I thought we were all going to die

Hey there,

There was one stretch of highway in Ontario that scared the hell out of me.

Back when I was in the Canadian Armed Forces, my family and I would make the eight-hour drive from Petawawa to Port Colborne every Christmas.

I was away most of the year.

So those trips home mattered.

But about two hours from Petawawa, we'd hit this stretch of highway where there was nothing.

No cell service.

No gas stations.

No streetlights.

Just blowing snow, a twisting road, a wall of rock on one side and a drop toward the river on the other.

And a couple of times, driving through a blizzard with my wife and our three little kids in the car, I genuinely thought:

We're going over.

That fear stuck with me.

And eventually, it became A Dark Breed.

It started as a movie script.

It attracted some interest, was optioned a couple of times, and I'm still hoping someone eventually turns it into a movie.

But the story was easy for me to write because I wasn't inventing the fear.

I knew what it felt like to have a family you desperately wanted to protect.

Three kids under five.

Money was tight.

I was gone most of the year.

And those winter drives home were eight hours of snow, darkness and sheer endurance.

I took that feeling—the fear of something happening to the people you love when you can't control what's coming—and turned it into a horror story.

A Dark Breed is now one of the six novels in my Monsters & Mayhem Collection, which also includes six professionally narrated audiobooks.

So if you've ever wondered where one of my horror stories came from...

Now you know.

[CHECK OUT MONSTERS & MAYHEM]

— Patrick
Back to blog