Blood Hound

Afterword & Acknowledgments

The first prototype for Alexi, Dante, started out as a character in an old IRC D&D group that I played with while I was in university. We were running a campaign in the Forgotten Realms setting—a protracted PVP murder-mystery style plot, where one of the characters was the murderer and had to pick off the other characters while they tried to figure out what was going on. The Dungeon Master asked me if I’d like to play the murderer. I made a Lawful Evil cleric with the ability to disguise his alignment, and deployed him as the healer for the party. He was so effective that they only worked out who it was when it was far too late. In a single session of absolute carnage, he strangled the paladin, poisoned the fortress well so that all our NPCs were sick, then let the forces of darkness in to overwhelm our weakened garrison. He then kidnapped the cute (male) rogue, who became his loyal brainwashed boy-toy, and took the artifact the garrison was supposed to be protecting. Everyone had a great time, but they were floored by this motherfucker: a fussy, thoughtful, outwardly compassionate but deeply bitter and merciless man capable of great foresight. Dante was compelling, confusing, and contradictory. I knew I’d found a winning archetype.

Alexi began to take more shape when I deployed his essential characteristics for a WOTC d20 Modern game, this time, as a mundane-but-talented crooked cop. As time went by, I gradually began to conceive of the character as being an organized criminal rather than a corrupt policeman, and the rest of his backstory followed. But it wasn’t until I entered the Dermal Highway setting that I fully realized Alexi for what he was… a character who exists in multiple places and multiple times. Part James Bond, part Dr. Who, part Constantine. The first draft of the book was written in 2009.

While working as a bouncer in 2010, I got a telecommute job for a small magazine in Australia. Seeing the opportunity for what it was, I gave up all of my personal possessions and traveled the world for three years, moving from country to country and keeping up a long-distance relationship with my soon-to-be wife. But I knew, as soon as I left Australia, that all roads led to Brighton Beach. I got there at one in the morning on a very hot night in 2012. The train carriage had one sleeping, coked-out office worker, two Russian women, and me—a very nervous Australian backpacker. Expecting to be mugged at every turn, I eventually found Brighton 8th Street, where I walked in on a fight between a cat and a raccoon. The fight was being cheered on by a group of cheerful Slavic men in sleeveless undershirts and gold chains, bottles in their hands, cigarettes in the corners of their mouths. They welcomed me like I’d come home, as did everyone else I met there. In other words, the place was pretty much as I’d always imagined it.

BLOOD HOUND was also written during one of the most difficult periods of my life: my transition from female to male. When BLOOD HOUND was first being drafted in 2009, I was changing names, changing sex, and only really just coming to terms with the many traumatic events I suffered in the past. The book is very different to how it started out, and Alexi’s story is not my story, but the transformational aspect of this is definitely personal.

This novel could not have been written without the help of many people: Canth?, Stacy, Joey, Joey, Amanda, #The_Highway and House Whitebird crews, and the many fleeting inspirations that were given to me by friends, family, strangers and enemies.