Bloody Hell
Bloody Hell is a corporate thriller that blends global intrigue, high-stakes science, and a quietly devastating love story.
Skyler Longview, CEO of Blackwell Pharmaceuticals, has built his career on one thing: mastering outcomes. But when his new wife, Mimi, is deliberately infected with a rare, fatal virus during their African safari honeymoon, he faces a crisis that exposes his limits.
With less than a year to save her, Skyler launches the largest global drug race in modern history. But the search for a cure quickly spirals into a labyrinth of hidden agendas, state cover-ups, and the moral cost of unchecked power, while Mimi’s body becomes the proving ground for a treatment that may come too late.
Bloody Hell explores the limits of control, the price of ambition, and how far we’ll go to protect the people we love.
From First Line to Final Draft: How Bloody Hell Took Shape
The First Line: A Winner Who Finally Loses
While studying fiction with my longtime tutor, Martha Hughes, I set out to write my first short story. At the time, I was focused on adapting a screenplay to what would become my debut novel, but Martha insisted I pause and write a short story first. So I sat down, opened my laptop, and typed:
“Skyler had always been a winner. He had experienced momentary setbacks and a few false starts but never the bitter seeds of defeat in all his forty years.”
The story became “Turning Mimi,” about a pharmaceutical CEO whose wife contracts a fatal illness. The setup worked. Skyler worked. But halfway through, the plot veered spectacularly off course—a vampire appeared and derailed the story entirely.
Old Draft, New Beginning
Years later, when I left corporate life to write full-time, I combed through my folder of 100+ story ideas. I rediscovered “Turning Mimi” and realized the bones were still there: a story about ambition, power, and the quiet cost of control.
But the vampire, of course, had to go.
So, once again, I wrote the story as a screenplay to make sure it held together. It did.
Voice and Perspective
I’d always wanted to write about the power games I witnessed in Corporate America. The screenplay provided the framework for the story, but turning it into a novel meant tackling the fundamental question: whose perspective would it be told from?
The CEO? Tempting—but at the start of the book, he’s not exactly someone whose skin I’d want to crawl into. So I couldn’t expect the reader to want that either.
Instead, I chose a different lens—someone close enough to power to see its inner workings, but with just enough distance to watch it unravel. The result? Fewer speeches, more danger—and the perfect vantage point to watch control fall apart.
Research Behind the Fiction
Bloody Hell also draws from real-world research. I spoke with a pharmaceutical scientist, former Secret Service and CIA agents, and CEOs to ground the story in authentic science and high-stakes realism.
The line between control and chaos is thinner than most people think.
It took years, but Skyler Longview’s story finally came together.