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The Book of Wine and Sorrow book tour includes an author interview and giveaway. Meet the writer, share, comment, and subscribe.
Book Details
The Martyr’s Vow series, Book 4
Urban Fantasy/Adventure
Date Published: 12-15-2025
Publisher: Shadow Spark Publishing
Newlyweds Armand and Vonnie are traveling to Armenia, where Armand hopes to reconnect with his estranged culture and investigate his family’s troubled history. But when a sadistic oligarch kidnaps them, their honeymoon spirals into a living nightmare.
Frightened and far from home, Armand and Vonnie race against time to locate a powerful artifact before their captor does, or they’ll join the dead in the underworld forever. The couple’s frantic quest takes them to lush mountains, desolate monasteries, and bustling markets, but they’re not traveling alone. A distant cousin with a penchant for stretching the truth, a mythological strongman who hurls boulders like skipping stones, and a stuffy ghost with a love for poetry join them on this macabre treasure hunt.
Armand must summon the courage of his ancestors and sacrifice himself for love, or the Scribe of Death will come for his beloved.
Bittersweet and brutal, The Book of Wine and Sorrow is the thrilling conclusion to The Martyr’s Vow series and a heart-aching testament to survival and wrestling with your demons.
Author Details
Eric Avedissian is an adjunct professor and speculative fiction author. His published work includes the award-winning novel The Ocean Hugs Hard and the Martyr’s Vow series (Accursed Son, Mr. Penny-Farthing, Blood Family, and The Book of Wine & Sorrow). His short stories appear in various anthologies, including Across the Universe, Great Wars, and Rituals & Grimoires. Avedissian received a 2024 Fellowship in Prose from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and a ridiculous number of books. Find him online at www.ericavedissian.com if you dare.
Author Interview
Tell us about your current release.
The Book of Wine and Sorrow is the fourth and final book in the Martyr’s Vow series featuring Armenian-American embalmer and monster hunter Armand Tarkanian. The other books in the series include Accursed Son, Mr. Penny-Farthing, and Blood Family. Each book can be enjoyed individually or read
together as part of the series, if you’re a purist.
The Martyr’s Vow is a horror/urban fantasy series with paranormal elements.
Each book functions as its own mystery with an overarching plot that gradually reveals Armand’s identity as a ghost channeler and the bloodline curse that plagues his family. Armenian folklore and ancient mythology plays a crucial role in the series.
In The Book of Wine and Sorrow, Armand and his wife Vonnie take a begrudgingly impromptu honeymoon to Armenia, where an occult-obsessed oligarch (talk about alliteration) takes them hostage. What follows is a thrill ride through Armenia in search of a fabled artifact. Along the way, Armand learns more about his true nature and his perspective gradually shifts. Armand’s final battle revolves around the nature of sacrifice and heroism.
When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
I first started writing short stories for my high school literary magazine. They were mostly surreal science fiction about alternate dimensions. Think The Twilight Zone meets Goosebumps. In college, I majored in Journalism and worked for weekly newspapers as a beat reporter and later an investigative journalist.
Writing always came easy to me. I devoured books by Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, J. R. R. Tolkien, which helped me craft a weighty tome I instantly trunked following a few rejections. The years passed and I started taking stock of my life and my lack of real accomplishments.
My dreams as a writer would pass me by if I didn’t take it seriously and begin working. Writing was this itch that needed scratching, and journalism didn’t really satisfy me. You look around at the world and realize you’re only here for a short window of time before the curtain falls. I had to start writing and not let rejection discourage me. I had to commit to writing something worthy of publication. I worked hard, accepted rejection as a learning opportunity, and kept scribbling away.
Have you published any previous books?
Besides the four books in the Martyr’s Vow series, I have two other books:
Midnight at Bat Hollow, a cops-versus-vampires horror novel that functions as a prequel to the Martyr’s Vow series and The Ocean Hugs Hard, a standalone folk horror book about a mysterious cult at the Jersey Shore in 1966. All of these books are published by Shadow Spark Publishing and available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books or wherever weird books are sold.
What can we expect to see from you in the future, any books on the backburner?
I have short fiction in anthologies and a few projects I can’t talk about just yet.
What do you like to do when you’re not writing?
The stillness of nature really orients me and unclutters my mind, so I hike the woods around my house. I also unwind with a good book or watch movies. I need time to decompress away from the writing desk, but I never really stop thinking about writing. It has a way of appearing unannounced.
Did you learn anything from writing your book? What was it?
One of the central themes in the Martyr’s Vow series is a representation of Armenian culture. I wanted these books to combat Armenians stereotypes I found in the media, particularly from Hollywood, where Armenians are depicted as mostly criminals, sketchy outsiders, reactionary and villainous. They were the drug dealers, the gang members, the corrupt businessmen. It’s been drummed into our heads that representation in media matters, that stereotypes are lazy and wrong. These depictions bothered me. Armenians are either criminals or comic relief, never the heroes. There is one, Joe Mannix, a detective played by Mike Connors (who was born Krekor Ohanian) in the TV show Mannix. Connors brought awareness of Armenian culture to a larger audience. However, I wasn’t aware of any strong Armenian protagonists in speculative fiction. Where are the Armenian-American heroes who fight monsters and investigate things that go bump in the night? I wanted to create a heroic character in supernatural fiction that was not only Armenian-American, but who is tormented by his family’s historical trauma. For many Armenian families, the Armenian Genocide has left indelible wounds that filtered down through generations.
Armand’s pain is a bloodline curse inflicted on one of his ancestors by a demonic imp from Armenian lore called an al. This curse enables Armand to channel the spirits of the deceased and learn how they died. While this has made him resourceful with murder investigations, it’s also but a target on his head. He doesn’t want the burden of having dead people appearing all the time lamenting about their grievances, and dead people have plenty of grievances.
This is made even more difficult as Armand works as an embalmer in his family’s funeral home. He can’t escape the dead, and the dead can’t escape him.
Besides combating stereotypes, what started me on this journey in writing the Martyr’s Vow series was one question: what did the Armenians believe before Christianity. Armenia was the first nation to adopt Christianity as a state religion in 301 AD under King Tiridates III. As a kid I saw how important the
Armenian Apostolic Church was to Armenians, but I wondered what came before? What I found was a rich tapestry of folk beliefs woven with Zoroastrianism, animism, and ancient Greek influences. We’re talking a pantheon of Armenian gods and goddesses, monsters, legends and lore.
Demons and dragons. Magical entities and creatures. A treasure trove of heroes and heroines from legend. One of the things I learned in writing The Book of Wine and Sorrow is the richness of Armenian culture and this ancient mythology.
Spandaramet, the goddess of the underworld, interacts with Armand throughout the series, as does the Aralez, a dog-like entity Armand adopts as a pet. The Book of Wine and Sorrow was a chance for me to learn more about
modern Armenia and to place Armand, a ghost-channeling embalmer and member of a monster-hunting biker gang in Armenia and see what he’d do.
Some writers have something playing in the background, do you and what?
I have two rules when it comes to music and writing: write in silence and edit to music. When I’m writing, it must be quiet, but editing sessions are filled with music. My musical tastes vary. Some days it’s classic rock, other days it’s soundtracks or jazz or pop. It all depends on my mood.
Tell us a little about yourself. Perhaps something not many people know about?
Where to begin? I authored and created a roleplaying game called Ravaged Earth, a pulp adventure blending classic science fiction and retrofuturism. I met my wife when we attended college together in the 1990s, lost contact, and reconnected 18 years later through social media. We’ve been together ever
since. I lost everything in Hurricane Sandy in 2012 after flooding destroyed my apartment. I graduated with my M.A. in Writing at age 50.
What do you hope your writing brings to your readers?
I’d like readers to walk away feeling better than they did before they read my work. I want lonely people to feel less lonely, sad people to feel a bit of joy, and anxious people to feel more at ease. Obviously, this is a tall order to promise with words on a page, but I believe if you give me your time, you should be
entertained and learn more about the human condition, or at least glimpse inside my weird mind. Kindness, creativity, and humor matter. Even if it’s a horror or fantasy novel, these elements are there somewhere. Bottom line is I want my writing to matter to someone. I want to write are the kind of stories
readers can experience over and over out of sheer enjoyment. Maybe they’ll leave reviews and recommend my books to their friends. Who knows?
Anything can happen.
Contact Links
Website: http://www.ericavedissian.com
Twitter: @angryreporter
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/943512.Eric_Avedissian
Instagram: @ericavedissian
Threads: @ericavedissian
Purchase Links
Coming Soon…
Giveaway
eBook Copy
Tour Schedule
January 5 – Ella English – Spotlight
January 6 – Books 1987 – Spotlight
January 7 – Sarandipity’s – Interview
January 8 – The Faerie Review – Spotlight
January 9 – Texas Book Nook – Review
January 10 – Nana’s Book Reviews – Spotlight
January 11 – Chapter Break – Guest Post
January 12 – Book Junkiez – Excerpt
January 13 – Novel News Network – Review
January 14 – Always Reading – Excerpt
January 15 – The Indie Express – Review
January 16 – Crossroad Reviews – Spotlight
January 16 – RABT Reviews – Wrap Up
