klarbel, also known as the Tool Shed Killer because he kills people with power tools. I tried to dive into detail during one of his murder scenes but I was not comfortable writing that level of gore.  There are authors who can make it work, but when I tried it just felt forced. So I took it out. There are still some deaths in my book, but they either happen quickly or the brutal parts are skipped.

While I removed the over-the-top bloody scenes, I didn’t want to give up on the horror genre altogether. To make up for the lost material from the murders, I emphasized other things that would make the chapters memorable. I gave the Genies special weapons and described the mechanics of how they were used. I also gave them special outfits to make them stand out. The more I worked on it, the more I realized something I hadn’t considered before: how similar horror movie monsters are to superheroes. They have signature looks, sometimes masks, along with a weapon of choice, a set of powers and weaknesses, and some have a tragic backstory. There have even been crossovers having the famous ones fighting each other. (I hope there are more of those someday. I’d pay to see Wishmaster vs. Pinhead).


After editing it seemed the main difference between a horror story and superhero story was the amount of gore the author was willing to provide, so it was not a difficult transition to make. Reading through it now I feel like it works better as a fantasy/action instead of a gore novel. There is still a serial killer and a shootout, so the publisher labeled it a fantasy/thriller on the cover, but from my perspective Soleil, Flarence, and Darren are all heroes in their own way and I’ll always see them as such.
​

I decided to base Mystic Rampage in Illinois, but not strictly Chicago. The hotel where Flarence and Clare stay is based on The Drake, but the path that leads to Soleil’s Café is based on a trail in Dekalb. In book 2 the Genies raid an adhesive factory which is based on a place in Montgomery where I worked briefly. This method of combining multiple settings might seem inconsistent to some readers. One chapter paints a picture of a densely populated city with cars lining the streets, and in the next people are firing shotguns in their backyard and nobody is around to hear them go off. Even though this does all take place in one city, the kinds of places the characters live are intended to emphasize their personality. Soleil is the quiet type so his house is secluded, while Darren is more sociable so he lives close to other people.

​It might still seem strange to read about people with such different lifestyles living so close to each other, but it isn’t so far from reality. Illinois is a big state and the scenery changes quickly. Keep driving and pretty soon you go from the part of the city filled with hipsters and sports fanatics to rail yards and closed down factories. Before you know it, there’s no infrastructure at all and you’re surrounded by fields of corn and soybean fields that seem to never end. I feel that using different settings to bring out aspects of my characters helped incorporate the different aspects my home state as well. A pair of towns separated by only a sixty minute drive can seem worlds apart. It’s my hope that my characters seem worlds apart based on the kind of house and neighborhood they live in.