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.
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.