A Potential Reader Asks: What Book Should I Start With?

One of the most common questions I get asked is this: what should I start with? The question usually comes on social media, from folks I really don't know well. I'm inclined to ask them what they like to read so I can fit my answer more directly to their tastes. 

Below, what I want to do is classify my best books and their genres, so I can point readers to this very blog to determine what they might want to read next of mine, or read for the very first time.

I'm including what I deem are my best books in each category. Click on the titles to go to their Amazon pages.

Here we go...

IF YOU LIKE A GOOD LOVE STORY

1. Blink. A semi-autobiographical love story set in the early '80s (the semi-autobiographical part) and present day, when the main character goes searching for that elusive "missed connection" from many, many years ago...and finds him.

2. Dinner at Home. My "romance with recipes" charts the course of love between a man who's seemingly lost everything and the homeless guy caring for his toddler niece as they embark on a course to build a home-chef business together. This is my most popular love story.

3. Blue Umbrella Sky. My Lambda Literary Award finalist that showcases the love between a man trying to get over the loss of his long-term spouse due to Alzheimers and a recovering alcoholic and singer who's much younger in a Palm Springs mobile home community.

4, Caregiver. Based on my own experiences as an AIDS buddy in Tampa, FL at a time when the virus was a death sentence, this book shows how love can arise out the ashes of tragedy.

5. Raining Men. One of the writing hat tricks I'm proudest to have achieved: taking a sex-addicted cad and redeeming him once he learns that loving himself is the most crucial love of all.

IF YOU WANT TO BE A LITTLE SCARED AND IN SUSPENSE

1. The Man from Milwaukee. Winner of the Rainbow Award for Best Thriller and Best Gay Novel Overall, my story of a closeted young man in Chicago discovering a strange affinity with serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who's just been arrested for his shocking crimes, is my take on the unreliable narrator and a testament to self-acceptance. Disturbing, yet poignant, this is one of my best.

2. Toxic. My Seattle-set story of how an innocent man, recently dumped, goes looking for love online and finds poison instead. Inspired by a true crime.

3. Bashed. Part ghost story, part love story, this is where I show how love grows out of tragedy, in this case a horrific hate crime.

4. IM. My serial killer thriller, IM is about the dangers of online, anonymous hookups. It also showcases one of my most evil, devious, and yet oddly sympathetic killers.

5. Dinner at the Blue Moon Cafe. My werewolf story with a twist: mine is a homophobe preying on Seattle's gay men. The horror story has a counterpoint, though--the love of a young man and a Sicilian chef. The latter has the habit of disappearing every time there's a full moon. Yet, everything is not as it seems...

Check out my Amazon Author Page for more titles. Most of my work falls into the two above categories.

2021 Year In Writing

2021 was my year to color outside the lines.

From a raw and poignant portrayal of a pivotal night in a small-town gay bar, to a tale of a tortured--and addicted--ghost in Chicago, to a story of ultimate sacrifice for love, to my depiction of a serial killer's reign of terror in Chicago, the year proved to me that good stories need not be hindered by genre restrictions. 

On deck for 2022: a romantic thriller called TOXIC and a magical realism novel that explores domestic abuse in a unique way, SEASPRAY.  

Hope you had a happy reading and/or writing year!

THE Q

Step out for a Saturday night at The Q—the small town gay bar in Appalachia where the locals congregate. Whose secret love is revealed? What long-term relationship comes to a crossroad? What revelations come to light? The DJ mixes a soundtrack to inspire dancing, drinking, singing, and falling in (or out) of love.

This pivotal Saturday night at The Q is one its regulars will never forget. Lives irrevocably change. Laugh, shed a tear, and root for folks you’ll come to love and remember long after the last page.

Buy from Amazon.

WOUNDED AIR

Rick and Ernie found the perfect apartment on Chicago’s West Side. Before they’re settled, Rick begins having all-too-real disturbing “dreams.” Each time, an emaciated young man with sad brown eyes appears, terrifying and obsessing him.

From their next-door neighbor, Paula, Rick learns about Karl and Tommy, who lived there before them. Tommy’s mysterious disappearance pains her. When she shares a photo of her with Tommy and Karl, Rick is shocked and troubled. Tommy is the man who appears to him in his dreams.

The ghostly visitations compel Rick to uncover the truth about Tommy’s disappearance. It’s a quest that will lead him to Karl, Tommy’s lover, who may know more about Tommy’s disappearance than he’s telling, and a confrontation with a restless spirit who wants only to—finally—rest in peace.

Buy from Amazon.

IMMORTAL THINGS

By day, Elise draws and paints, spilling out the horrific visions of her tortured mind. By night, she walks the streets, selling her body to the highest bidder.

And then they come into her life: a trio of impossibly beautiful vampires: Terence, Maria, and Edward. When they encounter Elise, they set an explosive triangle in motion

Terence wants to drain her blood. Maria wants Elise . . . as lover and partner through eternity. And Edward, the most recently converted, wants to prevent her from making the same mistake he made as a young abstract expressionist artist in 1950s Greenwich Village: sacrificing his artistic vision for immortal life. He is the only one of them still human enough to realize what an unholy trade this is.

Immortal Things will grip you in a vise of suspense that won’t let go until the very last moment…when a shocking turn of events changes everything and demonstrates—truly—what love and sacrifice are all about.

Buy from Amazon.

OBSESSED

I kill, therefore I am ...

Voices slam through the corridor of his wounded mind. The words of his dead sister cry out. His parents' taunts fill the silent room where he sits and waits -- waits for the murderous rage, filling him with strength, driving him to kill, to touch the cold flesh, taste the warm blood -- to feel alive again ...

A witness has seen him, but his killing only turns her on and now she wants to protect him. His wife suspects him, but the private detective she hired cannot stop him. Joe MacAree fears nothing -- except that he may no longer be human. The thirst that drives him is relentless, moving deeper and deeper into his own shattering, private realm, where each murder is a delicious new gift of life, where revulsion is beauty, and the obsession will never let him go.

"A harrowing ride through cutting-edge psychological horror, this one's got a vicious bite. Rick R. Reed's Obsessed is a twisted nightmare." -- Douglas Clegg, bestselling author

Buy from Amazon. 

How about a MEAT MALLET as a Halloween Treat?

If this short doesn't send a chill up your spine by its deliciously horrifying conclusion, I don't know what will... 

ABOUT THE STORY
Steven's cruising the Chicago lakefront park when he meets the man in the Jeep. He seems nice. He seems sexy. He seems like the kind of guy Steven could have a very good time with. When the guy invites him to his place, Steven doesn't hesitate to accept.

But when Steven gets back to the guy's apartment, he realizes, too late, there's more on the menu than just sex. Steven has fallen into the hands of a very hungry predator...and he may never escape.

EXCERPT
Oh, I know all the jokes when it comes to tenderizing meat for cooking. Most of them center around “beating your meat.” How childish. But the truth is, if you’ve got some tough meat—oh Lord, keep your mind out of the gutter, people!—you have to work with it a little bit to get it tender.

That’s what I’m doing right now. Go ahead: laugh. Yes, I’m beating my meat. I prefer using this old oak hammer type thing my Mom had when she was just a girl. You’ve seen similar ones. They look like a wooden hammer and have little pointy things on either side of the mallet head. They work wonders when you beat your meat, breaking up the tough gristle and fat, so once you cook it, it gets really tender, especially if you cook the meat in its own juices.

Bam! I pound the nice cut in front of me, beating it into submission.

The mallet, its solid oak burnished to a dark, dull shine, is splashed with the blood of the new meat. I suppose that’s what gives the mallet its patina of darkness.

Blood.

Bam!

BUY NOW (Amazon Kindle) 

Get Obsessed! My First Book is Out in a New Edition!

 

Dell, 1991

JMS Books, 2021

You always remember your first... I'm delighted to announce that my first book, OBSESSED, is out in a newly-reissued edition from JMS Books. Above are the original Dell cover from 30 years ago and the latest cover. 

Pick up a copy and see where my writing journey began... 

BUY

Amazon  

JMS Books

Smashwords (on sale for only $2.99 through March)

ABOUT THE BOOK 

I kill, therefore I am ... 

 Voices slam through the corridor of his wounded mind. The words of his dead sister cry out. His parents' taunts fill the silent room where he sits and waits--waits for the murderous rage, filling him with strength, driving him to kill, to touch the cold flesh, taste the warm blood--to feel alive again... 

A witness has seen him, but his killing only turns her on and now she wants to protect him. His wife suspects him, but the private detective she hired cannot stop him. Joe MacAree fears nothing -- except that he may no longer be human. The thirst that drives him is relentless, moving deeper and deeper into his own shattering, private realm, where each murder is a delicious new gift of life, where revulsion is beauty, and the obsession will never let him go.

Tasty Horror: Meat Mallet

If this little short doesn't send a chill up your spine by its deliciously horrifying conclusion, I don't know what will. 

BLURB
Steven's cruising the Chicago lakefront park when he meets the man in the Jeep. He seems nice. He seems sexy. He seems like the kind of guy Steven could have a very good time with. When the guy invites him to his place, Steven doesn't hesitate to accept.

But when Steven gets back to the guy's apartment, he realizes, too late, there's more on the menu than just sex. Steven has fallen into the hands of a very hungry predator...and he may never escape.

EXCERPT
Oh, I know all the jokes when it comes to tenderizing meat for cooking. Most of them center around “beating your meat.” How childish. But the truth is, if you’ve got some tough meat—oh Lord, keep your mind out of the gutter, people!—you have to work with it a little bit to get it tender.

That’s what I’m doing right now. Go ahead: laugh. Yes, I’m beating my meat. I prefer using this old oak hammer type thing my Mom had when she was just a girl. You’ve seen similar ones. They look like a wooden hammer and have little pointy things on either side of the mallet head. They work wonders when you beat your meat, breaking up the tough gristle and fat, so once you cook it, it gets really tender, especially if you cook the meat in its own juices.

Bam! I pound the nice cut in front of me, beating it into submission.

The mallet, its solid oak burnished to a dark, dull shine, is splashed with the blood of the new meat. I suppose that’s what gives the mallet its patina of darkness.

Blood.

Bam!

BUY NOW at Amazon Kindle for only .99 cents!

Or...for an even better deal, get it at JMS Books for a mere 79 cents!

COVER REVEAL: The Man from Milwaukee

★★COVER REVEAL!★★
Happy to announce I will be taking a deep dive back into the horror genre. My first new horror novel in years, THE MAN FROM MILWAUKEE will release July 20 from NineStar Press. The cover, by Natasha Snow is awesome and chilling, better than I dared hope for...

BLURB
It’s the summer of 1991 and serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer has been arrested. His monstrous crimes inspire dread around the globe. But not so much for Emory Hughes, a closeted young man in Chicago, who sees in the cannibal killer a kindred spirit, someone who fights against the dark side of his own nature, as Emory does. He reaches out to Dahmer in prison via letters.

The letters become an escape—from Emory’s mother, dying from AIDS, from his uncaring sister, from his dead-end job in downtown Chicago, but most of all, from his own self-hatred.

Dahmer isn’t Emory’s only lifeline as he begins a tentative relationship with Tyler Kay. He falls for him, and just like Dahmer, wonders how he can get Tyler to stay. Emory’s desire for love leads him to confront his own grip on reality. For Tyler, the threat of the mild-mannered Emory seems inconsequential, but not taking the threat seriously is at his own peril.

Can Emory discover the roots of his own madness before it’s too late and he finds himself following in the footsteps of the man from Milwaukee?

My #serialkiller #thriller, OBSESSED is the Deal of the Day at DriveThruFiction! 

60 cents...today May 1, 2020 only!

"A harrowing ride through cutting-edge psychological horror, this one's got a vicious bite. Rick R. Reed's Obsessed is a twisted nightmare." - Douglas Clegg, bestselling author

BLURB
I kill, therefore I am… Voices slam through the corridor of his wounded mind. The words of his dead sister cry out. His parents' taunts fill the silent room where he sits and waits--waits for the murderous rage, filling him with strength, driving him to kill, to touch the cold flesh, taste the warm blood--to feel alive again…

A witness has seen him, but his killing only turns her on and now she wants to protect him. His wife suspects him, but the private detective she hired cannot stop him. Joe MacAree fears nothing--except that he may no longer be human.

The thirst that drives him is relentless, moving deeper and deeper into his own shattering, private realm, where each murder is a delicious new gift of life, where revulsion is beauty, and the obsession will never let him go.

BUY For Only 60 cents!

Instant Message or Instant Murder? IM is Out Today in a Brand-new Edition from Nine Star Press

What Drove Me to Write my Serial Killer Thriller, IM

If you get an instant message from me, would you wonder why? Probably not, unless you knew that one of my most infamous thrillers was called IM, and that IM in the title stands for instant message, but that it could also stand for instant murder. And maybe you’d pause if you knew that IM is a book about a serial killer who uses the Internet to lure his victims.

But then again, maybe you wouldn’t. After all, what are the odds that someone who writes a book about a murderer who uses instant messages to charm his way into the homes of his victims, where he will ruthlessly stab them and perpetrate all sorts of horrors on their bodies would actually do something so heinous?

IM comes from that comfort zone we probably all have: that place that tells us, “It couldn’t happen to me.” People, in general, don’t expect to be murdered. That’s why scores of young men on gay internet hook up sites often brazenly invite strangers into their homes. They believe it “couldn’t happen to them.”

This belief is the impetus for IM. The internet has made it so easy for us to meet other people, especially for sex. Who needs a bar, a social club, or even a bathhouse to meet a sex partner? Today, we can order up a roll in the hay almost as easily as we can order a pizza. And have it delivered fast, hot, and fresh… The temptation is so great that many of us cast caution to the wind and never do the things common sense might tell us when contemplating an online hook-up, things like meeting in public first, getting the details on your potential suitor like name, address, phone number and conveying those details to a good friend, just in case.

Instead, many men, every day, open their homes up to complete strangers. Strangers who have no connection to them. Who, if they’re careful, would leave no pesky traces like motivation or other associations investigators might look for. The internet has made it easy to perpetrate the perfect crime.

Enter my killer, Timothy Bright, who looks mild mannered but who’s twisted and broken on the inside. He knows how easy it is to chat someone up online and gain admittance to their homes. It almost never fails.

And that’s just how it works in real life. I thought that was scary…and so I began writing.

BLURB

The Internet is the new meat market for gay men. Now a killer is turning the meat market into a meat wagon. 

One by one, he’s killing them. Lurking in the digital underworld of Men4HookUpNow.com, he lures, seduces, and charms, reaching out through instant messages to the unwary. When the first body surfaces, openly gay Chicago Police Department detective Ed Comparetto is called in to investigate. At the scene, the young man who discovered the body tells him the story of how he found his friend. But did this witness play a bigger role in the murder than he’s letting on?

For Comparetto, this encounter is the beginning of a nightmare—because this witness did more than just show up at the scene of the crime; he set the scene. Comparetto is on a journey to discover the truth—before he loses his career, his boyfriend, his sanity… his life. Because in this killer's world, IM doesn't stand for instant message… it stands for instant murder.

BUY
Amazon
Nine Star Press

  

My first novel, OBSESSED, now back in paperback after being out of print for decades!

Thrilled (and chilled) to announce that my very first book, OBSESSED, has just been reissued in a brand new paperback edition from Untreed Reads!

It's the first time the book has been available in paperback in decades (since Dell published it as part of its remarkable line of horror, Abyss).

Get your copy from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Obsessed-Rick-R-Reed/dp/1949135187 or Untreed Reads (at a discount!): https://www.untreedreads.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=720&products_id=2180

(Also available in ebook and audiobook!)

BLURB

I kill, therefore I am…

Voices slam through the corridor of his wounded mind. The words of his dead sister cry out. His parents' taunts fill the silent room where he sits and waits--waits for the murderous rage, filling him with strength, driving him to kill, to touch the cold flesh, taste the warm blood--to feel alive again… A witness has seen him, but his killing only turns her on and now she wants to protect him. His wife suspects him, but the private detective she hired cannot stop him. Joe MacAree fears nothing--except that he may no longer be human. The thirst that drives him is relentless, moving deeper and deeper into his own shattering, private realm, where each murder is a delicious new gift of life, where revulsion is beauty, and the obsession will never let him go.

Obsessed was part of Dell Abyss' remarkable horror line, lauded by none other than Stephen King.

EXCERPT

Joe MacAree had just murdered a woman, and all the things he felt when he killed the other four he was feeling right now. How would he describe it? In his journal, he might call his feelings an “elevation of the senses” or “an ethereal quality bringing the world into sharp focus.”

After each killing the reaction was the same. There was a moment of sharp pain right behind his left eye, an instant where the pain was so intense as to block out the act he had just committed, the blood and the ripped flesh…then a moment where brilliant flecks of silver light swam before him, and he could not keep his eyes from rolling, trying to follow the patterns the stars made.

And then the clarity.

As he guided his light blue Honda Accord along Harlem Avenue just south of Chicago, everything seemed more alive, as if to contrast the death he had just brought about. He noticed things he never noticed: the shifting red, amber, and turquoise of the reflections the stoplights made on the rain-slicked pavement. He noticed how the color spread, muted, over the slick black roadway. Even his radio, usually sounding tinny tuned to WLS, seemed more vibrant. He heard the different instruments in “Hungry Like the Wolf” as if Duran Duran were in the car with him, playing. Although it was February and his windows were rolled shut, he listened to the sounds of the other cars, the hiss of their tires on the pavement, the bass of their engines. He felt each perforation on the cover of the steering wheel. He thought he could even sense the mechanical smell of his own and the other cars as they all made their way northeast, to the Eisenhower Expressway and the city.

And in his mouth, he savored a slight metallic taste.

* * *

Randy Mazursky had lived in Berwyn all his life. The suburb just west of Chicago had been where his father grew up and where his grandfather had set up his home when he came over from Poland to work in the meat yards of Chicago.

Randy liked Berwyn. It was familiar: The streets, gridlike, had always made it easy to get around and easy to give new people directions to his house on Oak Park Avenue. And best of all it was close to where he worked, the North Riverside Mall, where he managed an ice cream parlor called Whipped Dream.

Tonight he had spent a little longer at the restaurant than usual, since one of his waitresses had come down with the flu that everyone (his wife, Maggie, included) seemed to be getting just as it looked like winter was about to come to a close. She had left midway through her shift, leaving a busy Friday night crowd of screaming kids, hassled parents, and birthday party victims.

Randy had donned the blue and white striped waiter’s cap he had worn when he started at Whipped Dream three years ago and, like the trooper he thought himself, had gone out and served up Tin Roof sundaes, blown whistles, banged drums, and sung “Happy Birthday” with the rest of the crew. He knew it wouldn’t hurt the “kids” to let a pro show them how it was done.

Randy had enjoyed the change. But it had been a long time since he had waited tables and he barely had the strength to hold the steering wheel properly. It was only ten minutes to his home and Maggie, but the eagerness to get there made the ride longer.

He knew he didn’t have to worry. Maggie would have a great dinner waiting for him. Ever since Maggie had quit her job as a proofreader of Sears catalogs, she had become a virtuoso cook, even taking classes in Chicago. Randy had gained fifteen pounds.

He and Maggie had been married for only seven months and already she was pregnant. The baby was unplanned; they had wanted to wait until they had a chance to buy a house before they had children. Right now they rented the second floor of a two-flat.

But when Maggie had whispered “we’re going to have a baby” in his ear right before he fell asleep one night, he felt nothing but delight. That delight and anticipation had not worn off in the two weeks he had been aware of his imminent fatherhood.

Now as he backed the car into a space in front of their yellow brick home, he felt a sudden urge to run up the stairs and hug Maggie. He knew she didn’t like him working late and wished he had thought to bring her something.

Well, he could make it up to her in other ways. As he closed the door of his car he smiled: There was no trace of the exhaustion he had felt just moments before.

Quickly he unlocked the two locks on the outer door and took the steps two at a time. As quietly as he could, he slid the key into the door of their apartment, hoping he could surprise Maggie in the kitchen.

He opened the door and closed it behind him, trying to stifle the click of the door as it closed. Randy crept through the living room, not wondering why the apartment was so still, why their stereo, Maggie’s constant companion, wasn’t on. He noticed only the yellow block of light that was the entrance to the kitchen as he made his way toward it on tiptoe.

As he stood in the archway, he began laughing. And the laughter did not stop until almost an hour later when paramedics put him under sedation.

Maggie, her dark hair a bizarre contrast to the pasty white of her usually dark Italian skin, lay dead in the middle of the kitchen floor, her throat and wrists cut. Her hair fanned out on the beige linoleum and her arms were out, almost as if she had been crucified.

The cat, Scruggums, sat beside her, licking his paws.

From the Chicago Tribune, February 18, 1989, page seven:

Murder has come to west suburban Berwyn once again. Margaret Mazursky, 23, was discovered early last night by her husband Randolph in their second-story home at 2511 S. Oak Park Avenue.

The victim’s death was attributed to massive loss of blood from stab wounds in the wrists and throat, Cook County coroner Michael Senn told officials.

Little blood was found at the scene of the crime, a Berwyn police official commented. Trace elements were found in cracks in the linoleum floor of the kitchen, where Mazursky’s husband discovered her body. Otherwise, according to officials, as much as a quart of blood was removed by her attacker.

Get Two of my Darkest Books, IM and MUTE WITNESS for an Amazing Price!

Through September 11, experience my dark side with this #BOGO deal. Buy my serial killer, IM, & get my child-abduction nail-biter, MUTE WITNESS #FREE! 

IM 

The Internet is the new meat market for gay men. Now a killer is turning the meat market into a meat wagon. 

One by one, he’s killing them. Lurking in the digital underworld of Men4HookUpNow.com, he lures, seduces, and charms, reaching out through instant messages to the unwary. When the first body surfaces, openly gay Chicago Police Department detective Ed Comparetto is called in to investigate. At the scene, the young man who discovered the body tells him the story of how he found his friend. But did this witness play a bigger role in the murder than he’s letting on?

For Comparetto, this encounter is the beginning of a nightmare—because this witness did more than just show up at the scene of the crime; he set the scene. Comparetto is on a journey to discover the truth—before he loses his career, his boyfriend, his sanity… his life. Because in this killer's world, IM doesn't stand for instant message… it stands for instant murder.

BUY
Amazon (FREE for Kindle Unlimited!)
Dreamspinner Press Publications

MUTE WITNESS

"The abuse of a little boy turns a community against a loving gay couple, and nobody comes out of it unscathed."

Mute Witness is a hard book to classify. The publisher files it under mystery/thriller, but there’s also some romance and a more than generous dash of horror—of both the real life variety and, in one instance, the supernatural. If I could make up a genre for Mute Witness, it would be redemption. The book’s all about finding redemption and how love can lead us there.

BLURB
Sean and Austin have the perfect life: new love, a riverfront home, security. Their love for one another is only multiplied when Sean’s eight-year-old son, Jason, visits on the weekends.

And then their perfect world shatters. Jason goes missing.

When the boy turns up days later, he’s been so horribly abused he’s lost the power to speak. Immediately small town minds turn to the boy’s gay father and his lover as the likely culprits. What was a warm, welcoming community becomes a lynching party out for blood. As Sean and Austin struggle to stay together amidst innuendo, the very real threat of Sean losing the son he loves emerges. Yet the true villain is much closer to home, intent on ensuring the boy’s muteness is permanent.

BUY
From DSP Publications (ebook)
From DSP Publications (paperback)
Amazon Kindle

FlashbackFriday: IM and What Drives Me to Kill, er, Write

What Drove Me to Write my Serial Killer Thriller, IM

If you get an instant message from me, would you wonder why? Probably not, unless you knew that one of my most infamous thrillers was called IM, and that IM in the title stands for instant message, but that it could also stand for instant murder. And maybe you’d pause if you knew that IM is a book about a serial killer who uses the Internet to lure his victims.

But then again, maybe you wouldn’t. After all, what are the odds that someone who writes a book about a murderer who uses instant messages to charm his way into the homes of his victims, where he will ruthlessly stab them and perpetrate all sorts of horrors on their bodies would actually do something so heinous?

IM comes from that comfort zone we probably all have: that place that tells us, “It couldn’t happen to me.”

People, in general, don’t expect to be murdered. That’s why scores of young men on gay internet hook up sites often brazenly invite strangers into their homes. They believe it “couldn’t happen to them.”

This belief is the impetus for IM. The internet has made it so easy for us to meet other people, especially for sex. Who needs a bar, a social club, or even a bathhouse to meet a sex partner?

Today, we can order up a roll in the hay as easily as we can order a pizza. 

And have it delivered fast, hot, and fresh…

The temptation is so great that many of us cast caution to the wind and never do the things common sense might tell us when contemplating an online hook-up, things like meeting in public first, getting the details on your potential suitor like name, address, phone number and conveying those details to a good friend, just in case.

Instead, many men, every day, open their homes up to complete strangers. Strangers who have no connection to them. Who, if they’re careful, would leave no pesky traces like motivation or other associations investigators might look for. The internet has made it easy to perpetrate the perfect crime.

Enter my killer, Timothy Bright, who looks mild mannered but who’s twisted and broken on the inside. He knows how easy it is to chat someone up online and gain admittance to their homes. It almost never fails.

And that’s just how it works in real life. I thought that was scary…and so I began writing.

BLURB

The Internet is the new meat market for gay men. Now a killer is turning the meat market into a meat wagon. 

One by one, he’s killing them. Lurking in the digital underworld of Men4HookUpNow.com, he lures, seduces, and charms, reaching out through instant messages to the unwary. When the first body surfaces, openly gay Chicago Police Department detective Ed Comparetto is called in to investigate. At the scene, the young man who discovered the body tells him the story of how he found his friend. But did this witness play a bigger role in the murder than he’s letting on?

For Comparetto, this encounter is the beginning of a nightmare—because this witness did more than just show up at the scene of the crime; he set the scene. Comparetto is on a journey to discover the truth—before he loses his career, his boyfriend, his sanity… his life. Because in this killer's world, IM doesn't stand for instant message… it stands for instant murder.

BUY
Amazon (FREE for Kindle Unlimited!)
Dreamspinner Press Publications

#FLASHBACKFRIDAY My First Book: OBSESSED--Serial Killer with Blood Lust Thriller

BLURB
I kill, therefore I am…

Voices slam through the corridor of his wounded mind. The words of his dead sister cry out. His parents' taunts fill the silent room where he sits and waits--waits for the murderous rage, filling him with strength, driving him to kill, to touch the cold flesh, taste the warm blood--to feel alive again… A witness has seen him, but his killing only turns her on and now she wants to protect him. His wife suspects him, but the private detective she hired cannot stop him. Joe MacAree fears nothing--except that he may no longer be human. The thirst that drives him is relentless, moving deeper and deeper into his own shattering, private realm, where each murder is a delicious new gift of life, where revulsion is beauty, and the obsession will never let him go.

"A harrowing ride through cutting-edge psychological horror, this one's got a vicious bite. Rick R. Reed's Obsessed is a twisted nightmare." - Douglas Clegg, bestselling author

Here's a very positive review (5 Stars and a Top Pick!) for OBSESSED from Night Owl Reviews. In part, Lilyraines, reviewer said:

"A portion of that feeling stems from the fact that I am picky with the horror I read and pickier still with what would stay on my "keeper" shelf... Obsessed fits into that category.a story that I found difficult to put down..."

Read the whole review here.

BUY
From the publisher
Kindle

On Writing Gay. On Being Gay

"Years ago it would have caused me great pain to even write the word gay on paper to describe myself... Writing has allowed me to change my self-hatred and doubt into true self-esteem and self-love."
--The late E. Lynn Harris in his 2003 memoir, What Becomes of the Brokenhearted

Wow. I was just having a little breakfast, a copy of Entertainment Weekly devoted to celebrities who has passed during the previous year open before me on the table when I came across that quote. To say it resounded would be putting it mildly. It was like someone had stepped into my own mind and eloquently sorted the emotions, memories, fears, joys, and hopes brewing there and instilled them into a few spare, eloquent words.

I am like E. Lynn Harris.

Beyond being gay men and writers, I don't know how much else we have in common. But I have traveled that same territory of self-loathing Harris describes. For so many years, I wore a mask and hid my true self in a closet. For most of my young adulthood, I was a married man, associated only with other straight people, and did not know what the inside of a gay bar looked like. I pondered checking out those vile groups that profess to change gay people into straight. I saw therapists, one of whom told me I could change and that my attraction to my own sex was simply my longing for the loving father I never had. My journey told self-acceptance was long and rough, and it pains me to think I was not the only one hurt on that journey.

It now either makes me shake my head, laugh, or cry, when I hear people talk about the gay "lifestyle" or that being gay is a choice or a preference. When I think of how hard I struggled not to be gay, it's hard for me to fathom how someone could view this as a choice. These narrow-minded souls have only themselves to ask the question: when did you make the decision to be straight?

Harris's quote made me think about all of the above and why, today, my stories revolve almost exclusively around gay characters. And, with one exception, most of those stories show gay characters for whom sexuality is simply a part of their lives and not their exclusive reason for being. I try, with my work, to affirm my gay characters and to give them lives worthy of respect. It is only my gay villains--twisted, tortured souls--do I demonstrate not that being gay is unhealthy or wicked, but that not loving oneself can be incredibly damaging. I think that's why some of my gay antiheroes, such as serial killer Timothy Bright in IM, want so much to be understood because they are beyond understanding themselves.

In my ebook short, Through the Closet Door, I write about a young man who was, very much like myself, in a straight marriage with a woman...a woman he loves (emphasis here is important) who struggles to accept something he doesn't want but can't escape. Toward the end of that story, he begins, just barely, to love himself for who he is and not who he thinks he should be.

It's been about twenty years since I was a young man similar to the one in that story, and I think the reason the quote I began this blog with resounds so much with me is that I never realized until today how much the things I write have enabled me to grow and develop not only as writer, but as a gay man. I can see how my increasingly turning to gay themes and characters has mirrored my own self-acceptance. I am lately writing a lot about love, and romance has taken a huge role even in my horror/suspense stories. That, I think, is more of a statement than I realized.

I have finally cast aside the chains of self-loathing that once bound me. I no longer hide that I am a gay man. And maybe, just as important, I can stand proud and say, "I write gay fiction...exclusively. Because these are my people..."

FLASHBACK FRIDAY: IM, the Book that Will Make You Think Twice About Hooking Up Online

What Drove Me to Write my Serial Killer Thriller, IM

If you get an instant message from me, would you wonder why? Probably not, unless you knew that one of my most infamous thrillers was called IM, and that IM in the title stands for instant message, but that it could also stand for instant murder. And maybe you’d pause if you knew that IM is a book about a serial killer who uses the Internet to lure his victims.

But then again, maybe you wouldn’t. After all, what are the odds that someone who writes a book about a murderer who uses instant messages to charm his way into the homes of his victims, where he will ruthlessly stab them and perpetrate all sorts of horrors on their bodies would actually do something so heinous?

IM comes from that comfort zone we probably all have: that place that tells us, “It couldn’t happen to me.” People, in general, don’t expect to be murdered. That’s why scores of young men on gay internet hook up sites often brazenly invite strangers into their homes. They believe it “couldn’t happen to them.”

This belief is the impetus for IM. The internet has made it so easy for us to meet other people, especially for sex. Who needs a bar, a social club, or even a bathhouse to meet a sex partner? Today, we can order up a roll in the hay almost as easily as we can order a pizza. And have it delivered fast, hot, and fresh… The temptation is so great that many of us cast caution to the wind and never do the things common sense might tell us when contemplating an online hook-up, things like meeting in public first, getting the details on your potential suitor like name, address, phone number and conveying those details to a good friend, just in case.

Instead, many men, every day, open their homes up to complete strangers. Strangers who have no connection to them. Who, if they’re careful, would leave no pesky traces like motivation or other associations investigators might look for. The internet has made it easy to perpetrate the perfect crime.

Enter my killer, Timothy Bright, who looks mild mannered but who’s twisted and broken on the inside. He knows how easy it is to chat someone up online and gain admittance to their homes. It almost never fails.

And that’s just how it works in real life. I thought that was scary…and so I began writing.

BLURB

The Internet is the new meat market for gay men. Now a killer is turning the meat market into a meat wagon. 

One by one, he’s killing them. Lurking in the digital underworld of Men4HookUpNow.com, he lures, seduces, and charms, reaching out through instant messages to the unwary. When the first body surfaces, openly gay Chicago Police Department detective Ed Comparetto is called in to investigate. At the scene, the young man who discovered the body tells him the story of how he found his friend. But did this witness play a bigger role in the murder than he’s letting on?

For Comparetto, this encounter is the beginning of a nightmare—because this witness did more than just show up at the scene of the crime; he set the scene. Comparetto is on a journey to discover the truth—before he loses his career, his boyfriend, his sanity… his life. Because in this killer's world, IM doesn't stand for instant message… it stands for instant murder.

BUY
Amazon
Dreamspinner Press Publications

  

FIRST LINES FRIDAYS: Obsessed

First lines Friday: On the long drive from Seattle to Palm Springs, I heard Duran Duran's song "Hungry Like the Wolf" on the radio. It reminded me of a lot of things, but most of all, it made me think of my first novel, OBSESSED, published in 1991 by Dell and reissued by Untreed Reads in its current ebook format. These first lines explain why Duran Duran and OBSESSED, a book about a serial killer terrorizing Chicago, mash up:

Joe MacAree had just murdered a woman, and all the things he felt when he killed the other four he was feeling right now. How would he describe it? In his journal, he might call his feelings an “elevation of the senses” or “an ethereal quality bringing the world into sharp focus.”

After each killing the reaction was the same. There was a moment of sharp pain right behind his left eye, an instant where the pain was so intense as to block out the act he had just committed, the blood and the ripped flesh…then a moment where brilliant flecks of silver light swam before him, and he could not keep his eyes from rolling, trying to follow the patterns the stars made.

And then the clarity.

As he guided his light blue Honda Accord along Harlem Avenue just south of Chicago, everything seemed more alive, as if to contrast the death he had just brought about. He noticed things he never noticed: the shifting red, amber, and turquoise of the reflections the stoplights made on the rain-slicked pavement. He noticed how the color spread, muted, over the slick black roadway. Even his radio, usually sounding tinny tuned to WLS, seemed more vibrant. He heard the different instruments in “Hungry Like the Wolf” as if Duran Duran were in the car with him, playing.

BLURB

I kill, therefore I am…

Voices slam through the corridor of his wounded mind. The words of his dead sister cry out. His parents' taunts fill the silent room where he sits and waits--waits for the murderous rage, filling him with strength, driving him to kill, to touch the cold flesh, taste the warm blood--to feel alive again… A witness has seen him, but his killing only turns her on and now she wants to protect him. His wife suspects him, but the private detective she hired cannot stop him. Joe MacAree fears nothing--except that he may no longer be human. The thirst that drives him is relentless, moving deeper and deeper into his own shattering, private realm, where each murder is a delicious new gift of life, where revulsion is beauty, and the obsession will never let him go.

"A harrowing ride through cutting-edge psychological horror, this one's got a vicious bite. Rick R. Reed's Obsessed is a twisted nightmare." - Douglas Clegg, bestselling author

Buy OBSESSED (for only $2.51!) here.

Listen to Duran Duran singing "Hungry Like the Wolf" here.

FLASHBACK FRIDAY: IM Instant Message? Or Instant Murder?

What Drove Me to Write my Serial Killer Thriller, IM

If you get an instant message from me, would you wonder why? Probably not, unless you knew that one of my most infamous thrillers was called IM, and that IM in the title stands for instant message, but that it could also stand for instant murder. And maybe you’d pause if you knew that IM is a book about a serial killer who uses the Internet to lure his victims.

But then again, maybe you wouldn’t. After all, what are the odds that someone who writes a book about a murderer who uses instant messages to charm his way into the homes of his victims, where he will ruthlessly stab them and perpetrate all sorts of horrors on their bodies would actually do something so heinous?

IM comes from that comfort zone we probably all have: that place that tells us, “It couldn’t happen to me.” People, in general, don’t expect to be murdered. That’s why scores of young men on gay internet hook up sites often brazenly invite strangers into their homes. They believe it “couldn’t happen to them.”

This belief is the impetus for IM. The internet has made it so easy for us to meet other people, especially for sex. Who needs a bar, a social club, or even a bathhouse to meet a sex partner? Today, we can order up a roll in the hay almost as easily as we can order a pizza. And have it delivered fast, hot, and fresh… The temptation is so great that many of us cast caution to the wind and never do the things common sense might tell us when contemplating an online hook-up, things like meeting in public first, getting the details on your potential suitor like name, address, phone number and conveying those details to a good friend, just in case.

Instead, many men, every day, open their homes up to complete strangers. Strangers who have no connection to them. Who, if they’re careful, would leave no pesky traces like motivation or other associations investigators might look for. The internet has made it easy to perpetrate the perfect crime.

Enter my killer, Timothy Bright, who looks mild mannered but who’s twisted and broken on the inside. He knows how easy it is to chat someone up online and gain admittance to their homes. It almost never fails.

And that’s just how it works in real life. I thought that was scary…and so I began writing.

BLURB

The Internet is the new meat market for gay men. Now a killer is turning the meat market into a meat wagon. 

One by one, he’s killing them. Lurking in the digital underworld of Men4HookUpNow.com, he lures, seduces, and charms, reaching out through instant messages to the unwary. When the first body surfaces, openly gay Chicago Police Department detective Ed Comparetto is called in to investigate. At the scene, the young man who discovered the body tells him the story of how he found his friend. But did this witness play a bigger role in the murder than he’s letting on?

For Comparetto, this encounter is the beginning of a nightmare—because this witness did more than just show up at the scene of the crime; he set the scene. Comparetto is on a journey to discover the truth—before he loses his career, his boyfriend, his sanity… his life. Because in this killer's world, IM doesn't stand for instant message… it stands for instant murder.

BUY
Amazon
Dreamspinner Press Publications