Is there anything scarier than procrastination? Here we are, just days away from Halloween, and I’ve only just finished refreshing the 3 books in my ‘fear’ trilogy, with Bitch in the Box and Dread, Desire, and Damaged Dreams already available, and Lost Ladies of the Nightmare now ready to follow in their dark and bloody footsteps.
This one is the most personal of the three, drawing as much upon my past, my favorite places, and my struggles. It’s a book that changed immensely from the first draft to the second, and found its true path in the original edition… but which was also a bit self-indulgent. It needed to be trimmed.
Reviews of the original edition were overwhelmingly positive…
…I choked up at several sections of this amazing sexy-scary novella.
If you’re into righteous anger, gleeful gore, embracing of the messiness of queer identity, and tentacles… this one is definitely for you.
… but I always knew it wasn’t quite right, that it suffered from some info-dumping early on, interrupted the tension in too many places, and didn’t give one of the character the respect they deserved. In revisiting it, I actually cut more content than I added, but that was the point. It’s a tighter, more intense, more satisfying story, and one that I think resonates far better with the reader.
Lost Ladies of the Nightmare: An Erotic Supernatural Horror Novel
Some places remember. Some places hunger.
The Velvet Orchid was more than a brothel—it was a sanctuary where women loved women in the shadows of a world that condemned them, where pleasure mixed with power, and where something ancient stirred beneath the floorboards.
It survived Prohibition’s raids, the Depression’s despair, and two world wars. But when the owner dabbled in witchcraft during the occult-obsessed 1960s, she opened a door that should have stayed locked forever. The building burned. The women vanished. And the ruins were left to rot.
Fifty years later, two awkward friends, each guarding closeted secrets, venture into what remains, drawn to this cursed place by a frightening magnetic pull.
Inside the Velvet Orchid’s impossible architecture, the past bleeds into the present. Phantom women whisper of betrayal from behind walls that shouldn’t exist. Tentacled things writhe in the darkness, blurring the line between terror and temptation. Stone gargoyles draw you in when you’re not looking. And something demonic—something that wore the brothel’s madame like a second skin—has been waiting for fresh souls to claim.
To survive until dawn, Chris and Kim must confront what they’ve buried deepest: their trauma, their hunger, and the terrifying truth of who they really are.
Because the house doesn’t just haunt you. It transforms you.
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