There used to be an old, elevated train system in Boston, spanning from the Roxbury area to downtown. Dark and dirty, it wasn’t exactly glamorous, but beneath it sat a storefront displaying boxes of cheap books. It was here that you could find a young Errick Nunnally rifling through boxes of torn-cover books being sold for a dime, discovering science fiction writers like David Gerrold and Walter Mosley. “When they’d tear the covers off, you’re not supposed to be selling those. They’re supposed to be destroyed or returned. But this guy was selling them for like 10 cents, you know, next to the peanuts,” Errick shares. At that time, he just knew that he loved science fiction comics. As he grew up, he would come to a fundamental realization about representation: that the voices telling these fantastical tales rarely looked like him.
“I would rarely see Black people in these things that I love,” Nunnally reflects, sitting across from me in a North Providence coffee shop as we discussed his path from Marine Corps veteran to acclaimed horror novelist. “I just want to see that. So when I am writing it, I’m sort of inserting my experience into stuff.”
That insertion has resulted in a catalog of compelling speculative fiction works, two of which I’ve had the chance to read so far. Nunnally masterfully blends supernatural horror and personal storytelling in Blood for the Sun, featuring a mixed-race supernatural investigator suffering from memory loss. Its sequel, All the Dead Men, is already on my reading list. His latest novel, The Queen of Saturn and the Prince in Exile, is a coming-of-age story set in 1970s Boston that weaves together family dynamics, historical references to the Black power movement, and otherworldly mysteries that I really hope I’ll be getting a sequel to as well. I don’t want to give away too much, so you’ll just have to read it.
Nunnally describes himself as “an ordered artist” who approaches his craft with a sort of military precision. “I am a planner when it comes to a novel,” he explains. “I will start with the premise and then start working on an outline. Each of the characters gets a sheet with a background so that whatever it is that’s motivating them, whatever experiences they’ve had, have all been documented.”
The worldbuilding in Blood for the Sun illustrates the scope of this careful construction. Without giving too much away, Alexander Smith is a supernatural investigator who’s been around for, let’s just say, quite a long time. He operates in a Boston that feels both realistic and otherworldly, while battling memory loss and trying to maintain a grasp on his sanity. The city that Nunnally builds feels real because he knows it well; he spent decades riding his bike or taking the T-train through neighborhoods like Roxbury and Mattanpan before he ever owned a car.
“I wanted something that seemed possible in terms of his lineage and also something that would create a kind of conflict,” Nunnally says of Alexander’s mixed Black and Indigenous heritage. There’s the in-between feeling Alexander has of straddling two cultures, but then there’s a supernatural curse slowly deteriorating his memories, passed down through his bloodline. It works as an element of horror, but it’s hard not to also see the parallel to how Black and Indigenous communities have had their histories systemically erased.
The novel’s first-person narration creates an almost unsettling reading experience; I enjoy the direction the horror genre has taken over the last century, opting to tell a story from the “monster’s” perspective. Alexander Smith’s memory gaps become the reader’s gaps, and more information about his background is revealed as you progress through the novel, creating a type of psychological horror that transcends your typical monster story. All the supernatural elements are woven into the story, ironically, naturally. Smith’s relationship with a police liaison undergoes tension throughout the book, and readers remember that there is still a normal world outside of Alexander’s that is oblivious to the existence of monsters and magic.
Despite the fantastical elements present in his work, Nunnally is committed to authenticity extending beyond mere personal experience and into rigorous historical research. Blood for the Sun incorporates actual occult inscriptions and historical texts, lending credibility and realism to its supernatural elements. “I really wanted to put as much real stuff in there as I could,” he explains. “I kind of believe that if you can forgive one aspect, one weird aspect, the rest will kind of all fall into place.”
He likens this philosophy to the first Superman movie’s tagline: “You’ll believe a man can fly;” by grounding fantastical elements in reality, Nunnally creates what feels like found-footage horror, stories that seem like they could be happening in the shadows of our mundane world.
His research process also led to an extraordinary personal discovery. After creating Alexander Smith’s backstory, a character whose father escaped slavery to marry an Indigenous woman in Canada, Nunnally learned through family genealogy that his own great-great-grandfather had followed an almost identical path, escaping slavery to fight in the Civil War and marry a Native woman.
“It was really weird,” he admits, “That was after the fact.” However, that weird coincidence validates his approach to creating his characters. Inserting a bit of his own experiences into his writing inadvertently taps into larger truths about identity and history. Growing up, Nunnally rarely saw himself reflected in the science fiction and horror stories he loved. Writers like Walter Mosley and Octavia Butler provided examples of what was possible, but they were exceptions in a mostly white landscape. “I never questioned who was writing books because I had no idea what they looked like,” he recalls. “I made no assumptions about it until I started to get older. This realization became motivation to create the representation that he wished to see.
Living in RI has provided Nunnally with a wealth of inspiration for his writing practice. The state’s rich history of colonial-era legends of ghosts, witches, and the like offers fertile ground for supernatural stories. “I prefer to be wherever it is that I’ve got something to say because I’ll notice things or be inspired by stuff,” he explains, though he acknowledges how practical modern technologies like Google Maps street view, historical databases, and digital archives have expanded the possibilities for writing beyond personal experience. His third Alexander Smith novel will be set in New Orleans, a city he’s visited frequently and hopes to continue exploring as he completes the book.
For readers seeking an entry point into Nunnally’s work, I’d highly recommend the Alexander Smith series, starting with Blood for the Sun; it’s a supernatural thriller that delivers action, horror, and a bit of humor while tackling deeper themes of identity and erasure. His latest novel, The Queen of Saturn and the Prince in Exile, is a coming-of-age story that captures experiences of Black boyhood with remarkable familiarity (I found myself reminiscing on my own memories of familiar haunts like the skating rink, the basketball court, and the neighborhood block), while maintaining a balance between realism and the supernatural.
With the third Alexander Smith novel in progress and the Sinister Societies anthology, featuring his story, “Agent Josephine Baker against the Island of Horrors,” debuting in December, Nunnally continues expanding his unique world of speculative fiction. The anthology story reimagines the real-life entertainer and spy as a full-fledged action hero battling Nazi occultists across Europe, a “pulpy story” that Nunnally hopes to expand into a series.
Nunnally’s work demonstrates how fiction can simultaneously entertain and educate, and that horror can emerge from reality rather than the purely fantastical; authentic representation doesn’t limit storytelling possibilities, it enhances it. In Nunnally’s worlds, the monsters that we fear and memories we’ve lost become channels for gleaning something more about who we are and where we came from, even when there are forces at play that want to erase that knowledge.
Learn more about Errick Nunnally and explore his work at erricknunnally.us.