Devil’s Row returns to print via Black T-Shirt Books, and to answer the most commonly asked question right off the bat: No, you do not need to have read Feral in order to read it.
When this book was originally published in 2015, it had the misfortune of hitting about a week before the birth of my first child. I tried my hardest to promote it through the fugue state that is newfound parenthood, but it didn’t work. Devil’s Row fell by the wayside rather quickly and by the time I was in a position to do anything about it, I was already on to other projects.
Black T-Shirt Books has given me a second chance to get this little horror/fantasy into the world, and I’m grateful. Those who have been following this site or my work for any length of time know that Devil’s Row was originally a sprawling flashback sequence within Feral’s first draft. It slowed that book considerably, but I didn’t want to simply stuff it inside a drawer and leave it to rot. The material was also never going back inside an “author’s preferred” edition of Feral, because I agreed with my early readers that it didn’t belong there.
But the work I’d done stayed with me, as did the mythology I’d spent years writing for these werewolves. I thought the material that would eventually become Devil’s Row worked as an interesting character piece about a werwolf who instinctively sets out on a path of revenge and is surprised to discover where that journey leads her.
The way it’s written, you do not need to know who Elisabeth is coming into Devil’s Row. Yes, it is a prequel to Feral in a literal sense, and while some of the other characters from that book do appear (or are mentioned), it’s very much a stand alone story. I want you to read them both, but you can come into this world of werwolves through either book.
So head over to Amazon and get yourself a copy (paperback or Kindle). And don’t forget to leave a brief review so that I know what you think.