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

Monday, June 15, 2026

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