The dead things that live in the dark – #ParanormalHorror #LGBTQ #Giveaway

Blurb

PI Bradshaw receives a late night call from a client desperate to find her missing daughter. The woman asks to meet him at a storage unit in upstate New York. The woman hangs up before Bradshaw can inquire further. Woken by the jarring news, Bradshaw decides to meet the frantic, mysterious woman pleading for his help.

Working as a private investigator has its drawbacks. Bradshaw often receives prank calls from clients with run-of-the-mill requests and chooses his cases wisely. But there is something unusual and unnerving about this particular call. The hopeless plea in the woman’s voice and the anonymity of her demand ignite a maelstrom of questions.

While Bradshaw decides whether the call is worth pursuing, a young dead girl from the Other Side visits him, demanding attention and seeking help for the request he just received. Who is this spirit? What does she want? And how is she linked to the caller?

Excerpt

I backed up against the rain-streaked window and closed my eyes.

Maybe if I stayed in place, camouflaging myself in the scrim of the storm, it wouldn’t see me. Or I’d join my parents on the Other Side.

Let whatever chased me devour me whole. Rip at my jugular, spew all my secrets, and leave me to die. No more running from the dead things that live in the dark.

I ran.

As fast as my middle-aged legs could move, through the maze of corridors, around and around, until I stopped to catch my breath next to a large metal door at the far end.

Something hissed at me somewhere in the enclosing blackness.

I grasped the doorknob and yanked it outward, dashed into the stairwell. I ran down a flight of stairs, my feet pounding like gunfire under me.

I didn’t look up when the doors flung open, and whatever was following me scurried across the ceiling, down the walls, and along the stairs, its legs clicking-clacking like chopsticks.

I lost my balance midway, but reached out to steady myself.

Teeth gnashed and sharp claws raked closely at the side of my face.

I ran down the rest of the stairs to the bottom floor, tripping off the last step and tumbling across the hard concrete.

About the Author

Thomas Grant Bruso knew he wanted to be a writer at an early age. He has been a voracious reader of genre fiction since childhood.

His literary inspirations are Ray Bradbury, Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Jim Grimsley, Karin Fossum, and Joyce Carol Oates.

Bruso loves animals, reading books, and writing fiction, and prefers Sudoku to crossword puzzles.

In another life, he was a freelance writer and wrote for magazines and newspapers. In college, he won the Hermon H. Doh Sonnet Competition. Now, he writes and publishes fiction and reviews books for his hometown newspaper, The Press-Republican.

He lives in upstate New York.

Author Links

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8591689.Thomas_Grant_Bruso

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thomasgrantbruso/

Blue Sky: https://web-cdn.bsky.app/profile/thomasgrantbruso.bsky.social

 

Buy Links

Barnes and Noble:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-dead-hour-thomas-grant-bruso/1148779270?ean=9798896020639

Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Hour-Thomas-Grant-Bruso-ebook/dp/B0FWBRGQBW/ref=sr_1_1

JMS Books:

https://www.jms-books.com/thomas-grant-bruso-c-224_236/the-dead-hour-p-5517.html

Thomas Grant Bruso will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner.

Friday Smooch: The Journeyman’s Trial – #Kiss #EroticRomance #FridaySmooch

Some of my creative colleagues have decided to develop a new meme: Friday Smooch. Each of us is going to devote a Friday Facebook or blog post to a sizzling kiss excerpt.

To kick things off, I’ve got a searing smooch from my steam punk erotica tale The Journeyman’s Trial. Enjoy!

Blurb

If she builds it, will they come?

Technically brilliant and thoroughly wanton, Gillian Smith has found her vocation: designing innovative erotic devices for the Toymakers Guild. Lust is a lubricant to creativity at Randerley Hall. But what happens when two Toymakers fall in love?

If you like intelligent, lusty women and kinky steam punk sex toys, pick up a copy of The Journeyman’s Trial.

The Smooch (Adult)

“Jill – please!” Rafe held out his hand. “Come here.”

The raw need she heard in his voice cut through her giddiness. She stared at the man reclining on the thin mattress. Ragged black hair hung over his brow, partially hiding the lump from his fall. His dark eyes seemed to glow in the dimness as though lit from within, while his lips pressed together, serious and unsmiling. There was no hint of his habitual mocking smile.

Something shifted inside her. All levity fled. A pang of desire clutched at her, so acute that she gasped. Without further hesitation, she seated herself on the bed, close enough that she could smell him: earthy traces of the moors where she’d found him; the sharp sweetness of the rum; the ripe animal smell of his horse; and under it all, his own sweat and musk, rich and male. The heady mixture increased her intoxication. He captured both her hands in his, still pinning her with that intense gaze. For an instant, she wondered if he planned to prevent her from touching him, as he’d done previously. Then he drew her down to face him on the bed, into a bottomless kiss, and she understood that their waiting was over.

His lips locked to hers, their breath mingling, he explored her body with eager hands. Though they were both fully clothed, each caress burned like a brand imprinted on her flesh. Her breasts, her belly, her arse, every inch of her was on fire. When he circled a taut nipple through her bodice, she spiralled down into a maelstrom of need. When he cupped her buttocks and pulled her pelvis against the rigid bulk of his prick, she thought she might spend from the mere thought of having him inside her.

Prying off her shoes, she snuggled closer. She ran her hands over his back, sensing the wiry strength in his slender frame. His tongue played along the seam of her closed mouth and she opened gladly, meeting his incursion halfway, revelling in the simple honesty of that kiss: nothing hidden, nothing held back, two souls acknowledging and indulging their mutual desire.

Find the buy links at: https://www.lisabetsarai.com/journeymanstrialbook.html

A center for the Queer Resistance – #MMRomance #DystopianSciFi #MFRWHooks

For today’s Book Hooks blog hop, I have an excerpt from my MM dystopian erotic romance, The H Gene – highly appropriate for Pride Month. In the near future, post-plague world of this novel, being gay is literally a crime. Lovers Dylan and Rafe are on the run and fighting for their lives.

Blurb

When love is forbidden, the whole world’s a prison.

Dylan Moore will do anything for freedom. Seven years ago, a gay plague spread to heterosexuals, killing millions and sparking brutal anti-gay riots. The Guardians rounded up men who tested positive for the homogene and imprisoned them in remote quarantine centers like desolate Camp Malheur. Since then, Dylan has hacked the camp's security systems and hoarded spare bits of electronics, seeking some way to escape. He has concluded the human guards are the only weakness in the facility's defenses.

Camp guard Rafe Cowell is H-negative. He figures the lust he feels watching prisoner 3218 masturbate on the surveillance cameras must be due to his loneliness and isolation. When he finally meets the young queer, he discovers that Dylan is brilliant, brave, sexy as hell — and claims to be in love with Rafe. Despite his qualms, Rafe finds he can't resist the other man's charm. By the time Dylan asks for his help in escaping, Rafe cares too much for Dylan to refuse.

Dylan's plan goes awry and Rafe comes to his rescue. Soon they're both fugitives, fleeing from militant survivalists, murderous androids, homophobic ideologues and a powerful man who wants Dylan as his sexual toy. Hiding in the Plague-ravaged city of Sanfran, Dylan and Rafe learn there's far more than their own safety at stake. Can they help prevent the deaths of millions more people? And can Rafe trust the love of a man who deliberately seduced him in order to escape from quarantine?

The Hook

“You’re not the first.” The three of them sat once again at the kitchen table, which held the remains of wild mushroom omelets and fried potatoes. Artemis was an amazing cook. Even the soy-based sausage links had some taste.

“What do you mean? You’ve met other men who’ve escaped from the quarantine camps?” Dylan asked, leaning his elbows on the table.

“Some from the camps. Some from the eyePorn studios, which supposedly are even worse. Basically sexual slavery.”

“They say all eyePorn is consensual,” Rafe objected. “That the stars make good money, too.” He realized he hadn’t had an eP session in weeks. Probably the first time since he’d reached eighteen and been given his pod that he’d gone even twenty-four hours without eP. And he hadn’t missed it.

“Maybe that’s true of het eP, though I wouldn’t bet on it. But gay eyePorn’s a different situation.”

“There’s gay eP?” Dylan asked. Rafe wasn’t sure he liked the gleam in Dylan’s eyes. “I thought that was illegal.”

“Completely. Possession can get you fifteen years and a memory wipe. Being involved on the—um—creative side is viewed as equivalent to spreading the Plague. These days that means death.” Artemis sighed. “Of course, there’s a huge black market in the stuff. Attractive men with homoerotic inclinations are in high demand as performers. Since few, if any, of them would deliberately risk the penalties, they’re either tricked into it, or forced. Sometimes studios even raid the camps.”

“Hmm.” Dylan’s brows knotted. “There were some guys at Malheur Camp, over the years, who simply disappeared. The Robbies took them away, and we never saw them again. Good-looking men, usually.”

“I’m glad they didn’t take you,” Rafe commented. The notion terrified him.

“Maybe they knew I’d cause trouble,” Dylan laughed. “Or maybe I just wasn’t hot enough.” He ducked Rafe’s playful swat. “So you say that you’ve met other fugitives. What happened to them?”

“Sometimes we managed to help them escape—to Brazil or Korea or Spain—somewhere being gay isn’t a crime.”

Rafe’s stomach twisted into knots. Sure, the system had treated him like shit, but he was still American, through and through. Could he really live in one of those countries who’d robbed the U.S. of its power and glory?

“Sometimes we weren’t so fortunate.” Rafe read sorrow and odd guilt in their host’s expression. Her grave tone suggested that the alternative to exile was far worse.

“Sanfran may be the national headquarters for the Guardians of American Greatness, but it’s also a center for QR. The Queer Resistance,” she added in clarification. “Hopefully, they’ll be able to help you.”

“How can we contact them?” Dylan asked. He seemed unconcerned with the notion of leaving the country of his birth.

“There’s an old bathhouse, in the Castro exclusion zone. I’ll give you directions. I can’t go with you. I’d be too conspicuous. Officially, the Castro’s a contaminated area, completely off limits. It’s in ruins anyway—even worse than the rest of the city.”

She sipped her dandelion tea. “The area’s a last refuge for the tattered remnants of Sanfran’s gay community, the few men who survived the Plague and the riots. Sort of a ghost town for gays. The authorities say that the prion level there is high enough to infect anyone who enters. Even the gangs avoid it. But that’s just hogwash. Nobody’s contracted the Plague in Sanfran for more than two years. Some people have suggested that the Castro should be razed. But the powers that be want to keep it, to remind us how much we need the Guardians.”

“We’ll get in,” Dylan swore. “We’ll find the bathhouse. But what then?”

“Ask for Hammer. He’s the current leader of QR. If anyone can help you, he can.”

Artemis stopped, as though her energy had suddenly deserted her. Rafe thought she’d gained decades of age in an instant. “By now, I expect the Guardians will have your faces plastered on every vid screen in the city. You’re in great danger and there’s a limited amount I can do to help.”

Dylan took her hand but it was Rafe he was looking at as he answered. “Believe me. I know.”

 

Find the buy links at https://www.lisabetsarai.com/thehgenebook.html

Be sure to visit the other authors participating in today’s Book Hooks!

Review Tuesday: Tiny House, Big Fake Fiance by Sadira Stone -- #SecondChanceRomance #EnemiesToLovers #ReviewTuesday

Tiny House, Big Fake Fiance by Sadira Stone

May, 2026

After years on the road, selling her artisanal leather products at craft shows and Renaissance Faires, Lilah Avo – aka Lilith’s Leathers – longs to put down some roots. The tiny house she’s contracted for in rural Washington seems like the perfect place to start her new life. Too bad that it has been taken over by a man whom she both desires and despises.

Zax Dupré is building a new career, using social media to market his carpentry and design skills. He wants to transform his aunt’s run-down holiday park into a tiny house community. As a first step, he’s in the process customizing his own tiny dwelling when Lilah shows up to claim it as her own.

Neither Lilah nor Zax can forget the night of intoxicated passion that first brought them together. At the same time, neither can quite forgive the other for apparently stealing their respective dreams. A fake engagement seems like a clever way to buy time in order to finish the house and work out their conflicts, but the ruse just leads to more complications.

Tiny House, Big Fake Fiance is a classic Sadira Stone romance. Two distinctive and sexy protagonists with off-the-charts chemistry, a gorgeous Pacific Northwest setting, a crafty elderly aunt, a host of colorful secondary characters and a lusciously romantic happy ending... what's not to love?

Sadira Stone's latest book has all the features that make me her fan. Her characters feel real, with families, histories, conflicts and secrets. Oh, and occupations they love. It's rare to read romance where the story is driven at least partly by the main characters' career aspirations, but Sadira Stone excels at portraying this very realistic situation.

I had two minor criticisms. First, the beginning of the story felt rushed. The fake engagement happens in the first or maybe second chapter, before we have any real feel for the characters or their histories. Furthermore, I didn’t follow the reasoning behind Aunt Aggie’s deadline for finishing the house. Second, I think the author assumes that the reader knows something about the "tiny house" movement, but that's not really true of me. So I had some trouble imagining just how "tiny" this house might be... with a loft and a full kitchen, it struck me as larger than I would have expected.

All in all though, this is a steamy and satisfying read. Recommended!

When an Enemy Becomes an Ally

By Kayelle Allen (Guest Blogger)

My Bringer of Chaos series features moral complexity, emotional tension, relationship dynamics, and survival through alliance without becoming plot-heavy.

Stories often divide people neatly into categories:

Hero. Villain. Ally. Enemy.

Real survival rarely works that way.

One idea that shaped the Bringer of Chaos series was what happens after systems defining those kinds of categories disappear. Not in a dramatic “collapse of civilization” sense, but in a quieter, more dangerous fade. What happens when the institutions enforcing morality, loyalty, and order no longer exist? When survival depends not on rules, but on individual choice?

That’s the situation facing Tornahdo in Lights Out, the opening story in the Fallen Empires saga.

The Ghost Corps exists because humanity is losing a war against immortals. How do you fight a soldier who doesn’t stay dead? Not zombies. Flesh and blood people with goals and principles different from your own—but who are so enhanced that almost nothing can kill them.

To fight them, human soldiers volunteer for service in a military system built around rebirth. But rebirth using the immortal blood of the enemy.

Now, humans can fight immortals. But what happens when the enemy blood in your veins brings you abilities you never knew you could have?

Service in the Ghost Corps isn’t heroism in the romantic sense. It’s endurance. Obligation. Survival under pressure.

And eventually, it leads Tornahdo directly to Pietas.

Pietas, known as the Bringer of Chaos, is not comfortable to be around. He’s powerful, dangerous, manipulative, emotionally controlled, and entirely certain of his own authority. He was raised in a civilization where command was absolute and loyalty enforced. Mercy was conditional. Weakness invited destruction.

He also understands survival better than almost anyone alive.

Which creates the real problem.

Because sometimes the person most capable of keeping you alive is also the person you should absolutely never trust.

That tension became one of the emotional foundations of the series. Not simply “enemies forced to cooperate,” but the gradual realization that trust isn’t always built on goodness. Sometimes it’s built from consistency. Competence. Shared danger. The recognition that another person sees the world clearly, even if you don’t like what they see.

Especially if you don’t like it.

That may be one reason readers often describe Pietas as both frustrating and fascinating. He doesn’t behave like a conventional villain because he doesn’t see himself as one. From his perspective, survival requires hard choices and emotional restraint. Compassion without strength is meaningless. Promises matter. Loyalty matters. Control matters.

And yet, over time, the people around Pietas begin making choices he never expected. When an enemy doesn’t fight, doesn’t run, doesn’t hide, but instead stays at his side.

The enemy stays not because Pietas becomes harmless, but because they begin to recognize the difference between cruelty and necessity. Between chaos and transformation.

Cruelty, Pietas can handle. But how does he handle the one thing he refuses to give?

Mercy.

Lights Out begins the Fallen Empires saga, where survival, consequence, and continuity matter more than heroics—and where the dead do not always stay dead.

If you'd like to begin the journey, you can start the series with Lights Out.

Watch Your Six, the final book in the Bringer of Chaos series, is out August 14, and can be pre-ordered now.

About Kayelle Allen

Kayelle is a worldbuilder who writes with a scalpel, a strategist of tenderness, and who understands that the most dangerous thing in any universe isn't power—it's attachment. To sum it up: “Epic scale. Microscopic pain. Absolutely intentional.” Claim your immortality and enter the Empire.

Dark Corporate and Institutional Romance

By A P von K’Ory (Guest Blogger)

Some new readers ask me who my favourite writers are in my genres and whether I write erotica – a genre defined as “a story in which sex is the central plot”. I have absolutely nothing against erotica. It just happens not to be my cup of Orange Pekoe, which is another way of saying I believe I’d be lousy at writing it.

This led me to think particularly of my latest and on-going series, UNTAMEABLE and LETHAL ENCHANTMENTS. Adrian Cranford and Damien Galbraithe don’t feel like typical dark-romance MMCs. The difference between chaos masculinity and institutional masculinity produces different vibes. It’s “street-dangerous” versus “state-trained dangerous.”

Adrian Xerxes Cranford and Damien Fenwick Galbraithe are two secret Crown operatives trained by the Royal Marines Commando. They earn hundreds of millions per single assassination for the Crown. Adrian’s and Damien’s danger comes from training, discipline, conditioning, strategy, and operational violence. Adrian’s and Damien’s authority comes from competence. They don’t need to posture much because they have actual operational capability. It’s not sexual swagger or street instinct.

They’re aristocratic, civilized, financially sophisticated, socially elegant, and terrifyingly capable of violence. That combination only really emerges from elite-state grooming structures. That’s why their mere calmness feels dangerous. Their strongest quality is professional restraint under pressure. That’s where they’re glamourized, not through violence alone. Even their obsession (Adrian with Leo and Damien – eventually – with Ambrosia) becomes more compelling because their women break through military-grade internal control systems.

That’s fascinating psychologically. And the women aren’t “sassy” – both Leo and Ambrosia, in their own individual ways, become the only people capable of destabilizing men trained not to destabilize. That’s why their relationships work so well. Not because “she tames him” but because “she bypasses military/institutional/corporate conditioning”, not gangland muscle and raw dominance.

And that’s WAY more interesting, IMHO.

Trained restraint is more frightening than impulsive aggression, the appeal of competence versus swagger, why intelligence-agency / military-conditioning archetypes create different erotic tension than mafia or street-crime archetypes do. “Weaponized civility”, the fantasy of a man who can remain calm under catastrophe as an attraction mechanism is more mind-boggling – you don’t expect it. Aristocratic polish combined with operational violence feels psychologically most dangerous because most dark romance heroes threaten the world around them.

Adrian and Damien threaten systems because they understand systems from the inside. That’s a very different fantasy, not that of the emotionally chaotic antihero versus the disciplined operative whose control fractures only around one woman. That’s a much more distinctive conversation than “who is hotter.”

My métier is romantic suspense/romantic thriller sprinkled with steamy, super spicy and racy stories. My heroines struggle with a ton of things but are always independent financially, even if they start out as students serving in cafés. Meaning, they’re no damsels in distress waiting to be rescued by that cocky billionaire scoundrel of dubious morals. She can do dubious morals too, right? Two of the authors I like reading in the steamy/spicy NA genre are Shen (I’ll never be able to match her talent for street-smart snarky MMCs) and Huang, who aces it in steamy clean commercial polish.

Most commercial dark romance male leads derive danger from criminality, street survival, gang violence, emotional recklessness, raw dominance. I steer away from street alpha, mafia brute, the tattooed nightclub predator, or the sarcastic chaos-boy archetype. My MMCs are something much rarer in dark romance because they’re state-manufactured predators. They have a completely different psychological texture and much more gravitas, IMHO. They move outside the systems while exploiting those systems because their real power operates parallel to official structures. 

That’s much more frightening because they are (self) controlled. Or at least trained to appear controlled. That distinction is enormous. A man who loses control naturally is dangerous. A man specifically trained to maintain control under extreme violence is another category of dangerous entirely.

Adrian and Damien, be it on official duty or a personal vendetta, don’t act randomly out of testosterone and some pissing contest or street turf wars. They apply situational awareness, tactical scanning, threat assessment, emotional compartmentalization, movement precision, operational patience, cleanup instincts, reaction speed, observational habits, and violence thresholds. All of that honed in military/ intelligence-adjacent context. To me, they aren’t simply more frightening, they also feel more convincing.

My prose has my literary voice underneath it. I weave in more texture and danger and sensuality underneath the obligatory intelligence I demand from and for my protagonists. I need to be the version of myself that's accessible to the commercial readership without abandoning what makes my prose distinctive – my “rich, intelligent, sophisticated voice with genuine heat and dark glamour” as one reader puts it.

That sums up my prose, voice, and style.

Since I entered the dark romance arena a couple of years ago with my two distinct dark romance series – UNTAMEABLE and LETHAL ENCHANTMENTS – I maintain the intellectual register because it's me and mine, real for me, with desire, lust, and longing running underneath it like a current rather than arriving as a separate event.

 

Trauma and memory, belief and betrayal – #LiteraryFiction #Suspense #Giveaway

Blurb

Some stories do not end when the danger passes.

Beth Clark has not returned to her hometown in decades, since the childhood she survived there nearly destroyed her.

When her estranged mother dies, Beth comes back to rural Alberta for a funeral that feels carefully rewritten. The eulogies are tidy. The past is sanitized. But inside the abandoned bungalow where she and her brother once lived, Beth finds objects that shatter the illusion—and awaken memories of abuse, neglect, and the systems that failed to protect her.

When Beth's younger brother is critically injured in a sudden accident, the present collides with the past. Keeping vigil at his hospital bedside, Beth is drawn back into the summer that changed everything: the violence in their home, the silence of those who should have intervened, and the foster family whose quiet faith offered the first real safety either child had known.

Told across dual timelines, What Remains After is a literary psychological suspense novel about trauma and memory, belief and betrayal, and the long, unfinished work of survival. It asks what it truly means to forgive—and what remains when the truth is finally spoken.

Excerpt

Coverville Baptist Church smelled musty and old, like the memories trying to escape the recesses of Beth’s mind. That’s all that remained now of her mother. Like her life, nothing at the church had changed in over forty years. It had simply aged, with splintered oak pews and grubby carpets that had been there when she was growing up.

It was unnaturally quiet in the church, which she remembered used to almost roar after a service with the lively voices of congregants discussing the sermon or what was coming up in their week. Children used to run around, shrieking and squealing in both joy and frustration. Now, it was still. Eerily so.

Beth ignored the stares from the other mourners who had arrived early for the service. When she tried to meet their gazes to say hello, they looked briefly, with pity, before looking away. She stopped looking at people. She had only arrived when she had to so she could find Otto and talk to him before it started. He wasn’t in the lobby. Maybe he was in the sanctuary.

She waited in line at the guest registry, attended to by one of the funeral directors. When it was Beth’s turn, her hand trembled as she picked up the ridiculous feathered pen and hesitated before writing down her name. Should she use her married name or her maiden name? Her ex would have a conniption if she wrote down his, and she was changing her name back anyway, so she entered “Elizabeth Clark.”

When Beth had seen her mother’s obituary on Facebook, she’d realized that, despite her hesitation, she would go to the funeral. The only other attendees were townsfolk—mostly members of Virgie’s church—and family. She suspected that most came out of curiosity rather than grief. Beth’s reasons were less clear. Her hatred for her mother had lessened over the years, but had never completely gone; still, she felt an odd urge, almost a duty, to attend. She told herself it was just an excuse to see her brother, Otto, not the urn.

About the Author

Pauline J. Grabia is a Canadian novelist whose work explores trauma, memory, faith, and the moral consequences of silence. Writing under the Stories of Consequence banner, she is drawn to stories that face difficult truths without spectacle and seek light without sentimentality. What Remains After is a literary psychological suspense novel rooted in rural Alberta and shaped by questions of survival, forgiveness, and what endures.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paulinejgrabia/

Website: https://paulinejgrabia.com/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/70032333.Pauline_J_Grabia

 

Book Link

https://amazon.com/dp/1834384516

Pauline J. Grabia will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner.