The Dark Sire Issue 1 (Fall 2019) | Page 94

Though I was wide awake and alert, I decided to go back to my hotel. Check-out was at eleven o’clock and I still had so much to do before going back home. I looked up to the night sky, thanked the Lord for strength, and continued down Piccadilly to the Sentrigard Hotel & Suites. Brenda Stephens began writing at six years old, drafting a play for her kindergarten class. She quickly fell into writing and, by the age of fifteen, was the creator of 25 short stories, 2 plays, and 3 screenplays. At sixteen, however, she watched her life’s work burn in an automobile fire, which caused an extreme case of writer’s block and thus ended her fiction writing. After 28 long years of not being able to pen a story, Brenda has finally returned to writing in her preferred gothic and horror genre, though she is stretching her wings with the writing of her first book, Vampyre Paladin. Influenced by Edgar Allan Poe and Anne Rice, she endeavors to create stories that will engage the mind and address social issues. Brenda holds an M.A. in English and Creative Writing with a focus in Screenwriting and teaches college composition at two universities in Ohio. She lives with her cat, Kira, and loves to watch anime. 92