Ryan Rennik

My new book, Black Site, Black Mother is being published by JournalStone/Trepidatio on November 22, 2024. Pre-orders are now available.

 Set in 2004, Black Site, Black Mother begins when the CIA abducts “the Engineer,” a man believed to be the head of Al Qaeda’s biological weapons program. He is taken to a black site in Poland where he is interrogated by several CIA officers, led by Mark Romero. They learn that the Engineer is insane and devoted to a figure he calls “the Black Mother,” who supposedly has a plan to transform the world in her own image. As Mark and his colleagues try to figure out if this is simply the product of a deranged mind, strange and disturbing things begin happening at the black site. Mark himself begins to have nightmarish encounters with the Black Mother. Too late to stop it, Mark must accept that the Engineer’s stories about the Black Mother may herald her arrival and that her horrific attempt to transform the world is about to begin.

Check out the publisher’s website to pre-order or for more information.

Had a really great year writing-wise in 2023 and will have some big announcements coming up, but I wanted to bring your attention to two of my stories that were published in 2023.

The first story was “The Nevermoon,” published in The Dusk: Tales for Twilight, edited by John Hirschhorn-Smith (Side Real Press, 2023). This is a really dark little fantasy tale that came to me almost fully formed in a dream. It stuck with me and I mostly just transcribed it when I awoke and polished it a little later. That doesn’t happen often to me but it’s great when it does. This books, physically, is one of the most beautiful I own.

The second story was “The Mystery of the Geometric Proof,” published in Sherlock Holmes Adventures in the Realms of H. P. Lovecraft, Volume 2, edited by Derrick and Brian Belanger (Belanger Books, 2023). This was a love letter to both Lovecraft and Conan Doyle, and includes the real first encounter of Holmes and Watson with Moriarty (who isn’t the villain in the story!), as well as some elements that are very much inspired by Lovecraft’s “Dreams in the Witch House,” among others.

I’m very excited to announce that two of my short stories will soon be available in separate collections to be published by Belanger Books in 2022. Both collections also happen to be edited by the inimitable John Linwood Grant. The two collections are Sherlock Holmes and the Occult Detectives IV and The Book of Carnacki the Ghost-Finder.

My Sherlock Holmes story is “The Adventure of the Country Estate,” which shows Holmes and Watson solving a very puzzling locked-room mystery with the aid of an occult detective of my own creation, Mrs. Agatha Hudgins.

My Carnacki Story is “The Loyal Hound;” this is an early adventure of Carnacki when he was thirteen years old. It’s a story about a murderous plot and a very good dog, and is one of the first times that young Carnacki had encountered something ab-natural. It’s also the story about how he and his friend Arkright met.

If you’re a fan of Sherlock Holmes, Thomas Carnacki, occult detectives, or Victorian mysteries, I think you’ll like both of these a lot. I certainly had a lot of fun writing them, and am honored to be included in these two collections along side many other fine writers.

Both books were fully funded on Kickstarter. You can read an interview with me about the two stories HERE.

Please check it out and let me know what you think.