New Novel Blood Family Explores Armenian Culture and Folklore

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Author Eric Avedissian announces the release of his latest novel, Blood Family, the third installment in the four-book Martyr’s Vow series published by Shadow Spark Publishing.

Blood Family continues the story of Armand “Tark” Tarkanian, a monster hunter who can communicate with the dead thanks to a bloodline curse. In Blood Family, Armand receives an invite from distant relatives in Watertown, Mass. to mourn the passing of the family patriarch. What he finds in the moldering mansion is an odd assortment of Armenian traditions, dark secrets, and personal grudges.

Things aren’t what they seem: paintings shift and change, bones hang from trees, and the family’s elusive patriarch is a dakhanavar – a vampire from Armenian folklore.

Eric Avedissian

The Martyr’s Vow series is comprised of four books: Accursed Son (2022), Mr. Penny-Farthing (2023), Blood Family (2024) and a forthcoming novel, The Book of Wine and Sorrow (2025).

“The idea for writing a series of novels combining horror and Armenian folklore came in grad school. I bristled at the negative depictions of Armenians in popular media. They were mostly drug dealers, criminals, or unflattering stereotypes. I set out to create an Armenian hero in a speculative fiction series you could root for and be proud of,” Avedissian said.

Speculative fiction is a broad literary term that encapsulates fantasy, science fiction, horror and magical realism.

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“The Martyr’s Vow series not only captures the elements of horror and the paranormal, but it includes Armenian culture and folklore, particularly ancient mythology. When I wrote Accursed Son, I researched pre-Christian Armenia and found a fascinating pantheon of gods, goddesses, monsters and heroes. Armenia was a civilization rich with legends and old stories ripe for harvesting. Why not bring those tales and legendary creatures to life?” Avedissian said.

In Accursed Son, the first book in the series, Armand is an embalmer working in his family’s funeral home. A bloodline curse allows him to see the spirits of those he embalms. The ghosts allow Armand to experience what they did when they died, which unwillingly pulls him into a murder investigation. Armand’s quest to understand more about this curse and how to get rid of it guides him through the series.

Blood Family is set in Watertown, Mass., a town with a sizable Armenian population. Avedissian is no stranger to Watertown. In 1990 he interned at the Armenian Weekly newspaper in Watertown. He also attended Harvard Summer School in 1993 and lived in Watertown then.

“I wanted to showcase the cultural impact Armenians had in Watertown in the novel, and how Armand travels from Fresno to Watertown. He’s used to spending time with Armenians in his family on one coast, but he’s unfamiliar with Armenians on the East Coast. It’s also fun including locations I knew when I was in Watertown,” Avedissian said.

Blood Family dips into the history of the Armenian Genocide through Krikor Barsamian, a dakhanavar, or vampire from Armenian legends. Krikor is turned into a dakhanavar during the Hamidian massacres in the 1890s. When his family perishes during the Armenian genocide during World War I, Krikor gets his revenge in the bloodiest way possible. He’s haunted by the trauma of the pogroms for decades after settling in America and the pain reverberates through generations of his family.

Avedissian started his writing career as a newspaper reporter in New Jersey. His reporting over 27 years earned him multiple awards from the New Jersey Press Association.

His first published fiction story was for a science fiction magazine in 2018. Before that, he wrote and designed a tabletop role-playing game based on old pulp serials called Ravaged Earth, which was published in 2008. Avedissian’s award-winning novel The Ocean Hugs Hard is a noir horror mystery set in the Jersey Shore in 1966 that pays homage to horror writer H.P. Lovecraft in terms of style and theme.

After receiving a master’s degree in writing from Rowan University in 2020, he changed careers from journalism to education. He’s currently an adjunct professor at Atlantic Cape Community College where he teaches English composition.

In 2024 Avedissian was awarded a Fellowship in Prose from the New Jersey Council on the Arts. Fellowships are competitive awards to New Jersey artists following an independent review of work samples. Avedissian submitted the first chapter of Accursed Son for review. The grant Avedissian received was used to further his writing goals.

“Writing is a personal and intimate act,” Avedissian said. “Unleashing your innermost thoughts on the page and creating characters that readers can identify with is powerful.”

To purchase a copy of Blood Family,visit https://books2read.com/u/4AlErN