Sunday, 8 December 2024
VAMPIRE ROMANCE SEASON 12 Dec - 1 Jan
Sunday, 27 October 2024
PRIME PLEDGE by Linzé Brandon (Book 8 in the Nations of Peace series)
PreSALE offer - get the book BEFORE its release on 1 December 2024!
Take a look at the rest of the series here
Tuesday, 22 October 2024
BOOK FEATURE: The Medusa Psalms by Kyle Toucher
This book is a collection of 10 stories and 2 novellas, taking place within, or tangential to, Walpurgis County, a place benighted by fallen angles and old curses, pockets of time dilation, and a sinister cult fixated on the end of all things. Overlooking the entire place broods Walpurgis Peak, a snarling ogre of a mountain, beneath which a comatose entity convalesces, kept alive by a colossal bio-mechanical atrocity, known only as The Machine.
Connected by events and recurring characters, whether taking place in the 19th, 20th, or 21st centuries, the history and lore of Walpurgis County revealed through the stories of those who lived it. Exorcisms and scarecrows. A wicked mountain and an unaging house. Disintegrating family and a lonely motel. Demons and monsters. Alternative history and the end of all things. Methamphetamine and Slayer.
👉👉 BOOK TRAILER 👈👈
🔖Get the book on Amazon here
Excerpt from 'Billy Beauchamp and the Monster Cartel'
Scarlet, leaning to accommodate Fate, gazed up at me. The twins wore a plain white dress of mismatched sizes, no shoes, and a garland of flowers arranged in each mane. Scarlet, the pagan maiden eager to plunge into the volcano. The look in her eye told me she had resigned herself to that day and had not that sacrifice spelled doom for her younger sister, I felt she would have acted on it there and then.
I felt sorrow for her. Though so pure and unafraid, I saw a future in service to monsters as they feasted on tentacles, traumatized children, and walked the endless line between desolation and damnation.
The conjoined sisters turned away and joined hands with the others. Six girls formed a perimeter around the magic weave. A freakish sight by any measure, but it would be a crude disservice to refer to these young ladies as freaks. In the Purg, bones fused in ways not seen, bloodlines ran long and true. Haunted and hunted had found refuge here, despite the bloody knife of Walpurgis Peak and the terrible events shat upon its slopes.
“Pneuma,” said the tallest of them, Destiny I believe. Her twin, Candi, half her size and nearly half her age, repeated the word in a whisper.
“Haima,” said another.
“Mystiko,” said a third.
The last time I heard Greek, Lena and I were in a restaurant in Studio City, and she had to order for us because I was about four Ouzos into a future DUI. But in the presence of Penny Brynnwick’s daughters, their words were clearly understood: Breath. Blood. Secret.
One second the magic circle was an ugly nightmare of lines and symbols―the next, an icy extrusion of light burst from those same lines. Shadows splashed throughout the Grand Room, and somewhere in the hollows of my heart, I knew if I stared at this shadow theatre long enough, I’d catch a glimpse of what waited out there, in the Elsewhere, that place of abandonment The Proprietor lamented over, the place where the monsters were left behind.
The temperature dropped. Serpents of frigid air slithered through the Grand Room. In their linen dresses and bare shoulders, these barefoot girls made me feel like a coward for shivering in my long sleeves, jeans, boots, and leather vest. Their hair, caught in the gale, sought the center of the conjuring rug.
🔖Get the book on Amazon here
About the Author: Kyle Toucher
Kyle Toucher is the author of the novel Live Wire, from Crystal Lake Entertainment, the novella Life Returns, and the Black Hare Press release, Southpaw.
He recently appeared in the anthologies Dead Letters: Episodes of Epistolary Horror and To Hell and Back, from Crystal Lake and Hellbound Books respectively.
This September, expect his first collection The Medusa Psalms: Welcome to Walpurgis County ―also from Crystal Lake Entertainment―to rise from the slab of a coroner's office near you. Ten stories. Two novellas. One benighted landscape.
Chat to Kyle on social media
X: @kyletoucher
Instagram: @kyletoucher
Thursday, 27 June 2024
Smashwords Summer/Winter sale - The Nations of Peace are on sale!
The first seven Nations of Peace books are 50% off for the whole of July.
Sunday, 25 February 2024
BOOK FEATURE: A Memory for Love by Linzé Brandon
A Memory for Love
"Their attraction brought heartbreak. Could their struggle for survival bring them back together?"
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1508808
Presale discount available at link.
Zarina sa'Der is not just an officer of the law, she is a category one memory witness, trained to work with the most vulnerable victims of violent crimes.
Her last court case left her with nightmares which requires her to take a break to focus on clearing her special memory banks before she goes insane. As a Treasure of the Magicians' Order, the Grandmaster arranges that she can take her vacation at the High Order retreat for the ideal peace and quiet she needs.
It has been three suns since Aidan Crea lost his mate and youngest daughter in the Wa'raki war that devastated Xa'an. When his best friend accuses him of becoming a grump, he agrees to take a break before the Grandmaster orders him to. After some soul searching he realised that he needed to get back to living instead of purely existing after the loss he had suffered.
Zarina and Aidan form an unusual friendship that soon grows into something deeper, until Aidan is tasked to protect her after a contract is given out to assassinate her. Although her job exposes her to the worst criminals of society, things take a turn for the worse, when they finally find out who is behind the attempts on her life.
They find themselves pawns in a larger plot and they have to risk their hearts and their lives to finally get a chance at a happily ever after.
#adult #fiction #fantasy
Friday, 12 January 2024
BOOK FEATURE: Master of Rods and Strings by Jason Marc Harris
SYNOPSIS
Jealous of the attention lavished upon the puppetry talents of his dear sister—and tormented by visions of her torture at the hands of the mysterious Uncle Pavan who recruited her for his arcane school—Elias is determined to learn the true nature of occult puppetry, no matter the hideous costs, in order to exact vengeance.
BUY LINKS -> Crystal Lake Publishing Amazon
EXCERPT
I will not deny that I have always been fascinated with puppets.
Perhaps because I was born on a farm in Saint Siméon, a forgotten town west of Valence in southern France named after the patron saint of puppets. Despite the frequent puppet shows many families considered themselves extraordinarily lucky if a child were accepted into the Lycée Avancé des Marionettes to study such puppetry—not all were enthusiastic.
Neither my father, Patrick Clermont, nor my mother, Anne Belleau, ever bought me a puppet.
I sulked over this injustice. At the age of four, I could only watch my sister, Sonja, play with Angélique, a fairy marionette with long red hair that our Uncle Pavan had bought her.
Occasionally, when she noticed me moping, Sonja would let me pull at the strings. Although I could get Angélique to do a flopping walk, I never could make her glide so gracefully as my sister did. Sonja’s twirling flourishes of thumbs and rippling fingers gave Angélique life.
“Such talent, such polish.” Uncle Pavan rubbed his large thumbs together as he watched Angélique slide amid potted wisteria and marigolds in the garden, flow through the open patio door, and float inside up to the doll’s house to join Sonja.
Sonja played at Angélique’s strings like a harp by whose invisible sounds the marionette bobbed with buoyant grace, almost hovering at times as if her silky azure wings could truly fly.
Uncle Pavan’s own prowess at puppetry was marvelous. Some townsfolk whispered he could literally bring puppets to life. He took a dedicated interest in Sonja’s future. That is why I have so few memories of her. She left for the advanced arts of puppetry.
I was left alone.
I longed to play with Sonja as we had on brighter days of jumping on piles of bronzing autumn leaves or racing through lavender fields with the spring winds—chasing harvest mice and Swallowtail butterflies dipping amid the yellow cowslips. We’d jump and then crouch down between stalks of shuddering wheat or corn. When I brooded and stroked Sebastian, our silky-furred black cat, who had also been the playmate of Sonja, I decided that if I showed myself particularly adept at puppets like my sister, then I would be reunited with her.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jason Marc Harris teaches creative writing, folklore, and literature, and is the Creative Writing Coordinator at Texas A&M University in College Station, TX.
He graduated with a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Washington, and an MFA in fiction from Bowling Green State University, where he served as Fiction Editor of Mid-American Review.
Creative work in journals such as Apex and Abyss, Arroyo Literary Review, Marvels and Tales, Midwestern Gothic, Psychopomp Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, and Writing Texas
His novella of weird horror Master of Rods and Strings was included in the Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker Award® Reading List for 2021 and will be republished by Crystal Lake Publishing in 2024.
Find the author online at his website: https://jasonmarcharris.com/
Friday, 1 December 2023
Book Feature: DEAD LETTERS: EPISODES OF EPISTOLARY HORROR edited by Jacob Steven Mohr
SYNOPSIS
Haunted podcast transcripts. Blood soaked police reports. Bewildering court findings.
Brace yourself for Dead Letters, an anthology that resurrects the chilling power of epistolary fiction—where ordinary documents become hidden records of our darkest fantasies and bleakest nightmares.
Across 21 all-original tales from talents like Gemma Files, Ai Jiang, Gordon B. White, J.A.W. McCarthy, and Red Lagoe, and curated with precision by Jacob Steven Mohr, Dead Letters: Episodes of Epistolary Horror serves up a prolonged sojourn into the macabre—and promises to haunt your sleepless nights.
EXCERPT (from "The Parthas UFO Incident" by T.T. Madden")
At first we thought it to be nothing more than a prank. Children from around town would mention something in the sky, a dark shape moving through the night. There have been strange things out in the desert, and even so, we thought little of it.
And then they started mentioning the men. Some people may think we’re hicks, living out here in the desert, but there’s no place in the world where parents won’t pay attention when their children say a strange man tried to talk to them.
The paper has pictures of all of them, what they arrived in and the men themselves. It looks like a pyramid hovering in the sky. Like an invisible hand lifting one of those Ancient Egyptian structures, except this one is all black. Black as the night.
The pictures of the men are different. There’s always two of them, and they’re always together. People say they see them out in the desert think they’re lost hikers, a duo who always disappear when people get close. At first, some of us were starting to think a new urban legend was happening right before our eyes. Like the ghost girl who leaves her sweater in your car.
But then something turned.
For the past several weeks, this presence around Parthas has menaced us. I do not know what caused their attitudes to change. Perhaps it was the fireworks. Perhaps they interpreted them as an attack. Since the Fourth of July, the number of car crashes and abandoned vehicles on the highway has gone up exponentially. People driving along the highway say the shapes in the sky follow them. Not engaging, just following. Watching. They say they pass the two men over and over again, standing on the shoulder, eternal hitchhikers begging for a ride that’s never coming.
I know what you must think, that I’m just repeating stories I’ve heard. That people out here in the middle of the desert have nothing better to do than spin tales. No. I’ve seen these things myself, the pyramids and the men, lurking in the sky, in the desert, just outside the trailer park. Always at night. Like they’re waiting for something. Some signal for them to finally come in.
This is the Nevada desert. There is so, so much open sky. There’s no place they can’t see us.
Please. Please send someone.
EDITOR BIO
Jacob Steven Mohr does not believe in human consciousness; his works emerge as though from the ether, fully formed and fully ominous.
Book Feature: PRIME PREY - The Protectors by Linzé Brandon (Book 6 in the Nations of Peace series)
Buy link
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Click the cover!
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EXCERPT (from Chapter 3)
If you become pregnant, will you allow me to provide for the child?
She felt her eyes widen. The tone of his voice, even in her mind, was pleading. She tilted her head sideways as she thought about this. Did he want a baby? In her experience with friends and family, human or otherwise, the males were not usually the ones who wanted children.
Are you serious?
He nodded. In any way you need. Money included.
She frowned slightly as they got out of the cooling water. She wasn’t exactly poor, but babies had more needs than she might be prepared for. She rubbed her forehead for a moment. Was she considering having this man’s baby?
She lifted her eyes back to his. He was deadly serious. Not only did she see it in his eyes, but she also felt it in his mind. He was promised to another woman, but he would not relinquish his responsibilities. On some level, she was sure he wanted her to have his baby. It made no sense. They had barely been introduced, to say nothing of knowing each other. How could he know what kind of mother she would be? To his child, no less. Shivering from a sudden chill, she felt him take the towel and wrap it securely around her before carrying her back to bed.
If it wasn’t that her thoughts were otherwise occupied, she would have protested; she did have a perfectly working pair of legs, after all.
“If there is a baby,” she started quietly as he lay beside her, holding her close, “I will tell you, and then we can decide what to do.”
“Thank you,” he replied.
He watched her drift to sleep and looked at his timepiece. He had to leave. It was not how he had planned to spend the first day with his soul-mate, but he had no choice. Prince Wolfgang was scheduled to travel to Zo’en today on family business, and he had to accompany him, being his chief bodyguard and his oldest cousin. Wolfe, as he preferred to be called, trusted very few people with his security, and Jarod was the only one he allowed to travel with him on family business.
Loathe to wake her, but he would feel like a jerk to just leave without at least saying goodbye. He got dressed and then gently shook her awake.
“It’s time,” he said when she opened her eyes and looked at him.
“I have a solar address, so you can reach me anywhere, anytime. I saved it in your contact list on your handheld.” He held up the tiny hand-sized computer he had found on her bedside table.
He touched her cheek one more time, running his thumb over her lips. “Will you be all right?”
She tried to smile but gave up. This was all they had or were going to be. Slowly sitting up, clutching the towel as a shield to her chest, she nodded. “I will be just fine.”
The sudden wariness in her eyes told him that lingering would not make it better. “Remember. Any time. Anything,” he said, with a last tender kiss on her cheek. He got to his feet and left the room. A few moments later, she heard the front door close quietly. He had obviously walked here since she didn’t hear a vehicle.
Lying back against her pillows, she wondered if they had been insane to do this when they both knew there could never be any future for them.
Lying in bed all day would not solve or change anything, so she got up and went to her closet to pick something to wear. The inside of the door had a full-length mirror, and a slight shimmer on her chest caught her eye.
Turning to fully face the mirror, she dropped the towel. She ran her hand quickly over her skin, removing the magic glamour hiding her body markings. Born from a Hunter and a Life-Giver, her body markings reflected both bloodlines. Then she frowned.
“Oh, shit.”
-----------------
About Linzé Brandon
She does, however, leave the teaching of story writing to others.
Linzé is the author of fiction and non-fiction books.
Friday, 8 September 2023
Book Feature: NEVER WAKE: An Anthology of Dream Horror
Where do we go when we dream?
Since the beginning of time, people have argued the meaning of dreams. Are they symbolic visions that hold great meaning and personal significance? Are they portals into other worlds? Or are they just a series of random events our mind shows us when we fall asleep? Whatever the case, this much is true—the mind can be a scary place to venture, even for a few hours.NEVER WAKE is an anthology of dream horror, bringing you several mind-bending tales of nightmares, hallucinations, and phantasmagoria from some of the hottest talent in horror fiction. But don’t worry—when you (wake up screaming) flip the last page, just remember to tell yourself, “It was only just a story…”
Unless it wasn’t.
Featuring an introduction from Sadie “Mother Horror” Hartmann and stories from: Cynthia Pelayo, Philip Fracassi, Gwendolyn Kiste, Eric LaRocca, Lee Murray, Todd Keisling, Laurel Hightower, and many more!
Buy link: https://getbook.at/NeverWake
Jenna lifts the cover to reveal a neat inscription written in the center of the first, blank, page.
But her friends are already standing, antsy and ready for the cake and ice cream portion of the event. The final meal before the party is officially over and they can go home to daydream about their own childhood birthday parties, the wonderful gifts they’ll hope to receive.
Jenna carefully sets the book back into the sturdy black box, her eyes unable to leave the cover.
“Jenna?” her mother says. “Come on, let’s blow out the candles.”
“Okay,” she replies, and begins to fold the thin tissue paper back over the book’s cover, when she pauses.
The embossed eye in the center—the one she would have sworn was closed only a moment ago—is now open wide. As if watching her.
As if seeing her for the very first time.
Realizing she must have seen it wrong the first time, Jenna dismisses the chill that climbs up her spine at the sight of the open eye. She dutifully covers it with the paper, replaces the cardboard lid, then heads for the kitchen to have cake and ice cream with her friends.
She doesn’t notice Nana watching her as she passes by the table, a rare smile curling the old woman’s lips.
Buy link: https://getbook.at/NeverWake
EDITOR BIOS:
Kenneth W. Cain is an author of horror and dark fiction, and a Splatterpunk Award nominated freelance editor. To date, he has had over one hundred short stories and thirteen novels/novellas, as well as a handful each of nonfiction pieces, books for children, and poems released by many great publishers such as Crystal Lake Publishing, JournalStone, and Cemetery Gates Media.
He has also edited eight anthologies, with two more coming in 2023. He lives in Chester County PA with his family and two furbabies, Butterbean and Bodhi. His full publishing history is available on his website at kennethwcain.com
Tim Meyer dwells in a dark cave near the Jersey Shore. He’s the author of more than fifteen novels, including Malignant Summer, Th
He bleeds coffee and IPAs. You can learn more about his books at timmeyerwrites.com
Thursday, 17 August 2023
Book Feature: LOST by Shilpa Suraj
Lost is a story of love, betrayal, honour, revenge, and everything in between. It’s also a love story that sets fire to the world they live in leaving them with no choice but to rise from the ashes anew…
Lieutenant Rahul Jaishankar of the Indian Navy is a man of honour, principles and commitment. His love for his family, his ethics, and his integrity is only eclipsed by his love for his country. He has no time or space to love anything or anyone else. Until the day Ayaana Sahni explodes into his life. Suddenly, she’s all he can think of, all he can hope for, all he dreams of, awake or asleep…
But Ayaana isn’t a dream he can afford to have. She’s an illusion. Ayaana Sahni is actually Aarushi Mittal. And Aarushi Mittal wants only one thing…Vengeance. And no man, not even one as deliciously gorgeous as Lieutenant Rahul was going to get in her way.
An award winning, intrepid journalist, Aarushi spends most of her life abroad working on the kind of devastating stories that the world would never hear of if not for people like her. But it has come at the cost of her personal life, at the cost of time with family, and at the heartbreaking cost of her friend’s devastating tragedy.
Aarushi needs to atone for her negligence, she needs to right the wrongs done in her absence, and she needs to make the villain in her friend’s story pay. What she really needs to make that happen is a way into the tightly knit community of the Indian Navy and Lieutenant Rahul Jaishankar is it. And if that means there is some collateral damage along the way, then so be it. Even if the collateral being damaged makes her yearn for dreams that don’t exist. Surely, the Lieutenant would understand, wouldn’t he?
Aarushi isn’t built for love. She’s built to burn down the world for her loved ones instead. So what if this man makes her want things she’s never wanted? So what if this man makes her heart ache for something she’ll never have? So what if, suddenly, this man is all she wants?
Goodreads * Amazon IN * Amazon US
Read an Excerpt from Lost
She swung the door open, her eagerness on full display. Rahul leaned against the wall outside her flat, in loose tracks and a t-shirt that had probably been washed ten thousand times. He looked warm and rumpled and enticingly cuddle-able.
“Hi Ayaana.” Rahul smiled, a weary smile.
Ayaana.
Her smile dropped in wattage as she held the door open and made way for him to enter. He didn’t move, instead waiting on the threshold for her to precede him.
Oh right. The whole gallantry thing. She turned around and started hopping back down the little corridor. She heard the door shut behind her and then a warm hand captured her crutch holding hand.
A shiver worked its way through her. He was so close. So big, so warm, so everything. A ridiculous urge to curl into his solid, stable presence and cry overcame her but she shook it off. She shook it all off.
“Problem, Navy?”
His eyes, so close to her own, flashed in amusement at the nickname.
“You’re doing it wrong,” he murmured.
“Doing what wrong?” Why was she breathless?
“The crutch thing.”
She raised one eyebrow and tried to look haughty. “You’re criticizing my ability to limp on a damaged foot?”
But she ruined the effect with the breathless whisper that accompanied the words.
He looked down at her, his gaze dropping to her lips before moving to land on her crutch. “You’re hopping too much. All the weight and pressure is on your shoulders and back. You’re not leveraging the crutch enough.”
He slid one arm around her waist to anchor her, his other hand going to wrap around the knuckles she had tightly clenched around the handle of the crutch. He helped her raise the crutch in the air and place it forward while using his other arm to coax her body into not leaping into a hop to compensate. Only when her weight rested on the crutch did he let her body slide into step with it.
“Better?” he asked, the word a waft of heat against the shell of her ear.
Aarushi shut her eyes, as unreasonable sensations cascaded through her. She nodded her head, just once, in response to his question.
He released her and stepped back, cold air rushing in to take the place of the delicious warmth of his body. She reached instinctively for him but stopped herself before she made contact. Her fingers curled in mid-air before her hand dropped to her side.
About the Author:She is, amongst other things, currently working on ‘Frazzled and Fabulous,’ a humorous, true-to-life parenting story that is part memoir and part nonfiction.
An avid reader with a passion for creative writing and storytelling saw her participating in writing competitions at school and dabbling in copy writing for an ad agency as a teenager. Twenty years in the corporate space, including a stint in Corporate Communications for Google, India, and a spell at entrepreneurship all hold her in good stead for her multiple current roles of author, mother and Head of Human Resources & Public Relations at an architecture and interior design firm.
Contact the Author:
Website * Facebook * Twitter * Instagram * Newsletter
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