Bathory – Blood and Iron

J. Penberth Rabold

Type: Beta project
Genre: Fantasy, Historical fiction
Word count: 139,400

Warnings: Graphic violence, Swearing

Hungary, 1585. Countess Erzsébet Báthory will seize the throne—even if it means becoming the monster everyone thinks she is. When her campaign for the crown crumbles, her estate falls to vampires, and an ancient prophecy surfaces about her bloodline, Erzsébet faces an impossible choice: save her country or embrace the darkness within. Please note: this book is over 120,000 words, so you will have three weeks to read it.

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What’s this?

Hungary, 1585. Countess Erzsébet Báthory will seize the throne—even if it means becoming the monster everyone thinks she is. When her campaign for the crown crumbles, her estate falls to vampires, and an ancient prophecy surfaces about her bloodline, Erzsébet faces an impossible choice: save her country or embrace the darkness within.

With the Ottoman Empire advancing under a vampire sultan and Hungary’s weak king leading the country to ruin, Erzsébet believes she alone can save her homeland. She’s brilliant, ruthless, and trained for this her entire life. But when her war-hero husband betrays her, her allies vanish, and village girls start disappearing, the whispers turn to an ancient prophecy about vampires rising again—and the woman whose blood can stop them.

Now Erzsébet must decide: become the queen she was born to be, or embrace the blood magic in her veins and become the weapon the prophecy foretold. Either way, everyone she loves will burn.

I’m J. Penberth Rabold, a neurodivergent screenwriter and director with 20 years in the Los Angeles film industry, now based in Pittsburgh. While this is my debut novel, I’ve written award-winning television pilots that have been considered by major networks, including HBO, Starz, Netflix, and Apple. I’m a two-time Austin Film Festival second-rounder, a ScreenCraft Fellowship quarterfinalist, and a semifinalist in the Table Read My Screenplay competition.

When I’m not writing, I work as a copywriter across multiple industries, run a writing-focused Substack, and am pursuing my BA in Creative Writing at Slippery Rock University alongside two of my (seven!) children.

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