Her Crimson Gifts - A New Episodic Horror Thriller on Kindlevella

I’m tremendously excited to talk a little today about my new Kindlevella series: Her Crimson Gifts!

On the verge of losing control in a nightmare world of monsters, demons, and killers, a young woman must venture forth into the darkness to find and rescue her sister before the cosmic terrors consume them. Armed with her guile and her pistol, Madelyn will stop at nothing to save Claudine. But, if she is to succeed, she must also survive the darkness within her, embrace her power, and overcome the traumatic secrets of her past, or else lose herself to the chaos forever.

Episodes one and two are available now on the Kindlevella platform with new episodes dropping every Monday and Friday.

The inspiration for this story was exploring the concepts of broken relationships, broken families, dread and regret. The core theme of the narrative explores how the traumas visited upon us by family, friends, selves, can become tattooed within and lead us down paths that are both self-destructive as well as destructive to those in our lives.

The story follows Madelyn Astinato shortly after she wakes up in her car in the middle of a snowy field, her younger sister Claudine missing and eerie runes carved into her windshield. Madelyn’s search for Claudine will take her through an eldritch wood, a derelict farmhouse, and a foreboding manor as she battles all manner of monster and demon along the way.

While facing these external threats, Madelyn must also navigate her blurred memories, the fragments of self she lost along the way, and confront a dark order that was once synonymous with family to whom she fled at her lowest. And, she must also face the possibility that Claudine would rather not see her emerge from this plane of chaos alive…

Check out Her Crimson Gifts on KindleVella today!

Let's Discuss: Authenticity of Narrative

This topic, along with power scaling, intentional design, interactive dynamics and a few others is something of an obsession of mine. It’s a topic that I’m very passionate about that I’ve held off on writing a piece on because in all honestly, my life is stressful enough without inviting needless animosity, but, let it never be said that Eugene the Author shies away from risk and discourse.

Authenticity of narrative, if I’m being completely honest, is something I feel is lacking in much of the global landscape. To tell that story, I’ll begin with another.

In my time as an independent author, I’ve had the pleasure of being told by Christian publishers that I’m entirely too worldly and something of a disgrace to the faith, and by secular publishers that I’m entirely too Christian and need to shut up about all this God stuff and cater to more easily monetized views of the world.

Personally, I find both perspectives amusing, truly. One of my personal mantras is “authenticity over everything”, which is to say that I will always pass no matter how big the potential payday if I have to compromise the authenticity of my narrative, my characters and my values to get there.

When demoing upcoming paranormal horror mystery Wired for Ruin, I was told by Christians that the story was antagonistic and pandered to modernity. There are sections of the narrative that deal strongly with some of the harm a few of the protagonists suffered at the hands of Christians, and aspects of the narrative that highlight ways that we can, while still holding our values, do a far better job of outreach, empathy and loving one another regardless of views, background, orientation, etcetera.

I also was told “how dare you depict an openly gay couple and not once have a scene where the protagonist tells them it’s wrong to be what they are!”

Now, on the flip side, whether subscribing to a different theism, agnosticism, or atheism, I had secular people tell me “Yeah I’m not reading a book by a Christian/with a Christian lead/that has positive Christian values/that depicts Christianity in a positive light”, and was told the narrative was distracting, weak, divisive, phobic for having Christianity portrayed positively.

Hey, look at that, I’m uniting people!

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Book Previews - K.A.C. Book 1: In the Village of the Devil's Daughters

Welcome to an exclusive sneak peak at the audiobook version of my Christian (yet accessible and badass for everyone) dark fantasy/horror/mystery novel "Kill All Christians Book 1: In the Village of the Devil's Daughters".

This novel (currently available in both print and e-book format on Amazon) follows the exploits of Saint Sword Moon and his Dark Blood companion Fox as the pair are called to the Village of the Devil's Daughters to investigate the abduction of a child and the targeting of two others by a dybbuk demon.

Moon and Fox live in a world where all forms of Christianity (and indeed even those God based religions such as Judaism) have been outlawed with nearly every professor of the faith hunted down and slain without exception regardless of race, age, gender, orientation, identity, class, etcetera. In the entropic world that remains humans pay homage to the demon barons and warlords who have become Earth's new gods in the eyes of man.

As one of the few survivors and one of the fewer still possessing divine power, Moon must partner with Fox to investigate these demon abductions while surviving grim politic with the twin sisters Hellana and Amahli who serve as the goddesses of the village.

Can Moon and Fox save the children before its too late, or will they too fall prey to the deviltry in the village in the frigid mountains up above? Only time will tell.

Arctic Comic Con!!!

I'm so excited to see you all at the Arctic Comic Con in Anchorage, Alaska tomorrow and Sunday! I've been hard at work here in the lab getting ready, and I've got 15% off discount cards for everyone who stops by! The discount cards will be usable for any order made from my website here.

Due to a glitch in the warehouse, I'll be going digital this time around. Let me break down what this means for you:

Kindle eBook versions of Dark Fantasy epic Kill All Christians: In the Village of the Devil's Daughters and Low Key Super Hero Drama Tribus Dulce will be available for $7.50 each from Amazon for the duration of this event. After the con is over, the eBooks will go back to full price!

The 15% off discount cards can be applied to orders made on my website for paperback versions of Kill All Christians and Tribus Dulce.

If you make your order with me directly at the convention, I'll discount your order even further!

What's more, these 15% off codes will be good from now through the end of May, and All Ages High Fantasy Epic Nora and the Eternal Waterwheel will be launching early May! 

So the best bang for your buck would be to pick up your books from me directly at the Arctic Comic Con in the Dena'ina center and consider saving your codes for Nora's release in the next few weeks!

But of course, go forth and buy as you please! And above all else, be blessed, and happy reading!

-Eugene the Author
a.k.a. Xeawn Cross
a.k.a. Gentleman Raptor

Spotlight on Tribus Dulce

Available now on Amazon with a limited time sale price of $4.99 for the Kindle Edition!

What is it about?

The name Tribus Dulce translates to “Three Sweets”, and represents the distinct flavors of each short story in this novel. The first narrative carries the taste of “Bitter”, and follows the struggles of seventeen year old high school senior Abra Ostberg and her best friend Judith Lee. Abra has endured a violently abusive household at the hands of her father from the time that she was very small, and takes refuge in Judy’s house whenever the maelstrom of her life grows too much to bear on her own. Abra remains in this environment, hoping that by serving as a lightning rod of sorts she can protect her mother and younger brother, even though her mother has never intervened in her father’s abuse.

One night, Abra experiments with a drug known as Hyperion, and what follows is a whole new world of horrors as the drug awakens Abra’s latent power to World Walk into the depths of the soul.

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Spotlight on Kill All Christians Book 1: In the Village of the Devil's Daughters

Available now on Amazon with a limited time sale price of $4.99 for the Kindle Edition!

What is it about?

Kill All Christians Book 1: In the Village of the Devil’s Daughters is a story about a young man named Moon and his dark blood companion Fox trying to survive in a world where all forms Christianity has been outlawed. 99.8 percent of Christians in the world were slaughtered in a three-month massacre known as The Liberation, and the world left behind is shaped by demons and their followers. This is a world without morality. People often say they’d love a world of nothing but moral grey, but Kill All Christians shows what that would really be like.

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The Three Categories of My Novels

Salutations! Today I'd like to talk about the three levels of content/maturity that each of my novels fall under.

One of the things I'm a firm believer of, is being open and honest with my fan base. To me, to create a series and draw people in, having every aspect of it appear to represent a certain set of purpose, morality and narrative flow, only to at the last minute once you've gained a following and a steady stream of cash throw in something that completely changes and turns on its head everything I told you I was about is the height of cowardice and sneaky marketing. Consider that harsh, and a run on sentence. I'll accept that it's one of those things.

I have no desire to draw you in, make my money in a safe way, then flip the script and exclaim "JUST KIDDING, YOU THOUGHT THIS STORY AND THESE CHARACTERS WERE LIKE THIS BUT I CAN MAKE MORE MONEY LIKE THIS!"

I also would never want a young reader who enjoys, say upcoming all ages novel Nora and the Eternal Waterwheel to see my name on Murder the Citizens, think the novel is safe for them to read and suddenly be thrust into a far more maturely written world. To that end, I established three levels to my novels:

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On Writing Badass Female Leads

A lot of the protagonists in my retinue are female leads of varying age and ethnicity. To be quite honest, this was somewhat accidental. I consider my novels to be broken up into four primary "ages" in history. The True Mythology series encompasses the warriors of legend that helped forge the world the protagonists live in today. The Era of Conflict is how the high holy orders that stand above all the others were established. The Modern Age is where you dear readers come in, with such fascinating reads as the upcoming Murder the Citizens: Hunger, Tribus Dulce, Ochre Alleycat, Pretty Little Whispers, In Defense of the Heart. These stories take place in or around the bubble of 2017, plus or minus ten or so years.

Well, when I began writing all of these narratives, I realized that I had a bit of an abundance of male leads and not enough female leads. What's more, an over abundance of narratives that seem only to know how to sell a female lead by stripping her of her clothing and having her defined by little more than sexuality and ambiguity cemented the necessity for a higher caliber of heroine.

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A Rondo of Tales...

Salutations et all! Welcome to the new official website of me, Eugene the Author. I thought it best to begin with a post that introduces you to who I am, and what I'm about.

As my intro stated, I am a minister and a Christian fringe ministry novelist, but, what does that really mean? Well, perhaps the best way to explain it is to begin with a few things you'll find in my books that you won't in other Christian artists.

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