Bloody Hell
A personal crisis with global consequences.
Skyler Longview, CEO of Blackwell Pharmaceuticals, has built his career on mastering outcomes. But that control is put to the ultimate test after a luxury honeymoon in Zavari—an island nation off the East African coast—when his wife, Mimi, is infected with a rare, fatal neurological virus during a disturbing mandrill encounter. The exposure appeared accidental. It wasn’t. Skyler soon learns that Zavari’s president, Kwesi Asante, orchestrated the incident to coerce him into developing a cure—one that Asante’s own daughter needs.
With less than a year to save Mimi, Skyler launches the largest global drug race in modern history—spanning labs, boardrooms, and geopolitical backchannels. Publicly, he brands the initiative as an ethical pivot, positioning Blackwell as a leader in rare disease research. Privately, he just wants to save his wife.
But as pressure mounts, the search for a cure unearths state secrets, hidden alliances, and dubious business practices—while Mimi’s body becomes the proving ground for a treatment that may come too late.
Bloody Hell explores the limits of power, the illusion of control, and how far we’ll go to save the ones we love. The novel will appeal to readers who enjoy the psychological tension of The Silent Patient, the scientific urgency of Recursion, and the corporate dystopia of The Circle.
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 everything.
Old Draft, New Beginning
Years later, when I left corporate life to write full-time, I combed through my folder of 100+ story ideas and rediscovered “Turning Mimi.” 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 called Betting the Pharma 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 answering a big question: whose perspective would it be told from?
Skyler, the CEO was tempting—but at the start of the book, he’s not someone I’d want to crawl inside. I couldn’t expect the reader to want that either.
Instead, I chose a different lens: Skyler’s bodyguard. Someone close enough to power to see how it operates, but distant enough to watch it unravel. The result? Fewer speeches, more danger—and the perfect vantage point to witness 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—as Bloody Hell.