Maxim Blake is my pen name.

This place is the overflow, the essays and confessions and small cruelties that will not fit inside the novels, usually because they are too contemporary, too political, or too close to the bone. If you like reading things that do not ask permission for thinking, stay.

I am a novice writer, novice since I was a kid.

My stories are bones still wrapped in skin, unfinished, imperfect, but pulsing with need.

I draw breath from the obsessions that shaped me, the dread-soaked elegance of Sir Edgar Allan Poe, the raw disquiet of Sir Chuck Palahniuk, the fevered, decadent beauty of Monsieur Charles Baudelaire. They are my pillars.

This space is my beginning and I have no ambitions.

This is not a polished place. It is raw and unfinished. But it is mine. If you’ve ever been haunted by a story that refused to settle, I think you’ll feel c here.