Monsters,Music and Mayhem
 BHorrorFiction

The New Queen of Publishing

10/4/26
By: B.E. Miller

Susan Russell saw the book I was trying to write before I had the language for it.

I came out of music production. Tracks, mixes, tension you can hear. I was new to putting that same pressure on a page, and my sentences felt stiff. My scenes wanted to get ugly and strange, and I kept sanding them down the way I used to master a song for radio. Then I landed in Susan’s orbit at Grendel Press, and she did not treat me like a tourist. She treated me like somebody who already carried a sound. She clocked what I was chasing, ran me through her editing masterclass, and helped me keep the unique madness instead of boiling it into something safe.

That is why I call her the new queen of publishing. It isn’t because the phrase is pretty. It’s because she builds a house for work that would get sanded to death somewhere else.

A press for the other

Grendel Press, founded in 2022, is a remote independent press based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, publishing horror, dark fantasy, and dark romance. The name comes from the monster in Beowulf, and Susan has been clear about the point. She wants monsters who are more than monsters and heroes who are more than heroes, because people are never one-dimensional. Susan started as an editor for a gaming website, then took on freelance clients and noticed how many self-published books could be elevated by the right editor. Grendel grew out of that. The press motto says it plainly: Where the Feared and the Forgotten Find Their Voice.

Susan wears every hat. She is founder, editor-in-chief, and Keeper of the Sass. She edits, she coaches, and she still takes freelance clients through Sassy Edits. When she isn’t working, she is usually with her cats, Grayson and Lilah. Authors at Grendel get a human on the other end of the conversation, one who polishes the work without losing the voice inside it.

What the masterclass did for me

I felt that in her masterclass. She never flattened the rhythm I brought from music. She showed me where the beat was hiding inside the paragraph. She let the ugly verbs stay, pushed the image when it got timid, and made every scene cost something. An editor who wants a clean product and an editor who wants the thing you actually meant are very different people, and Susan is the second kind.

The books

The catalog shows that taste at work. Grendel opened in 2023 with anthologies. Paramnesia, edited by Susan, gathers fourteen stories about broken memory and the fear that your own mind is lying to you, from a theater owner casting a plague-city diva to a woman who thinks her taxidermy is moving. More Than a Monster collects sixteen stories that stand on the line between creature and person, including a woodwose trying to join polite society and a tentacled thing with an unstoppable hunger in a quarry. The Devil Who Loves Me leans into supernatural seduction and dark want, and Uncanny & Unearthly Tales gathers hauntings, folklore, and odd domestic dread. Later came The Midnight Labyrinth, a collection of strange rooms and lost people, each told by a different Grendel author.

The novels followed. Cyril Mezden’s An Empty Embrace pairs an elven cleric with a vampire in a story of queer desire, devotion, and captivity. S.A. Gonsalves’s The Blood Princess and The Corrupted Prince split a royal life into rule and revolt. Chantal Noordeloos’s Alleria and Charlotte Platt’s One Smile More add more dark fantasy. J.M. Faulkner’s Her Being Toward Death sinks a woman into a Louisiana plantation, a family curse, and a madness that does not knock. Kelly Barker’s Beneath the Bridge brings fae law, secret gardens, and a love that will not stay hidden. C.H. Riley’s Sound of the Future drags science fiction through transformation and the ugly music of a world going wrong. In 2026, the press also released Rebekkah Ford’s The Last O’Clery Witch, a small-town story about a reluctant witch with real stakes and dark humor, and Leon Peter Blanda’s Old Soul.

Horror readers also have Counted With the Dead by Peter O’Keefe, Thrall by Richard Beauchamp, The Women Without Eyes by Micah Castle, and IXIXIKLIS by Jason Wyckoff. All of them are outsider stories told from inside the outsider.

What Grendel offers authors

The press offers authors direct support. Grendel publishes completed manuscripts in dark fantasy, horror, and dark romance, with editing, cover design, typesetting, and marketing handled at no cost to the author. Theme matters more to Susan than a tidy genre label, and the editing is hands-on. Books come out in print and digital, and the press runs its own storefront, events, and mailing list. To see the door for yourself, visit grendelpress.com.

For me, the offer was sharper than any contract. I was a musician learning to write. Susan heard the mix I was after and helped me make the madness hold. That is a rare editor, and it is why Grendel feels like a throne instead of a logo.

Long live the work that would not sit still. Long live the woman who refused to sand it down.



I Am Horror, Hear Me Roar

9/8/2026

     Look around. The modern world doesn’t need invented monsters to terrify us. We live with them every day. Real horror is already here. Wars grind entire generations into dust. Pandemics lock us in our own homes while fear spreads faster than any virus. School shootings and random acts of violence turn ordinary streets into nightmares. Trust erodes quiet as people turn on each other online or in the dark corners of everyday life. Betrayals cut deeper than any blade. Systems crush the vulnerable. Environmental collapse makes the planet itself feel like it’s turning against us. These aren’t movie plots. They’re the headlines, the private reckonings, the things we scroll past and try not to feel too deeply. That’s the landscape I write from.

     I’m B.E. Miller. Army veteran, former studio musician, producer, and now a modern horror writer who refuses to play it safe. I grew up on the classics that shaped me. Stephen King. Clive Barker. The raw stuff that didn’t apologize for getting under your skin. When I turned fully to fiction, I saw too much of the same. The monster appears, does its thing, retreats into the dark for the sequel. I wanted something different. Unique horror that doesn’t just scare you and let you go. My books lean gritty, erotic, full of triggers, packed with twists. They are rollercoasters by design. Cringe moments. Gut punches. Thrills and turns that leave you catching your breath. Beneath the sex, the gore, the creatures, and the chaos sit real messages about people, power, betrayal, and the horrors we create for ourselves. The beast is often just the antagonist. What people do to each other is the real story. My writing has its imperfections, but it is my natural voice behind the madness.

     This approach isn’t new. The best horror writers throughout history have always done the same thing. They held up a cracked mirror to the real fears of their time, refused to make the darkness comfortable, and buried deeper truths beneath the screams. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1818 wasn’t just about a stitched-together monster. It was a raw response to the Industrial Revolution, scientific hubris, the terror of creation without responsibility, and the isolation of the outsider. Layers of philosophy and human failure wrapped in pure gothic dread. Edgar Allan Poe took readers into the collapsing mind itself. His tales of premature burial, obsessive guilt, and madness weren’t safe parlor entertainments. They reflected the psychological fractures and social anxieties of the nineteenth century and left readers unsettled long after the last line. Bram Stoker’s Dracula channeled Victorian fears of sexuality, disease, immigration, and the foreign other invading the heart of empire. H.P. Lovecraft pushed even further into cosmic insignificance and forced readers to confront a universe that did not care about human concerns. An existential rollercoaster that still echoes in every modern fear of the unknown. Shirley Jackson turned the everyday American town into a site of quiet, crushing horror in works like The Lottery, exposing conformity, ritual violence, and the darkness people inflict on their neighbors. And the writers who directly shaped me kept that tradition alive. Stephen King mapped the traumas and everyday evils of late-twentieth-century America. Clive Barker dove into the erotic and the mythic with unflinching intensity. They never treated horror as decoration. They used it as a weapon and a revelation. I often wonder if I will ever be as good as the greats who have inspired me on this writing journey. Their shadows are long, and the bar they set is high, but that doubt keeps me honest and keeps me pushing.

     I stand in that line, and here’s why I believe the work matters. In a genre crowded with formula, I deliver something unfiltered and personal. Stories that treat horror as a full-body experience rather than a checklist of scares. Readers respond to the pace, the redefinition of familiar legends like Bigfoot into something darker and more human, the bloodlust, and the lingering questions about who the real monster is. On Amazon my titles have earned solid ratings and reviews. The Writhing sits around 4.3 stars. Savage Creek near 4.2. The Beast from Beyond series, Chronicle, The Fool’s Game, and Dead and Buried, lands in the 3.9 to 4.2 range with hundreds of combined reviews. I’ve hit bestseller rankings in categories, enough to claim the best-selling tag honestly. Two books have already crossed into audio with adaptations of Benny and The Writhing, adding another layer of intensity that doesn’t let the rollercoaster slow down. Benny leans erotic-thriller. Raw, provocative, unforgettable if you can handle the heat. The Writhing is pure creature-feature momentum. Something best left undisturbed rises, hunger spreads, and obsession becomes its own terror. Fast, classic, relentless. These aren’t safe reads. They’re meant to provoke, to leave you with something interpretive beneath the surface, and to stick with you long after the last page. That’s the case I make for myself as an author. Imperfect. Driven. Rooted in the real world. Committed to the same uncompromising tradition that made the greats matter.

     Horror is not supposed to be safe. If it comforts you too much, it’s failing. My goal is to provoke, to take you through the cringe and the adrenaline and still leave you with something that reflects real life’s darker edges. The modern world already supplies plenty of genuine dread. I just hold up a mirror, twist it, and invite you to ride, the same way those earlier writers did in their own eras. I’m not stopping at the page. My next goal is movie production. I want these stories on screen. The same unfiltered intensity. The same refusal to pull punches. To get there I’m always looking for collaborators. Writers, directors, producers, actors, creatives who get it, who aren’t afraid of the dark. I’m building a true horror brand I’ve dubbed BHorrorFiction, a home for the kind of work that doesn’t water itself down.

     So where are all the real horror fans? The ones who still crave the rollercoaster, who know the modern world is already screaming and want fiction that answers back just as loud, the same way readers once answered Shelley, Poe, Stoker, and the rest? I’m here. Come find me on X at @BHorrorFiction. Follow, engage, share the madness, and help build this thing with me. Whether you’re a lifelong fan of the genre, a fellow creator, or just someone who refuses the sanitized version of fear, join in. Let’s grow this community together. The roar is just getting started. Buckle up.