Author Danny Wylde/Christopher Zeischegg is unashamedly also a porn star. And he seems to use his experience in movies to create an intriguingly edgy main character in his first novel, Come to My Brother.
David is a musician and makes straight fetish porn in which he plays the bottom boy to dominant women. He also has a really bizarre past that is revealed in flashback chapters interspersed with his current situation—and neither narrative is any less engrossing than the other.
David grows up with major dysfunction. Some parent swapping leads to David living under the same roof with his best friend, Daniel, being raised by the same mother and father. As they hit puberty, they start a metal band…and start to have a relationship with each other.
Circumstances separate them, but while making his way through college, being sexually slapped around and pegged by women on film, David reencounters Daniel, who has changed. Soon, David changes, too…and does something awful. And now, his friends have turned against him and he’s on the run from the law as his need to feed spirals out of control….
Told from the first person perspective, Come to My Brother keeps you reading. It’s sleazy sexy, suspenseful, and even throws in some gore for good measure. David’s then/now narrative is wickedly entertaining—and at times, I couldn’t help but wonder, is he really a vampire, or are the people he’s hanging with one of those “vampire cults” that just imagine they’re vampires?
Things take an unexpected turn when David and friends visit his alma mater, and it’s at this point that I wish the novel had actually been longer. It feels like the climax comes too soon. Despite this being essentially a horror novel about vampires, David’s life and his relationship with Daniel are the most intriguing and passionate parts of the book, sort of like Let the Right One In. The conclusion of the book pulls us back into the fugitive storyline, which breaks the spell.
I don’t know if Danny Wylde/Christopher Zeischegg has any thoughts of writing a sequel, but he has released a digital only short story to satiate our desire for more of this story. “Fang Slut” takes us back to David and Daniel’s teen years and fills in some of the gaps.
Danny Wylde is also in a hardcore band called Children. Check out the video for “Girl in the Dirt.” It’s sexy gory gross.
