Damien Waugh
Writes dark fantasy about men who have lost everything and the kingdoms that did it to them.
Damien Waugh writes character-first grimdark fantasy from somewhere on the east coast of Australia. His debut novel, Revenge Runs Red, releases September 2026 — the first book in a series set in the fractured continent of Aelysia, where the price of every oath is paid in blood and the men who keep the peace are the ones with the most to bury.
He came to fantasy through Cook and Cornwell, lost three years to The First Law, and never properly recovered. He writes about violence and what it costs the people who do it — not because he thinks the world is dark, but because he thinks the cost is the story.
Outside the page, he holds down a day job, raises a family, and reads too much military history. He answers his own emails. He always replies.
Hopelessness is easy. Anyone can write a world where everything is ash. The harder thing is to write a man who has lost everything and still chooses what he gets to be.— On grimdark, May 2026
The man before the war
Every blade in the books was sharpened by something a character once loved. Stakes that feel inherited, not imposed. Interiority before plot.
Choices that cost
No clean wins. No tidy endings. The world keeps the receipts. Vengeance is what survives when grief gets organised.
Lived-in worlds
Maps that show economics, not just battles. Magic with a price. A continent that reads like it existed long before anyone wrote it down.
Runs Red
Currently
finishing the eighth pass.
Revenge Runs Red is the first book in a planned trilogy. It is being self-published, Kindle Unlimited exclusive for ninety days, then wide.
Pre-launch updates, early excerpts, narrated chapters, and launch-day access go to the newsletter first. The list is small. It will stay small.
Read about the book →