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 My brother was a taxidermist and my first real brush with terror came one dark night in the countryside. We lived on 62 acres of wooded wilderness west of Blanchard, Louisiana, truly out in the middle of nowhere. My brother would work on deer heads from hunters proud of their latest kill. He would strip the flesh of all of its gooey stuff and haul it all out into the woods. At night, I would walk through the dark from my house down a dirt path to my sister’s house. Although it was only 100 yards away, it seemed like a different continent. One warm, spring night I was halfway to my sister’s house when I stepped on a water moccasin. The snake hissed at me and I barely avoided its striking fangs. And then, I heard the most blood curdling howling I had ever heard in my life. It was a chorus of insane voices moving closer and closer. I was paralyzed in my fear and afraid to move because of the snake. Out of the bushes along the trail, dark humped shapes appeared howling at the new moon, their satanic voices driving my heart into my throat. They were mongrel dogs, abandoned in the countryside and living a life of wild abandon.
The dogs tore through the bushes dragging along the putrid flesh of those deer my brother had stripped. They chased and whirled around me, nipping at each other, eyes wild in the dim light, teeth dripping with gore. I dared not move lest they turn their attention on me. The largest dog carried a deer skull in his mouth, its neckbone dragging behind him. The rest of the pack had turned on their leader and wanted the prize. They fought and tumbled and tore at the earth and at each other. I prayed harder than I ever had in the eleven years of my life. Finally, the pack moved on across my front yard, out onto the highway and across into the far woods. I stood shaking on the dirt path, terrified and covered with the sweat of my fear.
That was my life back then. Things moved and bumped in the night outside my window. Evil lurked in every shadow and every hidden hollow of the woods that surrounded me. I had nothing to fall back on but my imagination and it was proving to be my enemy as much as my ally. And so, at the age of 13, I began to write. If I put down the fears in tangible form I could control them. In the wild unreeling of my unfettered imagination, I could chase the horror back into the shadows. I could grab evil by the throat and kill it. I could control the fear that paralyzed me. I have not stopped writing since then. Nor has my imagination ceased its wild flights of fancy.
In 1989 my life took a detour into church based drama. God moved my writing into a more effective arena. Since then, I have written well over 200 short and long dramas all of which have been performed in some form on the stage or have been filmed for short films. But, the dream of taking those terrors back to the written page has never faded.
In 2001, my pastor, Mark Sutton and I were privileged to have our book, “Conquering Depression: A Thirty Day Plan to Finding Happiness” published by Broadman & Holman. The journey through depression that led to my part of the book is another story and it can be found at the website, www.conqueringdepression.com. After finishing that book, I asked God what I should do next. More drama? Another non-fiction self help book? Or, could I possibly fulfill my personal dream of writing a book of fiction? I set a deadline on myself and on God. Big mistake. Don’t ever do that. Why? Because nothing happened. Nothing! The night before the deadline I realized I had made a big mistake. I prayed and asked God to show me what He wanted me to do next. It may be that only one book would ever be written by me and if so, I was satisfied. Whatever God wanted me to do, I would do. It’s called surrender and unfortunately it is not what I do best.
August 1, 1999 I woke up in a cold sweat at 4 AM with the story in my head that would become the 13th demon. It was all there spread out before me. I got up and sat before my computer and began writing. By noon, I had written six chapters and had outlined the entire book. In the month that followed, God worked in miraculous ways to affirm I was doing what he wanted me to do. And so, I wrote “The 13th Demon: Altar of the Spiral Eye”. I self-published the book through iUniverse and it has won two awards and received many excellent book reviews.
Struggling with the difficulty of getting “The 13th Demon” into book stores, I looked for another publishing outlet for the next book in the series, “The 12th Demon: Vampyre Majick”. I chose BookPros, an organization out of Austin, Texas. BookPros is a healthy cross between a conventional publisher and self-publishing. I worked diligently with their editor and book designers and “The 12th Demon: Vampyre Majick” will be available through conventional publishing outlets, including book stores in May, 2008.
In the future, I hope to either become my own publishing company or to find a conventional publisher willing to embrace the first two books and be willing to publish the following books in the series.
At this time, I am working on the third book, “The 11th Demon: Children of the Bloodstone” and I have ten books planned for the series. My philosophy is simple. I want to tell a huge story arc that coves Jonathan Steel’s story. I plan to write no more or no less than the story will allow. I promise not to extend the series just to sell more books.
Currently, I am a physician practicing medicine in Shreveport, Louisiana in the field of radiology. I am a member of Brookwood Baptist Church where I have served as the Drama Minister for 15 years. Currently, I am the script writer for our Production Team.
I am married to the most patient and practical woman in the world, my soul mate chosen by God before we were born, Sherry. We have two children who are grown. Sean is married to Jennifer and they are currently graduate students at U. T. Austin. Casey is still living at home and is attending college to become a veterinary assistant. We have a Jack Russell Terrier named Romeo who is currently the ruler of our lives. If you want to know more about my future books outside the Steel Chronicles check out www.613media.com.
— Bruce Hennigan
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