Suzi Albracht – The Queen of Scream

I am an indie author, a dedicated pool player, a gourmet cook, and an e-book cover artist. If you think about it, all of these things require passion if you want to be good at them. Wow! I just surprised myself. I never thought of myself as being passionate, but clearly, I am. I would not say it’s a flash in the pan, consuming everything in its path type of zeal, but more of a focused passion that surrounds and permeates anything that gets in its way. Oh my, is it hot in here?

The Devil’s Due Collection

So about the Indie author in me – I have four books on Amazon at the moment, three fiction and one non-fiction.

Three of my novels are part of my collection – The Devil’s Due. They are Death Most Wicked, The Devil’s Lieutenant, and Scorn Kills. At the moment, I am working on the fourth book in the collection – The Making of a Soul Collector. I hope to release it this summer. I am also working on a separate thriller and a ghost story novella. Those, I will release once the Soul Collector book is out. I have more ideas for novels in the collection that I will write somewhere down the road.

I also wrote a non-fiction book on how to get and keep Twitter followers. I wrote it because I noticed a significant number of authors with less than 500 followers who wanted to join Facebook groups that required a minimum of 5,000 followers. I wanted to help them get there without spending money on fake followers or pulling their hair out. Hair is important, after all.

Now let’s talk about my writing style. I don’t believe I am your average horror author. While I love horror, I’m not crazy about books or movies that are overloaded with slashings and beheadings and low on character development. I want my readers to experience more than fear in my books; I want them to enjoy laughter and joy, to see love bloom, to feel compassion when a character is frustrated, and I want them to feel free to want to smack a character along the way when they make a bone-headed mistake.

Did I mention that some call me “The Queen of Scream?” Well, they do but not in the blood spurting kind of way. It’s more of a comment about my style of building fear until it bursts. My preferred style of horror is mind-twisting. I want my readers to feel horror that is personal. It is important to me that they come to love the characters and get that pinch of fear in their guts whenever the villain appears on the pages because they know that character might not survive. I like my characters to have faults, to make silly mistakes, to pop off the pages because they are relatable. I want my readers to scream when a character is making wrong choices and worry for his safety. I much prefer characters who are everyday people that brush their teeth and worry about bills, characters who are insecure about their looks and have all those silly, bad habits you and I have.

I want my readers to feel like that’s their brother there on the page. I want them to grab the arms of their chairs in terror because he’s about to open that door that should stay closed because a monster is on the other side. The monster is a vile creature that doesn’t have warts or a hockey mask, but instead, looks like your handsome cousin Ryan. I won’t lie and tell you that people don’t die horrible, grisly deaths in my books because that would be a lie. My books are, after all, cringe-worthy.

My novels each have several intertwining relationships with realistic problems. For instance, in The Devil’s Lieutenant, I have brothers Jake and Bobby Holyfield and their friend, Max Wilson. Where Jake is a dedicated law enforcement officer, living a normal life with a wife and daughter, Bobby has a hellion for a girlfriend who keeps him on edge with her unreasonable demands. She is grooming Bobby for a run at the Presidency and won’t settle for anything less. Their friend, Max, is like their brother from another mother. He is that friend who can’t get anything right. He’s always out of work and too prideful to ask for help. Bobby’s bad taste in women affects the rest of the group because of the frustration they feel over his refusal to see his girlfriend for what she is. At the same time, Max is a hot mess which lets Bobby feel superior. And Jake? He is the voice of reason, the brother who takes care of everyone even when it’s not easy. Now add the Devil’s right-hand man who is stalking all three, pushing buttons and turning brother against brother because he has dark and evil plans for each of them. Now that’s my kind of horror.

Since we are all warm and fuzzy now, I’d like to give a shout out to my pool teams. On one 8-ball team, I am going to Vegas to play in the APA World Championship in August. It’s been a long, hard fight to get there, so I am very proud of them. My other 8-ball team is becoming my dream team. We are beginning to gel and kick ass like we are intended to. You can look for us in Vegas one day too.

Last but not least, I’d like to take a few minutes to talk about a service I provide. I created Wickedly Awesome Designs so that I could offer services such as Social Media photo cards. That has evolved into my newest offering of pre-designed e-book covers at affordable prices. At the moment, I have close to 250 covers available with more being added each week. Each cover is a one-time purchase, which means that once someone buys a cover, it is taken down from the site and is no longer available to be sold again. Most genres are represented and should you prefer to have a custom-made cover that is also an option at an additional cost. Like my writing, my covers are emotionally charged and offer a promise that a great story lies between the pages. I love creating the covers for other genres because it lets me experience another source of creativity. I feel like I am virtually cheating on my books when I design a cover that is stylistically exciting for an outer space adventure. I can be a bad girl when I design of cover that depicts the naughty boys of literature. And I can be a child again designing covers with dragons and bunnies.