My job is imagining things.

And then telling about what I’ve imagined. So I’ve written films, books and videogames. They were crime thrillers, dramas, biopics.

But in my mind there’s always this dark, beautiful place like a black river running endlessly through a garden at night. And there’s a voice calling me down there.

There are times when I follow that voice and there are times when I don’t. I was following it when I wrote my first stories, I wasn’t following it when I tried to sound more clever, more commercial or more high-brow than I really was. I have been punished for not following the voice: my words sounded dry and nobody really liked them.

I was surely following that voice when I made my computer game, Donna: Avenger of Blood. I set out only to amaze myself! It is a bit clunky, but I love it to bits, and there were quite a few people who liked it, too!

After finishing Donna I’ve started working in the film industry as a screenwriter. Now, there’s something you can never have when you’re making movies in the professional industry, and that thing is artistic freedom. And when you have a dark river in your head, you sure miss that freedom sometimes! 

Ten years have passed and I’ve realized Donna was the last time when I made something exactly like I wanted, without listening to anyone else. No directors, no producers telling me what to do. I discovered I was really longing for this feeling. 

So when an idea for a story like no other in a new, exciting world appeared in my head during a bout of two-week-long cluster headache in the beginning of 2019 I knew I had something good — something I knew I had to do on my own, without caring for budgets, producers or directors.

It is dark thriller, it is horror, it is supernatural suspense… it is everything that made people and myself enjoy my first short stories or Donna: Avenger of Blood.

The name of the series was Books of Darkness.

And the only thing I was interested in when writing it was following the voice coming from the dark river, whispering with the night wind among the shrubbery. I have decided to return to the dark garden and remain faithful. My aim is to live by exploring that place and to make it my mission in life … which, I believe, fulfills all the markings of an obsession. But, well. What can you do? That’s what I have. So, no more listening to directors and producers and level designers. I’m doing my own stuff.

Not many people bought Books of Darkness but what they said made me confident I was on the right path. I had an idea for another series… about two very different priests (I always loved the messy history of heresy and cults and religions!) fighting monsters and investigating demonic crimes across modern-day, troubled America.  

And so you have it — Amen: American Exorcists!

… and what happens outside my mind, outside the night garden with the dark river? I live with my lovely wife, who is a photography teacher (and shoots me sweet photos to use on my books!)  and two sons, who make a lot of noise and trouble, but are a pair of most adorable trolls you’ve ever seen!

This is the computer game I’ve made:  

https://donnathegame.wordpress.com 

And that’s it for now! See you around. Somewhere by a black river, in a garden, late at night …