Works by
Rick R. Reed
(Writer)

Amazon Shorts

Into the Red Series
"I've always been inspired by true stories of real life psychics who help solve crimes. I began to see how this “gift,” especially in relation to crime, could also be a curse. This duality led me to create Cassandra D'Angelo, a young single mother who suddenly has second sight and sees into the murders of young girls in her small Ohio River town. Her struggle with these visions and keeping her own life together, I think, makes for exceptional suspense…the kind of book readers just can't put down." -- Rick R. Reed

1. Part One

2. Part Two

3. Part Three

Fiction

• Mute Witness (Oct 2, 2009)
  Sean and Austin's perfect world shatters when Sean's eight-year-old son, Jason, vanishes. When Jason turns up days later abused and unable to speak, small town fingers point to the boy's gay dad as the culprit. Meanwhile, the real villain is close by, intent on ensuring the boy's muteness is permanent.

• Bashed (2009)
  Three haters. Two lovers. And a collision course with tragedy. That October night, Donald and Mark had no idea their lives and love were about to be shattered by fag bashers, intent on pain, and armed with ridicule, fists, and an aluminum baseball bat. Bashed charts the course of a journey that encompasses suspense, horror, and--ultimately--romance.

• Dead End Street (2008)
  They were five misfit kids who had banded together in their small Ohio River town. Over the years, they had organized various clubs and now they had formed the Halloween Horror Club. The premise was simple: each week, each teen would spin a horrifying tale and at the end of five weeks, the scariest story won a prize. The twist: the stories had to be told in the infamous and abandoned Tuttle house, where, fifteen years earlier, an entire family had been murdered in their beds. The idea seems like a good one, until the kids begin to realize they may not be alone in the Tuttle house, which backed up against the woods. There seems to be someone—or something—watching them. Is it Paul Tuttle, the teenage son who disappeared fifteen years ago, the night his parents and sister were killed? Or is it someone even more sinister?
  
  With each story (each a completed short, original horror tale that stands on its own), the tension mounts...and so does the anger of this mysterious inhabitant of the house. He is enraged at having his space violated. And his rage could mean a real dead end for those who dare to invade his home...

• High Risk (2008)
  Beth Walsh seems like such a demure housewife. Taking care of her attorney husband and doing volunteer work, the young woman is someone you'd meet at a church social. But Beth has a secret life. While her husband works, Beth slides into what she calls her "slut clothes" and goes on the prowl. She becomes a completely different woman, wanton and uninhibited, with dozens of handsome strangers. Until she meets the one blindingly gorgeous stranger who will make her more than sorry for her secrets and lies. . .
  
  Abbott Lowery is every woman's dream: handsome, muscular, with intense blue eyes that contrast with his thick black hair. Women want him. Men want him. But Abbott is deeply damaged, and inside lurks a monster just waiting to be released. When Beth Walsh pursues him, it pushes a deeply-buried rage to the fore and he becomes determined to punish her.
  
  Beth meeting Abbott lights the fuse on a bomb. Its explosion leads to a tale of terror and desperation so intense it will sear everyone who knows them. High Risk is a story of secrets, tainted histories, murder, kidnapping, and an ending so brutal and shocking readers will be left breathless.

• Orientation (2008) -- Winner 2009 EPPIE award for Best GLBT Novel of the Year
  Orientation asks: Can love rise above sexual orientation? Can a lesbian and a gay man fall in love? What if the one of them is the reincarnation of the other’s one true same-sex love?
  
  Orientation takes us through three pivotal Christmases. We begin at Christmas, 1983 and find a young man, Robert, tending to his older lover, his soulmate, Keith. Keith is dying from a new disease that the world has just recently christened AIDS. Robert tries valiantly to make this a special Christmas, but he loses the fight late Christmas night, when Keith, held tight by Robert, slips away. Fast forward to Christmas, 2007. Robert has now become Keith’s age and has inherited his former lover’s wealth. He tries to assuage the loneliness he feels through a succession of younger lovers, the latest of whom is named Ethan. Ethan is in his early twenties and is cheating on Robert, but what Robert doesn’t know is that Ethan’s love affair is not with another man, but with a highly addictive drug, one that poses a horrible peril not only for Ethan, but ultimately for Robert. Alone, melancholy, and more than a little tipsy, Robert ventures out late Christmas night for a walk, where he finds a young girl about to fling herself into the unforgiving waters of Lake Michigan. He rescues her and the two form a bond forged not just from Robert being a Good Samaritan, but from an odd feeling both have of familiarity and even love for one another. Neither understands it, since Jess is a lesbian and Robert has never been attracted to women. But there’s more: Jess begins having strange dreams, reliving key moments she couldn’t know about in Keith and Robert’s life and courtship. She was born on the same day Keith died. The pair begins to wonder if their inexplicable feelings for the other might be rooted in something much more mystical than just a savior/victim relationship.
  
  As the two move toward and pull away from each other, Ethan is plotting. His drug-addled mind becomes convinced there is only way to save himself and that is through Robert’s destruction. Christmas 2007 spirals down to a shattering climax in which both life and love hang in the balance. There is a murder attempt. Salvation. Redemption. And a new love is born.
  
  Finally, we arrive at Christmas, 2008. Robert and Jess have traveled together to the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico and have forged a loving, nurturing relationship. But have they been able to overcome the obstacles a gay man and a lesbian might face? It might appear so, but there are still a few surprises in store for those who stick with this oddest of couples until the end of their story.

• IM (2007)
  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, charms, reaching out through instant messages to the unwary. He's just another guy.
  
  They invite him over. He's just another trick. Harmless. They're dead wrong.
  
  When the first bloody body surfaces, openly gay Chicago Police Department detective Ed Comparetto is called in to investigate. Sickened by the butchered mess of one of his brothers left on display in a bathtub, he seeks relief outside where the young man who discovered the body waits to tell him the story of how he found his friend. But who is this witness...and did he play a bigger part in the murder than he's letting on?
  
  For Comparetto, this encounter with a witness 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. And maybe, he's more than just a killer...maybe he's dead himself.
  
  Comparetto is on a journey to discover the truth, a truth that he needs to discover 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.

• In the Blood (2007)
  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 just 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.
  
  In the Blood is a novel that will grip you in a vise of suspense that won't let go, forcing you to stay up long past midnight, turning page after page, until the very last moment, when a surprising turn of events changes everything and demonstrates, truly, what love and sacrifice are all about.

• Twisted Tales of Obsession and Terror (2006)
  Step into a nightmare world where truth is stranger than fiction, where real monsters wait, and where the dead taunt the living. These twisted stories meld the supernatural with the most terrifying elements of modern-day life.

• A Face Without A Heart: A Modern-day Version of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (2000) -- Named best horror novel of the year by Queerhorror.com.
  A young man bargains his soul away, while his painfully beautiful hologram mirrors every sin and each nightmarish step into depravity. even cold-blooded murder. Take a thought-provoking tour of the darkest sides of greed, lust, addiction, and violence.

• Penance (1992)
  They’re barely into their teens, but wiser than their years. Without homes, without families, they dwell in neon-cast shadows, the violent eddies of urban America. They trade their innocence for money, abuse their faded hopes, and then a monster comes…
  
  A monster without fangs or claws, but more deadly. Because of them, he has lost everything: his wife, his family. And he vows to clean the streets of Chicago…for good.
  
  One of the street kids and a man of the cloth stained by his own sins form a desperate pact. Together, they will find the madman whose basement has become a chamber of horrors…

• Obsessed (1991)
  Voices go slamming through the corridor of his wounded mind. The words of his dead sister cry out to him. His parents’ taunts fill the silent room where he sits and waits—waits for the murderous rage to come washing over him, 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 fears nothing—except that he may no longer be human. The thirst that drives him to his bloodletting 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.

The Cassandra Chronicles

1. Deadly Vision (2008)
   Deadly Vision is inspired by the mythical seer Cassandra, who was given the gift of prophecy only to be cursed by having no one believe her. Reed's story is about small-town single mom, Cass D'Angelo, whose life changes when a thunderstorm sweeps into her small Ohio River town. Cass must venture out in it to hunt for her son, seven-year-old Max. Lightning strikes a tree near her and a branch crashes onto her head, knocking her unconscious; when Cass awakens a couple days later, she sees into the deepest secrets of those around her. Worse, some teenage girls have gone missing, and Cass can see their grisly fates. She tries to interest law enforcement and the mother of one of the girls in her visions and is rebuffed. The only one who will believe her is the father of the first missing girl. Reluctantly, Cass agrees to help him find his daughter and she does, in a shallow grave by the river.
   
   The discovery opens the door to a whole new life. The police are suspicious. The press wants to make her a celebrity. And the killers are desperate to know how she found their carefully concealed grave. Cass's visions continue, frustrating and terrifying her. She finds an ally in Dani Westwood, a local reporter. The two women begin to probe into the disappearances/murders and start to forge a romance. When Cass's little boy, Max, disappears, Dani and Cass must race against the clock to find him...before it's too late.
   
   Will Cass find her son in time? Will the parents of the other missing girl get closure? Will the killers escape? These are all questions answered by the time the reader comes to the breathtaking conclusion of Deadly Vision: Book One of The Cassandra Chronicles.

Electronic Offerings

• Incubus (2009 release, Kindle)
  What if...a stranger with a knife ripped away the love of your life?
  
  What if...that love came back to you?
  
  What if...that love looked the same, but you knew it couldn’t really be him?
  
  Incubus is the haunting—and haunted—tale of Oliver and Ryan, a young couple who have traveled to Montreal from Chicago to get married. It’s late and they’re on their way home from their honeymoon, and their trip on Chicago’s el trains and subways is fraught with strange characters, one a biker-jacket-clad man who urges them to “Get close to Lucifer!” But the oddest stranger they encounter is a man in a zippered leather mask who waits for them in an underground parking garage with a knife. Only one of the men will emerge from this encounter alive.
  
  Oliver’s depression overwhelms him, having seen his hope for a new life with his new husband squashed in an instant. He feels so alone. Or is he? When Ryan begins to appear to him again in the dark, and to make love to him, Oliver is happy...and in denial. He ignores this new Ryan’s cold touch, his strange eyes, and the odd burns Ryan’s touch leaves on his skin.
  
  Has Oliver’s despair and desire for his lost love opened a door to something dark and terrifying? Is the Ryan who returns to him really the Ryan he loves, or a demonic imposter? And when love is brutally ripped away, will Oliver decide it doesn’t matter?
  
  With Incubus, Rick R. Reed merges his talent for horror with a tragic love story and the result is...chilling...
  
  Incubus is also available in electronic form directly from Amber Allure.

See also:

• Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet (2008), Lee Thomas, ed.

• Like A Chinese Tattoo (2008), Cullen Bunn, ed.

• Best Date Ever: True Stories That Celebrate Gay Relationships (2007), Lawrence Schimel, ed.

• The Mammoth Book of New Gay Erotica (2007), Lawrence Schimel, ed.

• Best Gay Romance (2006), Tom Graham, ed.

• Best Gay Love Stories 2006 (2005), Nick Street, ed.

• Confessions (2005), M. Christian and Sage Vivant, eds.

• The Wildest Ones: Hot Biker Tales (2005), M. Christian, ed.

• Ultimate Gay Erotica 2006 (2005), Jesse Grant, ed.

• I Do/I Don't: Queers on Marriage (2004), Greg Wharton and Ian Philips, eds.

• Law of Desire: Tales of Gay Male Lust and Obsession (2004), Greg Wharton  and Ian Philips, eds.

• Best S/M Erotica: Extreme Stories of Extreme Sex (2002), M. Christian, ed.

• Whispered from the Grave: An Anthology of Ghostly Tales (1999), Thomas J. Strauch, ed.

• Contra/Diction: New Queer Male Fiction (1998), Brett Josef Grubisic, ed.

• Kiss Of Death: An Anthology of Vampire Stories (1998), Thomas J. Strauch, ed.

• The Crow: Shattered Lives & Broken Dreams (1998), Ed Kramer and James O'Barr, eds.

• The Darkest Thirst: A Vampire Anthology (1998), Thomas J. Strauch, ed.

• Dante's Disciples (1996), Edward E. Kramer and Peter Crowther, eds.

• Dark Destiny III: Children of Dracula (1996), Edward E. Kramer, ed.

• Dark Destiny (1995) by John Cobb with Edward E. Kramer, ed.