Writing Death Cult

A how-to look

Death Cult, as a sequel to Hell Spawn, needed to go faster. We didn't need five pages of introduction.

Heck, with the current rerelease, everyone can read every book one right after the other.

But when I first wrote it, I had to up the ante. I even had to go back and rewrite part of the end to Hell Spawn so I could best segue into it. This is a rewrite I don't even think anyone else knew about, because I had Death Cult coming to me as I wrapped up Hell Spawn.

This is in part because there are two ways demons go trolling around the world.

One: someone is open to being possessed by … vulnerable. When your brain becomes an open house, you never know what will wander in. The original case upon which the Exorcist was based had someone playing with Oujia boards and such. Leading to my line in Demons are Forever: you don't play with demonic crap, demonic crap does not play with you.

The second way? Summon demon. Deliberately. Hilarity ensues.

While the killer in Hell Spawn is certainly the type for #1, it had been suggested by my wife that book #2 should have a cult involved.

Well now, wouldn't it just be easy to tie the two together?

Which led to book 3 being tied in with all of them, based off of a suggestion by yet another friend. 

I didn't quite mean to make it a trilogy where everything was tied together, but it happened.

And, frankly, it's awesome.

Yes, I will grant you, Death Cult, like Hell Spawn, were not much in the way of a mystery. They were horror novels with a police procedural thrown in. And I made certain to have a lot of dead ends, but even the dead ends fit together at the end of the day. If not in Hell Spawn  or Death Cult, then in Infernal Affairs.

City of Shadows is book four, and that's a completely different story… but everything was all eventually tied together. Even the last six books could be seen as fallout from the first six.

But still, Death Cult this wasn't much in a way of a mystery, but I have been reliably informed by my editor (and later, early readers from the kickstarter) that not only are these things awesome and bad ass, but also "creepy as f**k."

So, yeah, I was happy with this one.

One of the major problems was developing a villain after the demon of Hell Spawn. How do you top a demon-driven serial killer? Any villain we get is going to be fairly limp in comparison...

That's an easy step one: make it more than one villain. Make it a group.

... No, that's not a spoiler, just look at the title.

Ooooh, how about we make it people who raised the demon? Wouldn't that be fun? (No, that's not a spoiler, it has no impact on Hell Spawn, and if you've read it already, you know it happened)

Of course, there are plenty of suspects already before the book even begins. Hell Spawn saw our hero piss off many many people. He wasn't even trying. He was just doing his job. And when Tommy Nolan says he does his job without fear or favor, he means that he doesn't fear anybody except God, and if he knows you're guilty, he's not doing you a favor.

This will lead to pissing off plenty of people if you get too close to the entitled elite.

And this is New York City, anyone who makes more than seven figures feels entitled. Probably comes from paying so much in taxes (or paying the accountants to hide the cash).  Either way, there are plenty of people who want Nolan's guts for garters.

It's strange making a character who's hated because he's good, and not because he's a weapon of mass destruction…

Though frankly I think my biggest accomplishment was getting Nolan to be a good man without being obnoxious.

Or worse, too “Hallmark special.”