About Belmont Andrews Publishing

Belmont Andrews Publishing was founded as the publisher for the Matt Bell Mysteries, which, when you say it out loud, sounds considerably more impressive than it actually is. It's essentially one guy with a computer, strong opinions about everything, and an unhealthy fascination with the darker corners of Philadelphia.

That guy is Tom Bates.

The honest origin of all of this is that Tom was reading a popular fantasy series, complained loudly about the dialogue, and his wife said, "Ok, then. You do it, tough guy." So he did.

Tom grew up in Delaware County, Delco to the initiated, in suburban Philadelphia — close enough to the city to know it well, far enough to see it clearly. He has strong feelings about way too many things, a deep respect for the neighborhoods that don't make the tourist brochures, and more than a passing familiarity with the kind of stories that don't get told in polite company. The kind that live at the intersection of history, folklore, and the genuinely strange. Those are the stories that become the basis of the Matt Bell Mysteries.

Matt Bell is a former Philadelphia journalist turned podcaster with a questionable reputation and an unfortunate habit of pulling on threads that reasonable people leave alone. His city is the one you know — the Birds, the attitude, the accent — but it's also the one underneath that one. The one with older bones. Matt's stories live there, where the folklore bleeds into the everyday and the line between what's real and what shouldn't be gets harder to find the closer you look.

The Matt Bell Mysteries don't fit neatly into any one genre, which is the way Tom likes it. There's horror, detective fiction, and urban fantasy, and something that might just be Philadelphia itself — a city that has always had more going on beneath the surface than it lets on.

Tom also writes short fiction. Wolf Moon and This Bright Darkness are both available to download for free on this site, because the best way to find out if any of this is for you is to just read something.