BloodLight

Haunted, cursed, or losing his mind — on the verge of seventeen, his own body is becoming the evidence.

Robert Goldner was five when his mother, wine in hand at one of her parties, spilled her confession in front of her friends: he was unwanted, unplanned, the ruin of her life.

She was murdered on his eleventh birthday, and the word she left him — mistake — outlived her like a curse.

At sixteen, he has built a life designed to disprove it. Top grades. A varsity singlet and the wrestlers' commandment — never go to your back. A first love kept secret and kept safe.

Then, at a Valentine's Eve party, the world starts breaking its own rules — for Robert alone. A ring of seven colors circles the full moon, and no one else seems to notice. Armed snowmen sway through the backyard under a sign reading PARADISE LUST. And at the night's end, Robert carries his best friend out of the snow — half-stripped, scratched, and impossibly light in his arms, as if something has been subtracted from him.

In the days after, the wrongness follows Robert home, to school, to church — patient, intimate, and bright. There are only so many explanations. He is losing his mind. Or something has found him — something that agrees with his mother. Whatever it is, it doesn't stand at the foot of his bed. It glows beneath his skin, in his blood, as if it has always lived there, waiting for him to notice.

BloodLight is dark metaphysical fantasy — an American haunting told from inside the haunted body, where grief, first love, and scripture collide with something bright and uninvited. For readers who want horror intimate, theological, and running in the veins.