October 2019 marked a full two years since I wrote LEATHER & LACE for TWISTED ROMANCE from Image Comics. I don’t think I ever really talked about how I came to be part of the project, have I? It all started with a message from Alex de Campi. I first encountered Alex’s work when I was writing comic reviews for a trash comics news outlet and I opted to review the first issue of NO MERCY. If I recall correctly, I followed her on Twitter. She followed me back. I’ve been bothering her ever since.So, one day in September 2017, Alex sent me a Twitter DM to the effect of writing a short story for a romance anthology – or else. She was very nice and supportive about it, of course. I said I would think of something. Throughout the summer, I had been kicking around a story idea about a vampire and a human who hooked up to hunt monsters together. A few months obsessing over Damien and Robert from DREAM DADDY (my Goth Dad/Knife Dad is DADTP, thank you very much) had me primed to write a romantic comedy of some kind.I drafted what would become LEATHER & LACE throughout October and November 2017, alongside the first volume of A MONSTROUS LOVE. This was the first anthology submission I had been tasked to write in some time. I have a variety of indie and small press horror anthologies under my belt, but that was from another life. At this point, I hadn’t written anything since my 2016 superhuman/urban fantasy book THE CRASHERS . Its turbulent publication history, wherein my publisher filed for bankruptcy and shuttered a month after my book came out, left me cagey about the state of my writing career, to say the very least.Per Alex’s request, I finished the story. I put out my short amusing romantic comedy and procedural paranormal detective story, a tongue-in-cheek spin on SUPERNATURAL. TWISTED ROMANCE did okay in sales, given it was a romance comic and prose anthology in the crowded and noisy comics market. It even went on to garner a few award nominations, included an Eisner nod at 2018’s San Diego Comic Con.In the end, I felt pretty good about what I did, and decided that would be the end of Dorian Villeneuve and Cash Leroy. Since then, I’ve written two full-length novels and over 20 short stories and assembled a short erotic collection set in what I’ve come to call THE SOUTHERN GOTHIC UNIVERSE . Because of course I did. As of writing this, I’m in the middle of revising the novel adaptation of LEATHER & LACE, appropriately called LEATHER AND LACE. The process of adapting this story after nearly two years since first writing it has been interesting. A lot has changed, both for me and for these characters.I want to talk about that here, because people have asked, and because I think it’s an interesting topic.So, here we go.The Preamble

There were three kinds of teeth in the world. Dorian Villeneuve had seen only two before the night in the woods outside Devereux city limits: the kind for biting, and the kind for tearing. Vampires, werewolves, all manner of shifter: they belonged to creatures with animal teeth and a taste for blood. Dorian had a set of fangs of his own, after all, and he knew plenty about blood. The third kind of teeth he never saw on a hunt before: big, flat, and made for grinding bones. These were the teeth of man-eaters. It wasn’t until Dorian watched a set sink into his bicep that he took the expression to heart.

LEATHER & LACE is about two monster hunters, a vampire and a human. The vampire is in love with the human. The human doesn’t have a clue. The hunters go to a karaoke bar, chase a wendigo (we’ll get to that later), and confess their feelings for each other in time for a duet of Stevie Nicks and Don Henley’s titular song. This is the exact sequence of events, and every scene in the short story is present in the novel adaptation.However, there are some critical differences in how I’ve approached the material, here in 2020. Let’s break down precisely how.The World

A vampire in wendigo territory wasn’t out of place. Vampires and wendigos went through the same channels to procure human materials. Even for it, Dorian held a breath as he walked up the steps to Paul Wright’s front door, hidden under his parasol.

The world of SOUTHERN GOTHIC has greatly expanded since I first wrote the short story. I’ve developed the sociopolitical climate surrounding these characters, as well as the nuances of monster society. The language of the world has changed in small but productive ways, I think. Linguistic definitions of monsters are rooted in regional slang, rather than American bastardizations of indigenous language and beliefs. Werewolves are werewolves because that’s what English speakers would call a werewolf. Weredeer are weredeer and not wendigos, no matter how these creatures have been classified by tabletop RPGs and horror movies. The only time one would borrow from other languages or cultural shorthand is if the character is of that culture, or it’s a regional creature with no Americanized English name.In the novel, interactions between monsters and hunters are fraught but understandably so. The presence of human law enforcement in the lives of monsters is the greater threat. Hunters aren’t feared or even respected figures. Rather, they are an ugly but necessary mediator between the apparatuses of human governments and the diverse monster cultures humankind has relegated to the margins. By and large, hunters function as a membrane between monsters and humans. Hunters are used by human law enforcement. They are a class of laborers who hunt and kill violent monsters who would threaten the uneasy monster/human armistice. To be specific, hunters keep monsters from being dragged into the circus of the media and justice system, thereby exposing monsters to the human world. Cops keep monster crime out of the press and slide hunters money under the table to perform state-sanctioned executions. They are also used by monsters to self-police because monsters unable to turn to an uncaring and exploitative human law enforcement for help. This is where it gets a bit hazy. If a werewolf eats a human, you call a hunter. If a werewolf beats his werewolf wife or extorts his community, the community itself attempts to intervene. If intracommunal efforts of punishment and rehabilitation don’t work, you call a hunter. It isn’t pretty, or easy, or morally cut and dry. Cash knows monsters. He pays off informants in monster communities for information, trying to give them some fair compensation for sticking their necks out. As a hunter, he sees the pain and grief he causes to the communities he interacts with, even if they all understand the nature of his role within those interactions. And, of course, he befriends and takes the vampire Dorian as a partner.























The Plot

Dorian Villeneuve had made many bad decisions in his life. He liked trashy bars and long nights out, struggling with his habit of going home with nearly anybody who bought him a drink. Cash Leroy, however, was quickly becoming the worst decision he ever made, but for very different reasons.

Most importantly, I think, the relationship between Dorian and Cash has changed for the better. This means that the plot, while the same in terms of the arc and plot beats, has still managed to change in some significant ways. In adapting the story, I rewrote, recontextualized, and reincorporated the many short stories I’ve written to flesh out their friendship. It works their entire relationship history in as flashbacks, from their first meeting to the frustrations of an uneven but not necessarily unrequired romance.I keep emphasizing friendship because the friendship between Dorian and Cash is the crux of LEATHER AND LACE as a novel. The original 6,000-word story followed two friends on their flippant, banter-filled adventure, coasting on Dorian’s one-sided longing for his attractive human mate. It assumed that friendship was an unwanted state, a kind of relationship made lesser by the lack of romantic intimacy and intent. After all, it was a short story, and I had to get these two dummies kissing in time for the duet.In the novel, their friendship is the rock bed of the story. Without it, there is no story. There is no story because this no love, trust, and respect to build the romance on. The friendship between Dorian and Cash steadies them in uncertain times. Dorian is a vampire down on his luck. He struggles on the streets of Devil’s Row, the vampire ghetto, to keep food in his belly and a roof over his head. He’s worked as a bartender, cocktail server, stripper, survival sex worker, and a semi-professional sugar baby, offering physical intimacy and companionship in exchange for some sense of financial security. Relationships are transactions to Dorian, because that’s how he’s stayed alive since being kicked out of his mother’s home at 16, without reason or warning. Cash, on the other hand, has been living a transient life as a hunter, relegated to the fringes of a society that has no concept of the monsters living among them. He’s a human, but he can’t tell anybody what he does for a living, or why he comes home at odd hours of the night with bruises and punch-black eyes. Intimacy is fleeting, and honesty is unheard of. Cash has casual sex with men to stave off the loneliness, then retrofits relationships around what few commonalities or interests they share to keep them around. It doesn’t help that Cash loves sex, but wants a relationship more, and so he’s willing to put up with people who don’t really care about him just to have somebody to come home to.Together, Dorian and Cash provide each other with what they lack. In Cash, Dorian finds a compassionate person who considers him an equal. Cash wants nothing but Dorian’s companionship, because Dorian is smart, capable, funny, and a good person. In Dorian, Cash finds trust, understanding, and someone invested in him as a person. Dorian wants to be around Cash, simply because he likes Cash. He cleans up Cash’s bloody noses, takes care of Cash on the job, laughs at Cash’s dumb jokes, and respects Cash’s unending devotion to Stevie Nicks when other people can’t be bothered.They’re friends and partners above all else. We see how they meet, how they come to trust each other, how Cash trains Dorian to hunt, and how their attraction to each other blossoms into a romance. But it’s the very friendship they treasure that drives a wedge between them, and ultimately serves as the obstacles to becoming a couple.Dorian, wracked with self-loathing, is terrified of committing to a relationship, ruining it, and losing everything.Cash, fearful of being alone, is terrified that if he doesn’t show Dorian that how much the vampire means to him, Dorian will slip away.Which is, of course, very different from how they are in the original short story, about a lovesick vampire and a cute boy who likes another, more traditionally handsome lover. To see how we go here, I need to talk about how much Dorian and Cash have changed in two years. How Dorian and Cash have changed since their first appearance in the pages of TWISTED ROMANCE #1 has not only impacted the tone of the book, but it has also impacted the shape of the overall series. These characters have become so much more lived-in. Their hard edges have been filed down; their temperaments softened and made more relatable. I don’t mean to say that they weren’t interesting before (I wouldn’t have spent the last two years writing them if they weren’t), but I feel the adaptation process has made them into people worth spending time with as they grow over the course of three, four, or more books. So, let’s talk about that.























Dorian Villeneuve: Not the Vampire You Think He IsThe first time we meet Dorian Villeneuve, he’s an anxious, lovesick vampire. He’s an ill-fit in the world of hunters, using his luck and determination to compensate for his inexperience. Dorian relies on his sarcasm to compensate, as well, covering up the fact that he’s a stranger in Cash’s world, and one racked with in equal measures of self-doubt and self-loathing.In TWISTED ROMANCE, Dorian’s lack of self-esteem manifests most prominently in his anxiety over his appearance. He is slim and feminine, with long hair, a somewhat gangling physique, and a gothic aesthetic marked by black nails and smoky eyeliner. Next to Cash’s love interest, Max Miller, Dorian feels insecure. Like Cash, Max is rugged, strapping, and masculine. Dorian assumes he isn’t what Cash is looking for in a partner and resigns himself to pining for his best friend.And, in hindsight, I can say with complete, clear-eyed certainty that this sucks. It sucks a lot.Granted, in the space of 6,000 words, I used it as a quick, relatable shorthand in a simple romcom plot. Dorian feels like he doesn’t belong, and Cash doesn’t want him, so let’s go with the cheapest, dirtiest way to get that point across. Self-esteem and body image issues are relatable, right? But it sucks because it places Dorian’s gender in opposition with Max’s – and, by extension, Cash’s. It makes Dorian out to be lesser than Cash and Max – a lesser person for being feminine. You see how that can read?So, in the book, I made the conscious choice to do away with that dynamic entirely. I did that by building vampire society from the ground up.As a vampire, Dorian doesn’t conceive of gender and sex the way mainstream human society does. Vampires don’t see gender or sexuality identity as static or binary, putting little weight on genital configuration or what any given vampire chooses to do with their genitals at any given time. This doesn’t make for a fully egalitarian society, much less a utopian one. Rather, vampires simply never conceived of hierarchal power rooted in such binaries.As such, Dorian isn’t a man or a woman, and he doesn’t conceive of himself as either. He just…is. By nature, Dorian feels more at ease with himself – comfortable in his own skin – when he dresses and presents as femme. Long hair, eye shadow, painted nails, chokers, cut-off shorts, crop tops, a face free of whiskers or a beard. The masculine doesn’t offend Dorian. It just isn’t right for him. He doesn’t like the way it looks and feels. It makes him anxious to grow a five o’clock shadow or to go out without looking the way he wants to look. Dorian takes time out of his day to get ready, and he makes a conscious effort to maintain his appearance. In a life where he has little control of his circumstances due to a lifetime of poverty, this is the one thing he owns. And he’s allowed to own it, because there’s no one, at any level of vampire society, telling him otherwise.The Max Miller of the novel, with his perfect abs and teeth, doesn’t infringe on that, because he has no reason to. Why would he? What kind of a cheap, loathsome villain would that make him? What would it say about Cash to be with somebody like that?Max doesn’t invalidate or intimidate Dorian anymore, because Dorian isn’t measuring himself against Max. Dorian isn’t measuring himself against Cash, either, who’s no less masculine than he was in the original short story. (Given a full novel to be a tall, ruggedly handsome, broad-shouldered, hairy-chested man who has very manly sex with Max about halfway through the book, Cash may be even more masculine than he ever was in the short story.) Dorian is who he is, and he’s comfortable with that.What he isn’t comfortable with, in a wholly contradictory way, is himself. Rather than simply pine for Cash, Dorian struggles with the depression and anxiety that comes from a lifetime of uncertainty and feeling like a burden on the family that eventually kicked him aside. He never feels that he’s good enough for Cash. That he doesn’t deserve Cash. That Cash should want somebody better. It’s that fear of being lesser – of being broken, and of being a burden, and of someone finding it out to be true all along – that haunts Dorian. To put it bluntly, these are the effects of abandonment, poverty, and untreated mental illness that has defined Dorian’s life in the vampire ghetto of Devil’s Row. He has so little and has lost so much. Now, Cash represents his new life, and the freedom that comes with it. The fear of losing that, and ending up alone again, racks Dorian. It drives him to self-sabotage and to act against his own best interest, even though he is wholly worthy of the love Cash wants to give him.Here in the novel, with a better sense of self to propel him, Dorian is complicated.In the novel, Dorian carries a knife, because he’s good with a knife. He’s stronger, faster, and more agile than Cash on the job. Cash may have the training and the years of experience, but the human is weaker, slower, and highly killable by the monsters they hunt for a living. The Dorian of the book doesn’t need saving because his mettle has already been tested. Instead of being saved by Cash’s marksmanship or honed instincts, Dorian keeps Cash safe from harm by holding back the monsters Cash simply can’t. And whenever Cash gets a busted lip, bloody nose, or broken bone, Dorian is there to clean him up. Put Cash back together. Keep Cash safe. Because that’s his job, and Dorian wants to be the one who gets to do that.Oh, and also Cash is a very different person than the guy we first met. Let’s talk about that.























Cash Leroy: A Study in ContrastsGive me a moment to be brutally honest with you. In the original short story, Cash Leroy was underwritten. He was my response to and antidote for the type of leading man found in action-horror movies, monster-hunting fiction, paranormal romance at large. Rural, masculine, good-looking, plaid-sporting, good with a gun, and chock-full of toxicity. Yes, I’m talking about Dean Winchester. Of course, I’m talking about Dean Winchester. If you didn’t think SOUTHERN GOTHIC was a jab at SUPERNATURAL (down to the pairing name, D/C, because I am a crazy person), I don’t know what to tell you.Cash is a gay man, who loves Stevie Nicks, a notable icon in large subsets of the queer community. He loves to sing and is open about his feelings, despite being a buff jock. He’s very traditionally good-looking, bordering on underwear model levels of absurdly handsome. Naturally, he wears a lot of plaid. Cash is a stereotypical alpha male in theory, but not at all in execution, which makes him a loveable subversion of audience expectation.As seen in TWISTED ROMANCE, it makes sense why Dorian wants Cash. However, it isn’t particularly clear why Cash wants Dorian, because there isn’t enough of a character to work with. Cash is the love interest in a very short romance story, after all. Sexy and into karaoke is about all we can say about him.In the novel, that changes, because we slow way down and spend time with Cash as a person rather than a subject of Dorian’s affection. And Cash, as a person, in his own words, is a hot mess.An earnest, vulnerable, well-meaning mess, but a hot one, nonetheless.In the book, Cash now has an origin story: the sole male in the well-established Mendoza hunting matriarchy, a long line of Mexican vampire hunters. His mother ran off as a teenager and married outside of the life, against the family’s wishes. Leaving home, she settled down with a white Cajun preacher and gave her only son his father’s name, Leroy, thereby breaking the established tradition of the Mendoza family. From birth, Cash is not quite fit for the world he’s born into.Cash grew up in a small, lonely town on the border of Texas and Louisiana, where he was torn between being a stoic hunter’s son and a soft-hearted preacher’s boy. This gives him a big, round, pronounced East Texas drawl that is more closely associated with poor or uneducated women than the kind of respectable, masculine accent you know from notable Texans like Matthew McConaughey and Jensen Ackles. He’s a hunter raised by women to carry on a tradition he didn’t ask to be born into, coming up as something of the disappointing heir to a throne that wasn’t quite made for him. In that regard, Cash is too soft for the world of monsters. He loves to sing, and he loves Stevie Nicks even more. He wears his heart on his sleeve, open and honest to a fault. He wants to settle down and make a home, because hunting is a lonely, dangerous job that keeps him from telling the truth about what he does for a living. He doesn’t want to leave hunting, because he doesn’t know any other kind of life or work, but he wants more than what he has. And what he has before meeting Dorian is casual sex and fleeting relationships that leave him feeling well and truly alone in the world.The Cash of the original story is swaggering but well-intentioned. This Cash is full of bruises and scars, nicks and scratches and broken bones. He has tattoos on his arms: a cross for his father on his left, a gun and the Mendoza name for his mother on his right. There’s a tattoo of his birth sign, Leo, on one wrist and the outline of the state of Texas on the other. A horseshoe and his birthdate with the words “Good Luck” wraps around his ribcage, a customary hunter tattoo that he got with his two childhood friends, Devon and Demi Constantino. He also has pronounced ears (that his mother assures everyone that he “grew into”), a nipple ring, and a name tattooed on his chest that he had removed for reasons that we definitely don’t know about yet. Why? Well, why not? He’s a weird guy, who comes from a weird place, who has a lived-in body with its own wants and needs and stories to tell. A body that wants affection and attention. A body that needs to be cared for. A body that smiles, puts on a good face, and keeps his wants to himself, because he’s used to not getting what he wants.One that is attracted to Dorian, because the vampire is smart, and funny, and beautiful, and Cash’s best friend, and the best person Cash knows. The only person who sees Cash as who he is: a bundle of chips and cracks and damaged nerves, assembled around a big, soft heart. A man wants to make a family with someone he loves and make the very best of what he expects to be a short, dangerous, and nasty life.























What Does This Make of The Book?Dorian is afraid to be with Cash because he’s afraid he’ll end up with nothing.Cash is afraid to be without Dorian because he’s afraid he’ll lose everything.Over the course of five bloody days in Devereux, on the hooves of a spree of weredeer killings, they’re going to meet in the middle and tell each other the truth. Otherwise, the friendship they’re trying so hard to protect isn’t going to survive the hunt.I hope you stick around to find out how all this shakes out.