As we inch closer to the end of #NationalPoetryMonth, I want to take a moment to talk about my own poetry.

Hysteria was my first book and it changed my life. I wrote this while spending the night at abandoned hospitals, asylums, and walking the halls of closed prisons.

Mourning Jewelry was my second collection, one I wrote while walking through cemeteries, photographing trees, and listening to Jill Tracy’s haunting music on loop for months. She was kind enough to blurb the book, which I’m still in shock about.

Next came: An Exorcism of Angels. This was born out of pain and it dances around being a dark romance and a meditation on religious horror. It pairs well with my novel The Eighth about the seven deadly sins.

Brothel introduced me to the madam and the world of erotic horror. This is a collection of dark, feminist poetry about sex, love, passion, and death. It won the #BramStokerAward in 2016.

My fifth collection, Sheet Music to My Acoustic Nightmare is a confessional dirge, a book about curses and nightmares, one that blurs the lines between fantasy and reality. It was the most emotionally devastating book I’ve written and it holds a special place in my heart.

Lastly, in the beginning stages of our own quarantine, @RDSPress published my sixth collection: The Apocalyptic Mannequin. This is an end-of-the-world meditation and it continues to frighten me that I wrote this before life as we knew it changed.