Friday, December 8, 2017

The Hunting, Vol.2

The second volume of The Hunting trilogy is officially up!  (Or will be in 24 hours...)  Releasing January 9, 2018, you can preorder a copy on Amazon.

PACK:  The Hunting, Vol.2

Opposites attract, and love is blind.  What other hope is there for a werewolf who can't seem to fall out of love with his werewolf-slaying ex?

Jackson thought the hard part of getting back together with his estranged boyfriend would be convincing Eric not to kill him outright.  After all, Eric has spent his entire adult life being brainwashed by the Paranormal Division; he's trained to kill monsters without mercy or sentiment.  And whether Jackson chose to become a werewolf or not, the fact that he ran away and hid for two years afterward has left Eric in a perpetually pissed off mood.

And yet—he didn’t kill Jackson.  He chose, instead, to leave the Paranormal Division and run away with his wayward ex.  But that wasn’t the hard part.

The hard part is living together after.  When they’re on the run from a secret and deadly branch of the government.  Camped out in the middle of nowhere with no decent coffee for miles.  When Eric won’t touch Jackson.  Won’t talk to him.  Will hardly even look at him.

When Jackson is pretty sure that Eric thinks running away with him was a mistake.

But the Paranormal Division is hot on their heels, and there’s only one place Jackson can think of where he and Eric will be safe to figure out their next move.  The problem is, it’s the same place where he spent the last two years hiding.  And it’s a wolf’s den.

For two years, Jackson lived with the Beneventi family.  From them, he learned how a man and a werewolf can live at peace in the same skin.  He ran with them, hunted with them, and called them pack.  To a wolf, pack means family.  And not every member of his adopted family has forgiven him for trying to return to his old life and his old lover.  Michael Beneventi thought he’d laid claim to Jackson, and now he’s fully prepared to take out any challenger, even a federal agent with a dangerous attitude and the knowledge and skill to put down any werewolf.

It’s up to Jackson to stitch together the two sides of his life—or tear them apart once and for all.  If he wants to keep Eric, he’ll have to fight for him.


But then… there’s always the thought that Eric never really left the Paranormal Division at all.
____________

And if you missed it, don't forget to check out the first volume of The Hunting!

Cheers!

Sunday, November 19, 2017

Pack Means Family

At long last, The Hunting continues - Volume 2, Pack, will be released for Kindle in January 2018.  It's taken a lot of drafts, a lot of coffee, and a lot of mumbling to myself, but Eric and Jackson's story has finally sorted itself out.

To be fair, nothing is simple when you're talking about a werewolf going on the run with his estranged boyfriend, who very formerly made a living killing monsters like the one his lover has become.  Not to mention his old employers are on their heels - the Division, the most secret and deadly branch of the FBI.  They want Eric back.  And if they can't have him, they'll put him down just like they intend to put his boyfriend down.  Throw in an old indiscretion of Jackson's, resulting in a dangerously jealous young werewolf dead set on knocking out his human rival...  And things are about to get messy.

Pack runs about twice the length of The Hunting, and forms the midsection of what is intended as a trilogy.  Volume 3, Blood, is in the works now and will be out closer to spring/summer of next year.

While The Hunting books are related to and partially set in New Berlin, they form more of a Division subset which gets a bit darker than stories like, say, Sweet.  I have plans for several Division focused novels to be released over the next year or two, werewolves and some undead forays as well.  And then it'll be full circle back into New Berlin proper, where the witches, incubi, and angels have been biding their time.

Pack will be available for presale mid-December.

Thursday, September 21, 2017

It's Halloween

Or almost Halloween.  Technically it's the first day of Mabon.  I was born at Mabon, which maybe accounts for some of my darker and more woeful inclinations.  Call me Demeter.  Or Persephone?  But I'm trying to look on the lighter side lately, because sometimes the dark is just too dark.  So even though I'm releasing my first zombie story in less than two weeks, it's kind of a lighter zombie story.  There are even jokes.  I can't say whether the jokes are funny.  But they're in there.  So...




Strange is a short story set in New Berlin, though it stands independent of any previous stories.  It's a look at the dangers of Craigslist roommate ads, and what might happen if a workaholic chef invited a hoodie-wearing, cash-rent-paying zombie to live in his spare bedroom.  It might be weird sometimes, right?  Like, who gets the last piece of bacon?  And is that blood on my beautiful kitchen floor?  But it might also be really convenient, say in the event of a home invasion, to have a roommate with superhuman strength and an insatiable appetite for human flesh.  Naturally though it would be a really stupid idea to start crushing on your dead roommate.


So, yeah, werewolves suck (you guessed it, I'm stalled on the second volume of The Hunting again), and zombies are in.  Strange comes out October 3rd.

And there will probably be more zombie stories to come, because they are somewhat of an obsession of mine.  I can't promise they'll all be light, because, you know, Mabon and the influence of the Dark Mother.  But there will probably be more.  And then maybe some vampires and/or witches.  Possibly we'll go back to a werewolf or two.  Eventually--eventually--there will be a return to the fey and incubi and fallen angels.  Because the angels are really the point of this whole city, if I didn't keep getting so damn sidetracked.

But for now.  Strange.  You can buy or borrow it from Amazon October 3rd.

Meantime.  Happy fall.  Go harvest something.

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Christmas in July

I have it. Definite proof that I am actually working on something.

Because clearly I have a fetish for redneck werewolves and their uptight, hunter boyfriends.

Here is the opening of The Hunting, Vol. 2, which I hope will be ready for publication soon.  Or soonish.
_______________

FROM THE EDGE of the forest, cool and dark, Jackson watched his lover shiver in the grip of a nightmare.
Shiver, and then thrash—Eric twisted free of his sleeping bag and kicked it away like a mortal enemy, one bare foot crunching hard into the side of the truck bed.  He came awake with a low, violent cry, sitting straight up and reaching for the knife he always carried strapped to his left calf.
It was gone.  Left behind three hundred miles ago, abandoned in a bloody field, in a town neither of them would ever return to.
If we’re lucky, Jackson thought.
Eric relaxed slightly, the tension leaving his spine.  He scrubbed a hand across his face and stared out bleakly around him.  His gaze swept the clearing and the woods, passing right over the shadows where Jackson lingered.  Even if he’d known where to look, he was just a man, with human eyes.  While Jackson was anything but.
Eric shivered again, and Jackson imagined he could see the tiny hairs on the back of his neck rise up and stand on end.  The mornings here carried autumn’s bite, today worse than usual.  The wind howled around the open truck bed, whipping the short, dark thatch of Eric’s hair.  An overcast sky warned of a nearing storm, an hour, maybe less, before the heavens burst open.
It was their fifth day here.  Five days camped out in the game lands of upstate New York, slapping at mosquitos, staring at trees, and sleeping in the back of the truck together—if together meant lying down together with as much space between them as possible.  If it meant Jackson waking up each morning while the sky was still dark to find Eric’s back turned to him, shoulders hunched against him, every line of him stiff with rejection even in sleep.
Jackson didn’t wake for him to wake up, couldn’t.  Each morning he slipped silently away into the woods to hunt, or sometimes simply to run, to wear the edge off his own tension and forget that Eric hadn’t touched him willingly in five days.
Not since Jackson had changed into a wolf and slaughtered Eric’s stepbrother while he watched.
If that killing had been murder, then so be it.  It had also been justice.  When Jackson was human, he had worried over morality, right and wrong, and crossing the line.  Now he was at peace knowing he would not hesitate to defend himself against any foe.  And to protect those he loved, to avenge the wrongs done them, he would kill without mercy.  Again and again, he would kill, until there was no one left to harm them.
And that was why Eric wouldn’t touch him.