Journalist. Palindrome. Writer.

Category: Fiction

New Novel – Violet Eyes!

My new horror novel, Violet Eyes, is being released as a serialized audiobook for the fall season! Get your pumpkin spice latte, pull up a chair by the fire, and give it a listen.

On the edge of the University of Akron campus is a beautiful Victorian mansion, former home to the Humboldt family, once the city’s wealthiest patrons. Years ago, Stella Humboldt gifted the house to the university under two conditions – that two young women would live there for free during the school year and that they never, ever bring men inside after dark.

Humboldt House is also the sight of an old local mystery – eighty years ago, young Blaire Humboldt disappeared along with the son of the family’s servant. The police believed they were murdered, possibly by Blaire’s eccentric uncle, but he claimed they left so that they could live together in sin. No bodies were ever found.

Enter our protagonist, a young woman finishing college, who has just moved to Akron. She is nameless, like the narrator of Rebecca. And mysterious in other ways – she has violet eyes and one of them is glass. When she accepts a position to live at Humboldt House, she thinks she has lucked into a wonderful arrangement – free room and board inside a giant mansion. But then the piano begins to play at night and round marks appear along the walls of the kitchen, leading to the locked basement door and she begins to suspect she should have stayed in the dorms.

There are ghosts here, and not all are human.

Listen to Violet Eyes, by James Renner wherever you get your podcasts!

Spotify.

Apple Podcasts

iHeart Radio

Now in paperback: MUSE!

MUSE
MUSE

My horror novella, Muse, is now available in paperback through Cemetery Dance! Click here to order.

Muse tells the story of a private detective hired by a young writer to steal an old box from the estate of H.P. Lovecraft. Mayhem ensues.

“This is a horror-filled book about creativity and storytelling and compulsion, not metaphorical but literal… Muse is now far and away my favorite Renner work.” – ScifiAndScary.com

“Renner’s spin on the Lovecraft-go-round is a dark-ass supernatural detective thriller speculating about the source of inspiration for two of America’s gloomiest, murkiest writers. It is a bloody, and clever and slick-noir journey through a criminal underbelly of east coast gangsters and cultists and amorous boy scout leaders and ambitious teenage novelists and it is creepy and rewarding and HIGHLY EFFABLE. like, ‘we are all effed-able.’ Finally, a Lovecraft i could love.” – Karen Brissette.

Pre-order MUSE Today!

My new novel, MUSE, comes out May 14 but you can pre-order a copy, today at this link! This story is limited to only 750 signed copies and Cemetery Dance has done a wonderful job with it.

Here’s a hint of what it’s about:The enclosed was transcribed from ten mini-cassette tapes that were recovered from the offices of Boston attorney William J. Latch following his disappearance on June 19, 2014.

These tapes are part of the evidentiary record in the civil case of Latch V. Weymouth Life & Casualty.

William J. Latch was declared dead by the State of Massachusetts in April 2015 after Magistrate Gavin FitzGerald reviewed these tapes, privately, in his chambers. Weymouth Life & Casualty was therein ordered to release Latch’s survivor’s benefits to his children.

Latch’s body has never been found.

His client, Michael Hadley, also remains missing.


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