MOVE ME

 

This post is part of a virtual book tour orgainzed by Goddess Fish Promotions.Lynn Crandall will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

An Aeon by birth, Diane Butler knew when she walked away from her fellow Aeons that she wanted certain things: wealth, power, acceptance. But she'd come to realize she didn't belong with Dark Sides and joined in the battle to save Auralia from darkness. But when her past comes after her, she understand that she can't escape it with a simple name change.

A surprise encounter that turns ugly pits lone Emmett Forrest against thugs determined to hurt Cassie. With each threat out cold on the ground, he believes he's done. But when the men report the incident to the Auralia Police Department, he can't avoid the drama or the intrigue surrounding her.

Read an Excerpt

“Anyone else bored as sin? We stopped the Irish mob and Dark Sides from taking over Auralia in December. January and February, we took some time to recover from Dark Sides’ Project Reckoning. I know you all have been tending to your personal lives, your relationships, and your careers, but for me, those two months were the epitome of boredom. Now March is almost over, and still boredom reigns.”

“Diane—” Braden started.

“Cassie,” she interrupted. “Try to remember, Braden. I’ve told you so many times that I’m using my middle name now. I’m not Diane anymore.” She pouted her lips.

Braden nodded. “Yes, sorry. You’re Cassandra Butler now, not Diane Butler.”

“Cassie. I told you, Cassie for short.” She swept her gaze around the living room at Braden and Payson’s house and flung her hands up. “I swear, it’s not that hard to remember my name. I made a change, I’m not Diane. I’m not that woman any more. I’m aligned with light and love. I’m Cassie. Cassie. Cassie Butler. Gauzy, gossamer, and open, not rigid, harsh, or angry Cassie.” The rock lodged in her gut weighed her down. Was she different? Truly? She’d been putting in the work with her counselor, Claire Eve Kelly, to make the change permanent. But with the chaos of the past not far behind, she ached for the excitement of the life she had. The parties, the conniving to get what she wanted. It had all been so mesmerizing.

About the Author After cutting her writing teeth as a feature writer for commercial and trade magazines, a reporter for newspapers and radio, and an executive editor for a communications company, award-winning author Lynn Crandall tuned her voracious appetite for stories to writing contemporary and paranormal romance, women’s fiction, and romantic suspense. In her books, she enjoys taking readers on emotional journeys with relatable characters who refuse to back down, and face challenges and tribulations with heart and soul. She believes every love has a story, and hers is with one handsome husband and a large, beautiful circle of family, including her cat Winter.

Website https://lynn-crandall.com
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lcrandall246
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/LynnCrandallAuthor
Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/lynncrandallwriter/
TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@lynnkelynnwriter
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H2FMSG8H

 

Giveaway:  https://kingsumo.com/g/mn544vm/move-me-crandall 

THE DEAD HOUR

 

THE DEAD HOUR

by Thomas Grant Bruso

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

GENRE: LGBT paranormal horro

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

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:

 

Thunder cleaved the sky, pulling me out of my foggy dream.

In the glass, a flash of white light and a dash of movement scurried past my periphery.

 

I shuddered at the pale flesh of a disfigured face sneering at me.

 

I turned.

 

Nothing -- a line of locked unit doors.

 

Then footsteps, sprinting away, and a gaggle of laughter from around the corner, along the corridor.

 

“Hello?” I yelled, chasing another phantom. My legs felt like rubber bands as I dashed to the end of the long hall. I stopped at the stairwell door, out of breath.

 

The sound footsteps seized. But intoxicating laughter followed.

 

“Who’s there?” I yelled. “This isn’t funny.”

 

A mockery of demonic laughter filled the air and cooled my skin.

 

I stepped back, drew a breath.

 

Behind me, one of the two elevators dinged. The doors opened.

 

Curiosity consumed me.

 

I should not have turned around to the sound.

 

The lights went out when I did, plunging me into complete darkness.

 

Up ahead, the exit signs flickered.

 

I reached into my coat pocket and gripped the small bottle of mace I carried with me when working cases. My heart thrashed behind my ribs, like a pack of hungry rats gnawing through the lining of muscles, tendons, and intestines.

 

A coldness coiled in the space behind me. A round of knuckles tapped against my head, and the sound of teeth clicked close to my ear. I ran toward the elevator doors. They closed before I reached it.

 

I banged hard on the doors and pressed the down button several times.

 

In the dim light of the corridor, I noticed shadowy movement from something skittering across the wall, a chittering screech of insectile legs rushing at me in the dark.

 

I raced a few feet to the left of the elevators to the stairwell door.

 

Locked.

 

 

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

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 

 

 Giveaway: https://kingsumo.com/g/1yp88o1/the-dead-hour

Night Home

 

Night Home
Rose Titus
Publication date: December 2nd 2017
Genres: Adult, Paranormal, Thriller

When Muriel Aubrey inherits an old house in a small town, she imagines that moving into the rural community will be deathly dull. But the old house once belonged to her eccentric granduncle, a professor who was said to be researching something very mysterious and unusual before his untimely death. While exploring the slightly rundown Victorian age home, she finds the research notes that had been hidden away and discovers that the professor was researching vampires.

It isn’t long before Muriel meets residents of the small town who knew the professor almost a century ago, and that everything he wrote in the notes he kept is true… And she suddenly finds herself stalked by a vampire hunter.

Goodreads / Amazon

—

EXCERPT:

There was the usual convenience store stuff on the rack: Tabloids, celebrity gossip, fashion magazines, newspapers. The store sold lottery tickets, junk food, candy, beer, a few grocery items, even a few small appliances. She noticed the guy who owned the place was watching her. It made her nervous. Not because he watched her, but because he was so pale. He did not look unhealthy. It was like he just never got out into the sun.

“You must be the new girl.”
“Huh?” She spun around to face him.
“You’re new in town. You just moved into that old house.”
“H-how do you know?”

“Well, how could I not know? I live across the field and saw the light was on for the first time in a long time.”

“Oh,” she felt silly. “Yeah. That’s right. I’m new in town. The house will need some work, but it’s not really that bad. My eccentric old uncle owned it a long time ago and—”

“I know. Professor Aubrey. He was a good man,” there was sadness in his voice.

“Yeah, that’s what they say—” how the hell would he know if he was a good man? This guy looked no more than thirty. The old guy had been dead for at least since 1936, according to the old newspaper clipping.

“Elton.” He seemed to smile as he introduced himself. “Elton Masaryk.”

“Muriel Aubrey.”

“That’s a pretty name.”

She went up to pay for the magazine she picked.

“You let me know if you need anything over there, all right? I live just across the field. If you need anything, don’t hesitate. Really.”

“Thank you.” She went for the door but turned around. “You sound as if you know something about Professor Aubrey?”

He hesitated. “A little. Why?”

“He was related to me, but I hardly know anything about him. I heard he was murdered by his colleague from the University and—”

“Yeah. That’s right. The same guy who murdered your uncle also killed three other people too. They gave him the chair. Bastard deserved it.” But then he was silent. He was beginning to sound as if he knew more than he could tell. As if it still angered him somehow. “Oh well.” Then he went silent.

“Okay. Thank you.” She left. She returned home as the sky began to brighten, and finally slept.

Author Bio:

Rose Titus resides somewhere in cold, dreary New England with two manipulative cats and a very out of date computer with which she creates horror and fantasy fiction. She also has a restored classic Buick to ride around in while in search of adventure.

For travel she has stayed the night in an allegedly haunted castle, has taken a boat ride on Loch Ness, and has visited the Bermuda Triangle -- without getting lost.

Her work has previously appeared in Lost Worlds, Lynx Eye, Bog Gob, Mausoleum, Weird Terrain, Descend, The Dead River Review, and other literary magazines. She also writes regularly for Blood Moon Rising Magazine.

When she's not working or writing or messing with her old car, she waits by the mailbox for her Fortean Times to arrive.

Amazon / Goodreads / Facebook

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Night Home Blitz

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The Life and Times of Jim Bridger

 

US Western History/Jim Bridger, mountain man, fur trade, exploration, American Indians

Date Published: 08-08-2025

Publisher: Farcountry Press

The Life and Times of Jim Bridger, a new biography by Bill Markley, is a well-researched work that brings to life the story of Jim Bridger, the legendary mountain man, fur trapper, and explorer who played a key role in shaping the American West. From guiding scientific expeditions to pioneering vital emigrant routes like the Overland and Bridger Trails, Jim Bridger’s name is etched into the very landscape of the American frontier. Bridger’s contributions helped lead to the establishment of Yellowstone National Park, the first national park in the world. His life was filled with encounters with Native American tribes, fur traders, U.S. Army officers, and remarkable adventures across the wild West.

 

Reviews for The Life and Times of Jim Bridger

Bill Markley has established an enviable reputation as a western biographer. His excellent new biography of Jim Bridger will only augment his status. Crisply written and carefully researched this biography of the greatest of the mountain men will both captivate and inform readers for years to come. --Paul Hutton, author of The Undiscovered Country

 

Bill Markley has done it again with THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JIM BRIDGER. The mythic mountain man comes to life in Markley's biography and by the end you will be ready to go West and discover for yourself the West of Jim Bridger. --Stuart Rosebrook, editor-at-large, TRUE WEST magazine

 

Well researched and well told, Markley gives us a fresh look at one of the giants of the American West. I believe he has captured the man and his essence. —Bob Boze Bell, executive editor True West magazine

 

Bill Markley’s The Life and Times of Jim Bridger vividly captures the adventures of a legendary mountain man whose courage, ingenuity, and deep connection to the American West shaped a nation’s frontier. From fur trapping to guiding emigrants, Bridger’s story is a testament to resilience and cultural fluency, brought to life with meticulous research and engaging prose.  -- Jon Nelson, Board Director for the Museum of the Fur Trade, Chadron, Nebraska

 

When the tall, genial Virginian Jim Bridger ventured West as a “green” teenager in the early years of the fur trade, no one predicted that he would become known as the legendary “old man of the mountains."   Packing his life with enough adventure for at least ten mountain men, Bridger led beaver-trapping brigades, hunted buffalo, fought hostile Blackfeet, married a Shoshone woman, mapped trackless wilderness, guided the U.S. Army during Red Cloud’s War, and more.  Although illiterate, he spoke several European—and Indian—languages.  Did Bridger really leave the grizzly-mauled Hugh Glass to die alone?  Markley delves deep into his subject’s extraordinary life. Wonderfully illustrated with period maps and artwork, this book is for anyone who loves true tales of the raucous fur trading era of the early nineteenth century. Bridger once said, “Sir, the grace of God won’t carry a man through these prairies!  It takes powder and ball.”  And how.  –Nancy Plain, four-time Spur Award winner, past president of Western Writers of America.   

 

 

Excerpt

Final Thoughts

During my two-year research of Jim Bridger, my respect for him

has grown. He accepted all people, no matter who they were. Only when

they turned on him would he treat them as enemies. He tried to stay out of

fights, but if one was unavoidable, he was in the forefront.

It’s a shame—and our loss—that he didn’t learn to read and write. He was

intelligent, creating accurate maps from memory. He learned English, French,

Spanish, a variety of Indian languages, and was proficient in sign language.

After people read Shakespeare to him, he would quote passages from memory.

As to the Hugh Glass story, I believe Bridger was not the teenager who

deserted Glass. Historians have pointed to Bridger because of an 1839 article

that gave the young man’s last name as “Bridges,” based on old riverboat pilot

Joseph LaBarge’s recollection, and tradition had it on the Missouri that it was

Bridger. That’s it. When Alfred Jacob Miller sat around a mountaineer fire

and jotted down the Hugh Glass story during the 1837 rendezvous, the first

name of the person Glass confronted was Bill. If Bridger had been the young

man who deserted Glass, I believe other mountaineers would have ribbed him

about it.

As to Bridger selling Fort Bridger to the Mormons, I don’t believe he sold

it. He was an honest man, and to his dying day, he never said he sold it, continuing to

attempt to collect his rental payment from the federal government.

Bridger’s descriptions of the Yellowstone geothermal region to expedition

leaders and scientists led to its eventual exploration in 1871 by one of those scientists,

Ferdinand Hayden. The following year, Congress designated it the

world’s first national park.

Jim Bridger was loved by many people, from children to generals. He was

well liked by many tribes. Most of his adversaries respected him. He enjoyed

nothing better than to be out in nature, preferring to sleep under the stars than

in a tent. It would have been great fun to sit at a campfire and listen to him tell

of his exploits and tall tales. He was a man in love with the West.

Toward the end of his life, Jim Bridger said, “I wish I was back there among

the mountains again—you can see so much farther in that country.” 
 

About the Author

 

 Bill Markley, member of Western Writers of America and multiple winner of the Will Rogers Medallion award, has written eleven books including biographies and histories of Old West characters and events. He writes for True West and Wild West magazines and is a staff writer for Roundup magazine.

Contact Links

Website

Facebook

Goodreads

Purchase Links

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

The Crown of Moonlight

 

The Crown of Moonlight
Martina Boone
(The Five Crowns, #1)
Publication date: November 11th 2025
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Romance

She’s the Highlander who saves his life with forbidden magic. He’s the immortal stranger who falls first—one healing touch, one fierce kindness at a time.

A romantic fantasy inspired by Scottish history, where the land itself is magic and chooses a woman as its champion.

Flora Domhnall is the last of her line: a healer, a strategist, her clan’s only defence in a war neither side can win. When she finds a dying immortal warrior in her woods, saving him is a terrible risk. But if he dies on her land, her clan will pay the price.

Her choice binds her fate to his.

Chyr has spent four centuries chained by the oaths carved into his flesh—oaths that read his every thought. Violence and honour are all he knows, and Flora’s brave, impossible mercy breaks him open.

Hunted across the burning Highlands, they can rely only on each other. Their longing grows with every mile they share a saddle, every sacrifice made in silence, and every night they guard each other in the dark.

He’s hopelessly fallen. She’s fighting not to fall.

Then the ancient sovereignty magic of the Cailleach Queens awakens in Flora—and marks her as something the world hasn’t seen in four hundred years.

And Chyr’s oaths may demand he destroy the one person he can’t bear to lose.

For her, he’ll try to break his oaths. Even if it kills him.

From award-winning author Martina Boone, The Crown of Moonlight is a mythic Celtic romantasy perfect for readers who love the haunting historical romance of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, the soul-deep yearning of Rebecca Ross, and the dark, aching magic of Rachel Gillig’s One Dark Window. The first book in a sweeping series about ancient crowns, impossible oaths, and a love that must survive betrayal, war, and the gods themselves.

Goodreads / Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Apple Books / Kobo

—

EXCERPT:

Flora

My knees shake as I crouch beside the nearest Ever, and a hot flush of magic ripples across my skin. More magic than I’ve ever felt. But that’s not the only shock. Although the ancient tales talk about the beauty of the Everfolk, seeing it in front of me makes my breath catch.

The Ever is handsome in a way that explains the warnings in the ancient stories—the blinding, dangerous sort of beauty that’s said to make humans lose their will and descend into madness. His features are too eerily perfect, his black hair has the gleam of raven’s wings, and the blue eyes that look unseeingly into the sky catch the light like layers of stained glass, revealing more colours the deeper I look.

His sightless stare unnerves me, and I brush my fingers across his lids to close them. The skin is still warm. I flinch from the contact, and my hand grazes a pale-blue crystal set in a ring on his right hand.

A jolt of pure power jars me as I touch it—so hot and bright that it pulls an answering flare from the ember of magic that burns inside me. Snatching my hand away, I wait for the sensation to ebb. But I miss it when it’s gone. My magic misses it, which makes no sense since my magic isn’t Ever magic. Careful not to touch the ring again, I bend closer to examine the crystal set within it. There’s movement inside, gold threads of magic dancing like lightning behind a thin haze of cloud.

The movement is mesmerising, holding me captive a moment too long after Ari snorts and stomps his foot. By the time the thud and the jingling of his bridle finally register, his muscles are braced as he uses his back to pull harder against the reins that tie him to the tree.

Then a twig snaps somewhere close. Behind me? To the left?

I spin around, searching. But there’s nothing. No one.

Well, I refuse to play this game.

“Who’s there? Come out and show yourself instead of hiding like a coward.”

The Wood falls unnaturally still. Then shadows stir beneath an oak tree to my left.

“I know you’re there,” I say, gripping the dagger tighter.

A voice answers me from the shadows. “Careful, little one. Taunt the things you fear, and you might just prove you were right to be afraid.”

The voice is male—slow and resonant, pitched between a growl and a cat’s deep purr. A predator’s voice, claws barely sheathed.

A shiver of awareness ripples down my spine. I draw on the cool, gritty power of the earth and fuse it with the fire that burns inside me. Needles of magic rake through bone and tissue as I force it outward, pouring it into the dagger. The blade groans, lengthening and thickening until it becomes a perfect replica of my father’s sword and rests cold, heavy, and steadying within my grasp.

An Ever steps forward, his figure cloaked in gloom, footsteps whispering over the frost-crusted moss. He’s larger than the bodies behind me seemed, taller and broader, his features carved in bold strokes beneath gilded hair that’s tied half-up in a warrior’s knot and reveals a widow’s peak. He looks gaunt, worn down, though power and command still radiate from him. He’s every bit as beautiful as the others—and devastatingly male.

He watches me with a faint, treacherous smile. “You can put that illusion away,” he says. “You’re lucky I didn’t mistake it for a threat.”

“The sword is no illusion,” I say, “and the threat is no mistake.”

Author Bio:

Martina Boone is the award-winning author of romantic fiction set in magical places. Her books blend lush writing, strong heroines, wounded heroes, atmospheric landscapes, history, folklore, family secrets, and magic woven through the ordinary world. When she isn’t writing, she can usually be found traveling, reading, studying history and folklore, wrangling wildflower meadows, or playing with Shetland Sheepdogs and tuxedo cats.

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Makerborn

 

Makerborn
Daymon Ashcord
(Maladies of Empire, #1)
Publication date: June 15th 2026
Genres: Adult, Dark Fantasy, Fantasy

The God War is over. An empire built on suffering, slavery, and betrayal remains…

In the fractured lands of the Salvian Empire, the Great Houses rule through blood and fear. For years, Alandra Phoenyka has hunted powerful Sonomancers in the empire’s name, paid in empty promises that her stolen daughter would be returned. Each step forward demands another compromise. Another betrayal. Another piece of herself lost.

When those promises turn to treachery, she is forced to take matters into her own hands and risk everything to reclaim her child.

In the empire’s mining camps, Bez Windstrider has endured years of torture and brutal experimentation. Broken but unyielding, he clings to one purpose: vengeance. The men who murdered his parents will pay, and their deaths will complete the ritual needed to free his parents’ souls from damnation.

But the deeper his grief cuts, the more he becomes something far more dangerous, for himself and for the empire.

As their paths draw closer, the buried truths of the God War begin to surface. What begins as two personal vendettas threatens to unravel something far greater than either of them can control.

Because empires do not fall quietly.

And the gods that shaped them are not as dead as they seem.

Makerborn is the first book in the Maladies of Empire series, a brutal epic dark fantasy of vengeance, sacrifice, and the cost of love.

For readers of dark, character-driven epic fantasy in the vein of Joe Abercrombie, Mark Lawrence, R.F. Kuang, Evan Winter, and Steven Erikson.

Goodreads / Amazon

—

EXCERPT:

Chapter 2

A Son’s Vengeance

Bez woke in darkness, deep in a pit, having failed his parents yet again. The night air was heavy and damp. The acrid stench of feces had lessened, but his nose still burned with the stink of decay. He felt like he would never wash the smell from his body. What does it matter now?

The moist earth offered scant relief from the Southern Waste’s merciless heat. Sweat slicked his body. His skin felt on fire, reminding him of how the Salvians slowly roasted meat on spits. He pinched his right nostril and blew out a thick wad of phlegm.

How long? How squalling long have they left me down here to rot?

He traced fine grooves in the earthy wall of his cage with long, dirty fingernails. Twenty-seven days he’d scratched before he’d given up counting. Then the real fun began. Weeks of wading in his own shit like a rutting hog once the pit guards had stopped retrieving his privy bucket. Weeks more of starvation when the obvious solution to avoid living in a hog pen penetrated his addled mind: no food, no feces. His only companions were self-pity, nightmares, and maggots gorging on his noxious filth.

And the moans of indentured miners, likely years past their freedom date, and Collared All-Tribe—his people—drifting down in his dirt tomb.

“Water,” cried a pit prisoner.

“Bread, just a heel of bread for Seal’s sake,” whined another.

“It was Tuftson,” someone sniveled. “He made me do it. It was him. Please, let me out.”

“Shut your gobs!” bellowed a voice.

The sounds washed over him, had become part of him, familiar as his gnawing hunger or the ever-present worms wriggling against his hot skin. Even without starlight, his people’s blessed vision allowed him to penetrate the mirk. He watched his sunken stomach rise and fall. Each rib pressed against his skin. Sour spit filled his mouth.

He wasn’t surprised that an army of worms assaulted the sides of his stomach and shoulders while he dozed. The slimy little grubs coated him with a sticky sludge, but he was past caring. Hands trembling, he brushed the vanguard away that had reached his chest. His legs were a lost cause. Scores of grubs covered them so only his toes peeked out.

Bez yawned. Heat-induced spans of intermittent sleep kept him drowsy and muddled. Sometimes his parents sat beside him in the dirt, back from the dead, singing and laughing. Other times, he was in the mountains climbing crags, or swimming in crystalline lakes so clear he could see rocks at the bottom. Moments ago, he was a boy again, running barefoot with his cousins through Uncle Darian’s fields, the tall grass whipping at his legs. Then a cry from a prisoner or the damp air clogging his nose had awakened him, shattering the vision. What was real or imagined blurred. Maybe I’m with my uncle still and the pit is only a nightmare.

Hesitantly, he stretched his hands to either side, fingertips brushing the cool, root-tangled walls. Feet firmly pressed against damp earth. Not a nightmare. He moaned like a wounded animal.

“Guardian spirits above,” he wheezed, not wiping the hot tears streaking down his cheek. “There’s no way out.”

But that was a lie. There was a way. His fingers searched for the gouge in the wall, finding the sharp-edged shard of obsidian he’d hidden there. My final escape.

He pried it free, hand shaking, and pressed the jagged edge against the soft flesh of his right wrist. A bead of blood sprang from the tip.

“I’ll do it this time,” he said to the crude face carved into the wall. A pause. “I know that’s what I said last time. By the All-Spirit, I can’t—” His throat tightened. “I can’t take it anymore.”

“Enjoying your new home, demon-blood?” asked an unwelcome voice from the pit’s metal cage above.

“Dorota,” he rasped, tongue clumsy from disuse. “What a pleasure.”

He hated Yan’s henchwoman, but at that moment, his life in the balance, he clung to her words like a drowning man to driftwood.

Her chuckles echoed in the earthy tomb. “Liar. Play it friendly as you like, slit-eyes, but we both know what you are.” She crouched, damp hair plastered to her face, mouth hooked in a grin that never reached her eyes. “I saw the demon in you when we caught you on that ridge. Thought you were clever, didn’t you? Thought the aqueduct workers wouldn’t notice you and your two friends? What is the count? Your third?”

It was his fourth failed attempt to escape the Makersmetal mining camp, but he didn’t bother correcting the murdering bitch. I failed them just like my parents. Tala dead. Marcel beaten or worse. Anelia missing. And Bez… well, he would die in darkness, dooming his parents’ souls to wander the Shadowlands forever, never to reunite with their ancestors. He choked down a sob, not wanting to give her any satisfaction seeing him broken.

Author Bio:

Daymon Ashcord writes dark fantasy shaped by suffering, resilience, and the brutal edges of love pushed too far.

Born in Gdańsk, Poland, and raised in New York, he grew up on science fiction, fantasy, and the stories that linger long after the final page. After studying accounting and public policy, he left a conventional path to travel the world and create a documentary, turning storytelling into something essential.

His debut novel, Makerborn (2026), reflects years of persistence, personal setbacks, and a fascination with the darker truths people endure to survive.

He lives in North Carolina, hiking mountains by day and writing by night. He is considering adopting a dog, a cat, or both, and suspects they would judge him harshly.

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Makerborn Blitz

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Spicy Disaster by Lani Lynn Vale

 

Title: Spicy Disaster

Series: Don't Date Him #6

Author: Lani Lynn Vale

Genre: Romantic Suspense

Tropes: Forced Proximity, Single Mom

Enemies to Lovers

Release Date: June 16, 2026

BLURB

Everyone talks about finding the one that makes their heart skip a beat.

Personally, I’m not looking to develop any heart problems.

I definitely don’t have to worry about developing any when it comes to the one man who knows how to get on my every nerve.

Odin Mayer is the most offensive, black-hearted, no-good, very-bad, surliest man I’d ever met.

He was Grumpy with a capital G, a biker to boot, and never missed a chance to make me see red.

Just as I’m convinced there’s no good side to Odin, he shows me differently, saving me when I didn’t ask him to.

And, of course, I have to spend the next few weeks with him after we both get chosen for the same trial to perform our civic duty.

Jury duty was not on my Bingo card.

Nor was falling for the jerkoff.

But there I was, somehow lingering in the middle space between fuck you and I want to fuck you.

Odin knew what he was doing, too.

Teasing and taunting me at every turn.

Then he had to go out of his way to be a hero, and I forgot that I was supposed to stay away.

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COMING SOON

Releasing July 14

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AUTHOR BIO

Lani Lynn Vale is an American author of humorous romantic suspense novels. Born in the Great State of Texas, she has lived the majority of her adult life in East Texas where most of her novels are based. She’s married to her high school sweetheart whom her readers refer to as “LLV’s Bearded Half.” She published her first novel, Boomtown. in the summer of 2013 after the birth of her third child. She’s gone on to publish over 100 novels, with most of them going on to become USA Today Bestsellers.

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