Justin Gustainis - Writing Career

Writing Career

Gustainis first tried his hand at writing fiction in 1978. He wrote a few mystery/suspense short stories and sent them off to magazines. Receiving (as one might expect) nothing but rejection slips, he put his ambitions to be a writer aside.

He tried again in 1994, less with the intent of publishing anything than as a way to deal with some personal problems he was experiencing at the time.

Over the next three years, Gustainis worked on a novel that would eventually become The Hades Project. At the same time, he took up short fiction writing again—this time with both greater persistence and more success. His stories began to win prices in contests, and he also sold some of them to semi-pro magazines.

Gustainis finally sold The Hades Project to a small, independent publisher, Wahmpreneur Press, in 2002. The novel was published as a trade paperback, under the publisher's Brighid's Fire Books imprint in 2003.

Gustainis's second novel, Black Magic Woman, was sold to British publisher Solaris Books in 2007. After years trying to interest either an agent or a publisher in the book, Gustainis saw the manuscript that he submitted to Solaris Books go from the slush pile to a contract offer in three weeks.

Solaris Books expressed interest in turning Black Magic Woman into a series, "Quincey Morris Supernatural Investigations," chronicling the adventures of occult detective Quincey Morris and his partner, "white" witch Libby Chastain.

Black Magic Woman is scheduled for publication in January, 2008. The release of the second book in the series, Evil Ways, is planned for January 2009.

In 2013, Gustainis will publish third book in Occult Crimes Unit Investigations series entitled Known Devil.