“Growing up, I always wanted to tell stories,” said Bunn. “Even in, like, fifth and sixth grade, I had an old typewriter, and I was writing really bad novels and really bad comic book scripts, and I was drawing my own comics and passing them out to friends.”
Bunn continued to develop his interest in writing in school, eventually landing him at Missouri State University.
“When I went to college, I pursued a degree in creative writing because that's the only thing I really enjoyed doing," he said. "After that, it still took me a while to break in. I was getting published short stories here and there and articles and things like that.”
Eventually, Bunn broke into the comic book industry and began writing for several different publishers, including Marvel and DC.
“Professionally, [I’ve done] comics for 20 plus years now, but I've always had that itch to return to doing more prose again," he said.
Regarding Bones of Our Stars, Blood of Our World, Bunn said this is probably the biggest book he’s written. Over the years, Bunn has written many short stories and novels, largely of the horror genre.
“I loved ghost stories [as a kid]. I loved, you know, thinking that there were creatures out in the dark," he said. "It terrified me, but I was always into it.”
Bunn said his novel is “one of those books that's difficult to pitch without spoiling.” It’s set in a small coastal town in North Carolina and follows the mystery of a series of organ harvesting.
“The characters are trying to solve the mystery of who [the killer] is. And then about 2/3 of the way through, the book's going to take a major turn. The book you think you've been reading, it becomes something completely different,” he said.
Bunn said writing, especially this book in particular, takes “a lot of focus and commitment.”
“I get up real early every morning, 5 or 5:30 a.m., and I work until about 5 p.m. every day. It's a daily job for me," said Bunn. "I have some flexibility that I didn't have when I was working, say, in marketing and things like that before I started writing full time, but still I treat it like a day to day job."
“[The novel] took several months of pretty dedicated, you know, focus to write the book,” said Bunn. “And then the thing that I found that really kind of expanded that time was once it was done, I started overthinking it. So I had to rein that in a little bit because I was just going off the rails, expanding it and expanding.”
In addition to his most recent release, Bunn has plans to release more work soon.
“I'm always working on several comic books, so I have several new comic book series that are starting up,” he said.
Recently, he released Deluge as a part of this comic series, which he describes as a survival horror set in a flooding women’s prison.
"It's coming out right now from Ignition Press. And then I'm doing several more comic books with Ignition Press over the next couple of years, he said. ”
Additionally, Bunn has a newsletter that he puts out weekly that’s “full of hints of what [he’s] working on and thoughts on the [horror] genre, writing and publishing.”
That newsletter can be found on his website as well as more information on his work which, is also posted on his Instagram and Facebook pages.
