Steven LaChance Blog

The first drafts of my book Grace were written in play form during the LA Riots of April 1992, following the Rodney King verdict. It was a deeply troubled and sad time, just a few months after Freddie Mercury had died from AIDS.

The world felt at the time like it was heading in a very dark direction and it felt like things were literally falling apart. Ironically, what I wrote then seems more relevant today than it did back then. This was the climate and seed that eventually became my book Grace. Interestingly, Grace actually falls into the third book of the Modern Monster series even though it was the first book creatively conceived.

Each book is a layer, leading deeper into a broken world based upon real research and events. I think this aspect of the books makes them even more frightening because the stories are based around actual history, cases and ideas. The research into them has been nothing short of horrific and has shocked me more times than I can tell you.

Glow : explores supernatural nightmares and reveals the first of many monsters to come.

Gorilla: delves into hopelessness and the rise of monstrous hordes.

Grace: depicts the Fall.

Gabriel: reveals the prophecy.

This is not subtle horror. These books are graphic and violent, but the violence serves the narrative. I am not carelessly gratuitous; it reflects the harsh realities of the story and the world we occupy together.

The monsters in these books represent the forces that strip away at our humanity, ultimately destroying who we are as humans. You cannot tell that kind of story with a soft hand. The destruction of humanity is bloody, it’s violent and it’s horrific. These books are all of that and more.

I hope all four books make the reader think about the world we live in and the monsters that surround us daily. One of the first things I said to my reading audience on the first pages of my very first book was we are not ever fully alone. I meant that then and I still do today. I mean it not in a Hallmark kind of way, but in a something unseen is breathing over your shoulder kind of way. That brutal unsureness is a symptom of the world we live in. A world where we really don’t know or understand how safe we are. We all have our own demons and monsters in our lives. Sometimes these monsters take on form and sometimes they are the nightmares which wake you up in the middle of the night screaming.

These four books crawl into that kind of darkness while holding a mirror up to the concrete and supernatural world we live in.

Now is the time for monsters.

Glow is out now. Gorilla will be released in Spring 2025. Grace will be released Fall of 2025. Gabriel TBD.