Barbara Truelove

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Bio

SHORT
Barbara Truelove is an Australian author and game designer. She writes about werewolves and sometimes other things including but not limited to vampires, zombies, and sentient space ships. She's worked in television, run hotels, and taught English to kindergarteners in South Korea. She started writing when she was nine years old and believes it’s too late to break the habit now.LONG
Barbara Truelove is the name given to a moderately sentient homosapien known to wander land masses in Oceania and occasionally further afield. Unlike a majority of lifeforms on planet Earth, she has an internal skeletal structure, a warm-blooded circulatory system, and more than four meters of intestinal tract, home to various bacteria.Powered by complex carbons and caffeine, Barbara Truelove has existed in varying forms since the early 1990s. During that time, she attended Griffith Film School, graduating in 2015 with a Bachelor of Screen Media Production with a specialisation in screenwriting. Since then, she’s worked in television, run hotels, and taught English to kindergarteners in South Korea.During the pandemic, Barbara started writing and sharing an interactive novel about werewolves. This transformative project (which would go on to become Blood Moon, a full version of which was released with Hosted Games in 2023) helped her stay busy throughout the various virus-related restrictions, built her confidence, and connected her to readers and fellow werewolf enthusiasts around the globe. This encouraged her to continue sharing her writing with the world, including her debut science fiction book Of Monsters and Mainframes which will be released in June 2025 with Ezeekat Press at Bindery Books.She’s never turned into a swam of bats, got higher than 41% on a spelling test, or married.Currently, Barbara lives in Australia on the land of the Gandangara people and spends most of her time wandering the streets in search of free Wi-Fi. She’s been writing since she was nine years old and believes it’s probably too late to break the habit now.Barbara Truelove is represented by Allegra Martschenko at BookEnds Literary Agency.

Photos courtesy of the author.

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Books + Games

Of Monsters and Mainframes

Demeter is a spaceship. Dracula is the vampire that ruined her reputation. It isn't in Demeter's programming to seek revenge, but for Dracula, she can make an exception.Of Monsters and Mainframes will be published in 2025 with Jaysen Headley at Ezeekat Press/Bindery Books.

• Learn More on Ezeekat Press

Blood Moon

Date Werewolves. Fight Vampires.Blood Moon is an epic 445,000 word interactive novel. Play as a werewolf as you defend your pack against vampires (and perhaps fall in love).Published April 2023.

• Available on Steam

• Available on the App Store

Thicker Than

The vampires bite back in this bloody sequel to Blood Moon.Play as a fledgling vampire, navigating the twisty and treacherous world of undead high society. Scheme, seduce, and sashay your way to the vampiric throne... or to an early grave.Thicker Than is the second half of The City of Monsters Duology and will be published with Hosted Games.Tentative release: Q1 2026.

short visual novels

A couple of short visual novels, currently free to download.Featuring: cannibalistic fairies, cannibalistic mermaids, and superpowered farm kids from space (who unfortunately aren't cannibalistic).

• Download all games free on itch.io

Other projects

Barbara Truelove's debut novel Crying Wolf is currently out of print.

• Statement on Crying Wolf

She's also currently working on a number of other stories, all at various stages of development.Stay tuned for updates on these, and other upcoming projects.

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News

Of Monsters And Mainframes is out in the world (and so am I)

Last month, I flew to NYC to attend a book launch. Specifically, the launch of my book: Of Monsters and Mainframes.It was brilliant. A little overwhelming, (okay, maybe a lot overwhelming) but still brilliant. I ate macarons, got a cool bracelet, and discovered I don’t like in-person book signings. You want me to sign my name? And also spell yours? Oh, okay. I have immediately forgotten how to hold a pen. Also, the entire English language.But that aside, I genuinely had such a fantastic time.I met a ton of wonderful bookish people including Jaysen Headley (who was a delight but also surprisingly human-sized and not person-who-lives-in-my-phone-sized which apparently had been my brain’s accepted reality up until that point). He’s been a champion for this book for several years now and it was so wonderful actually getting to see and talk to him in person.I also spent a lot of time hanging out with the other authors in my Bindery cohort; Samantha Bansil (author of Black Salt Queen), Maren Chase (author of Crueler Mercies), and Denise S. Robbins (author of The Unmapping). They were all so cool, and pretty, and clean which was deeply unfair because that New York July weather was not so kind to me. I’d gotten their books as ARCs a few months prior so was already a fan which made meeting them just that extra bit special. Plus, it was so nice not to be alone in this whole experience.Between bookish events I wandered around, exploring the city, taking photos, and generally just enjoyed my time as a tourist. New York is a weird place. It doesn’t quite feel real, honestly. The chaos, the noise, the mess. I really liked it.After everything was said and done (the books signed, the parties had) I flew home the long way so I could spend a couple of weeks with my sibling. Then, on my final leg back to Australia I i) lost my luggage, ii) contracted a really gross head cold and iii) hit the LA Times bestseller list.I found out while sitting in an airport, waiting to see if my flight was just delayed or cancelled, which sounds like a scene from a movie but actually happened. Everyone in the waiting room was pacing around, gesturing at the departure board, getting slowly more furious. Meanwhile, there I was, in the middle of everything, hugging my phone and grinning like a loon.I honestly still can’t really believe it. My weird wee spaceship story… a bestseller. It doesn’t feel real. Perhaps it never will.Now I’m back home in Australia, recovered, and slowly getting back into the rhythm of writing again. There’s a bunch of stuff happening behind the scenes, and most of it I’m not ready to talk about, but I've got a lot of work to do, and I couldn’t be happier.There’s also Thicker Than, my unfinished sequel to Blood Moon. The demo is still incomplete but I’m determined, amidst all of this, to change that. Blackwell needs an ending (or five) in equal parts triumphant, tragic, and traumatic—because my favourite undead loser deserves nothing less. Also because I owe so much to the interactive fiction community... and the last thing I want to do is leave them now.Anyway... that's it. That's my update. Here's some photos from New York:

Posted: 18th July, 2025

So... I'm going to NYC in June.

I booked the flights today, it's happening, and I couldn't be more terrified (don't worry, it's in a good way, but more on that in a sec). The details are still detailing, so I won't share any specifics, but the short version is I'm going to be in the city for the launch of my debut sci-fi book: Of Monsters and Mainframes.Which is an utterly insane thing to type let alone think about. Do you know how I spent the launch of Blood Moon? Hiding under my bed covers, pretending I didn't exist. And that was a book that a massive chunk of the audience had already read.Now I'm going to be at a party.Me. A party.As already stated, I'm terrified. I'm a painfully awkward and uncharismatic person in real life and I'm pretty sure my wealth of marine animal reproductive facts won't be as endearing in NYC as it is on tumblr (something else that happened today).But I am also excited. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I know when I'm doing it and I know where. June. New York City.

Posted: 23rd December, 2024

Of monsters and mainframes has a cover!

And it's beautiful.The journey to get to this cover was a wee bit scary. For a while, I really wasn't sure what this book was going to look like... but I couldn't have asked for a better result.The artist is Carl Cozier (@holymolyk on Instagram). It was that Instagram page that made me want to pick him as the artist we used on this project, so seriously check it out.I have been so ridiculously excited to share this for so long.I wrote Of Monsters and Mainframes back in 2022. It's about Demeter (a remarkably unlucky spaceship) and Dracula (needs no introduction). I had so much fun writing it and can't wait for more people to read it. It's very weird, very queer, and very much my vibe.

And it's beautiful.The journey to get to this cover was a wee bit scary. For a while, I really wasn't sure what this book was going to look like... but I couldn't have asked for a better result.The artist is Carl Cozier (@holymolyk on Instagram). It was that Instagram page that made me want to pick him as the artist we used on this project, so seriously check it out.I have been so ridiculously excited to share this for so long.I wrote Of Monsters and Mainframes back in 2022. It's about Demeter (a remarkably unlucky spaceship) and Dracula (needs no introduction). I had so much fun writing it and can't wait for more people to read it. It's very weird, very queer, and very much my vibe.

Posted: 20th September, 2024

A (somewhat delayed) announcement

Wait! Hold up! I forgot to post this here. My novel manuscript Of Monsters and Mainframes is going to be punished with Jaysen Headley at Bindery Books next year!

Posted: 26th April, 2024

Crying Wolf is out of print

My debut novel, Crying Wolf, is no longer available for purchase. I requested my publisher put it out of print and they kindly agreed.Crying Wolf is set in a fictional prison and stars twin brothers with South Asian and Middle Eastern heritage. There are strong themes of systematic oppression and injustice.Simply put, as a white author, this was not my story to tell.
My intention at the time was to write a book about siblings surviving a hostile environment (and the complicated family dynamics that can arise in those situations). I didn't think about how these themes could intersect with race. I wrote outside my lived experience, without a deep understanding of the issues being touched upon, or the harm that doing so could cause.This was ignorant. I should've known better, and I'm deeply sorry that I didn't.I'm grateful to my editor, publisher, and to the sensitivity readers for this book. I'm grateful to readers who purchased the book and to the people who have spoken to me about it since. This was my own decision, and I believe it was the best one. I hope you'll find that my newer projects reflect my continuing growth and thoughtfulness. Thank you for everything.-Barbara Truelove 💙

Posted: 30th October, 2024