Backroads Blood Brothers: My Homage to the Pulpy 90s Sex Thrillers

Well, it’s finally happened. After several self-published novels/novellas, my novella Backroads Blood Brothers has been picked up for publishing by Lethe Press in August of 2024.

I’m shocked and excited by this turn of events for a lot of reasons, not least of which is the subject matter.

I originally wrote the first chapter of this book as a short story. I wanted to play with formatting and POV. I wanted to explore the sexy thriller/killer of the 1990s that I love so much from a queer perspective. I wanted to see if I could make the kills sexy but also terrifying.

I presented the story to a group of fellow writers who all read it and came back with the same response. They wanted to know more. It felt like just the beginning. What happens next?

About six weeks later I had a finished draft of the manuscript, which I resubmitted to some of the authors from the same group to peruse. To my shock, they loved it, and they encouraged me to send it out. I wasn’t sure. The themes and scenes of this particular story are pretty taboo.

The story centers on four men.

Caleb and Connor are identical twins who travel the backroads of Texas, seducing lonely men together. When it works (and it almost always does), they take them some place private, have very steamy sex with them, and then kill them Afterwards, they wipe the victim’s blood all over their bodies. They say it makes them feel the way they did when they were still in the womb. Warm…wet…connected. Their latest victim is a man named Mark.

That was my jumping off place. I know it’s a bit campy, a bit over the top, but have any of you ever seen Color of Night or Final Analysis or even Sliver, which as far as I’m concerned is the superior of the campy, sexy Sharon Stone films winning out over Basic Instinct because (gasp) they actually showed a man’s penis at one point in the film.

What do you expect from me? I was a repressed gay teen in a small East Texas town…

Enter Lane.

Lane is Mark’s best friend, or was. They’d recently had a huge fight because Mark’s girlfriend was cheating on him with Lane. Lane discovers Mark’s body, and when he realizes the police aren’t investigating his death because of the queer angle of his killing, he sets out to find the men who did it himself.

And finally, there’s Ryan. Sweet, sympathetic Ryan who doesn’t even realize he was almost the victim of the twins. He just knew he met a pair of hot men that seemed really into him and were far better than the men he usually found in the small west Texas community where he lived.

With my players set, all I really had to do was find a way for them to meet, to interact.

And I did, but I’m not going to tell you anymore because I really want you to read this book!

What I discovered was that I had created a space where I could explore things like masculinity, queerness, and internalized homophobia.

Lane and Mark were best friends, but Lane had no idea Mark enjoyed sex with men.

Ryan lives an isolated life in a religious family and community where his identity is completely repressed save for late night hookups from men far too ashamed or fearful to share their names. Cruising never really stopped in these towns. They’ve only gone digital; parks and rest stops replaced by apps and headless torso pics, most of which are sketchy at best.

Lane doesn’t know how to ask for help.

Ryan doesn’t know how to give it.

Caleb and Connor operate entirely on what feels good, devouring the men in their path until nothing is left, exposing their soft underbellies so they can slice them open, preying on their “weaknesses” to sate their own hunger.

The whole thing is a powder keg with a two inch fuse and all four men are carrying matches.

In the end, Backroads Blood Brothers is a book I’m proud of. I’m not only glad I wrote it, but I genuinely enjoyed writing it. I enjoyed digging into that pulpy side of myself and letting it out to play. I like the unabashed, sexy nature of it. I love the queerness. If I’d discovered a book like this back in the 90s, I would have read it over and over again.

So, I’m giving it to you, and I hope you feel the same way.

I hope you love all my boys, even the serial killers…