Crystal Lake welcomes author F.R. Michaels. His novel The Blood of Saint Vera will be published in 2027.
F. R. Michaels is just a nice, normal person who happens to like weird and scary stuff. Seriously. An IT guru, retired church elder, and garage-band musician, his true love is writing strange stories about the odd little people who live in his head. His work has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Haunts (as Frank Michaels) as well as the anthologies Strangely Funny II, Mysterion, Wicked Weird, Wicked Creatures, Monstorm, SVP’s Little Black Book of Terror, More Future for Ferals, and The Chaos Clock, where his steampunk cosmic horror story, “The Last Flight of the One-Eyed Jack” made the TangentOnline recommended reading list for 2024. He dwells on Long Island and writes horror and dark fantasy.
The Blood of Saint Vera:
When antiquities expert Max Moulton is summoned to a secret vault deep below the Vatican, he did not expect his job would be to authenticate the legends surrounding Vera of Genoa, a mysterious young woman nominated for sainthood. Martyred for her uncanny powers, walled up alive at the order of her own Mother Superior, her body lies in its stone coffin, undecayed for over a hundred years, beautiful, serene, as if she were only sleeping. But is Vera of Genoa a saint, or a devil in disguise? Rome in 1922 teeters on the brink of chaos, with riots in the streets and Mussolini’s Fascists on the march. Trapped underground while anarchy rages in the Eternal City, Max Moulton and his plucky assistant Paradise must unravel the secret of Saint Vera before the hidden horrors below claim their lives.
Welcome aboard, Frank!