Posts Tagged ‘LGBT’

Peek Inside And Giveaway ~ Method To Madness by Thomas Grant Bruso

Posted: November 21, 2023 in Excerpt, giveaways, Mystery
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Welcome to my stop on the virtual book tour for Method To Madness organized by Goddess Fish Promotions.

Author Thomas Grant Bruso will be awarding a $10 Amazon or B&N Gift Card to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Don’t forget to enter!

And you can click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Method To Madness

by Thomas Grant Bruso

 

 

Genre: Mystery / LGBT

Synopsis

Five years ago, Jack Ballinger was a police officer.

He has since moved from the small upstate New York town of Black Falls for greener pastures and a peaceful life alone in the Green Mountain State. Time has changed Jack — he is no longer the man he used to be. A significant challenge for him has been the heartbreaking loss of his boyfriend, companion, and one true love, Steve.

Now alone, Jack has yet to deal rationally with the immediate changes of his new life. After losing his partner, Jack drank heavily to numb the pain and forget his life-changing loss. Now, he must find a way to move forward without Steve and the life he built for himself. Joining an Alcoholics Anonymous group helps quiet the voices that still keep him awake at night. But something much darker has followed him to his life in the quiet corners of Vermont.

When Jack thinks he has buried the scars of his past, a new nightmare emerges. How far will Jack go to end the imminent evil in his life and kill it for good?

Trigger warning: this story addresses suicide and suicidal ideation.

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Enjoy this peek inside:

My work boots clipped across the newly polished floor, squeaking with each determined step toward the security guard’s office in the back of the mall. I didn’t usually get frightened, but after the week’s events of Jacob Adler’s murder and my recurring hallucinations, I was on guard twenty-four-seven. The wall I’d built after Steve died sent me into a tailspin. I lost my self-confidence to “live on — move on,” as Steve had put it. Getting out of bed was the most challenging part of the day, getting started. But not as difficult as being a suspect in somebody else’s murder.

I locked up in the office, hung my jacket on the wall peg along with my badge, fastened my uniform hat on top of my coat, and secured the building. I walked around the side of the shopping center to get to my truck, which was parked near the auto shop garage in the adjacent lot. My keys clanged against the side of my uniform work belt.

There was a crispness to the air as it gusted across my face.

When I reached my truck, I stopped and glanced at the imposing three-floor structure of the Rushford Shopping Mall. It had been a game-changer, I told myself. When my life was at its lowest, the job as mall security had saved me. Moving from upstate New York to Vermont and being hired at a stone’s throw distance from where everything had bottomed out of my life, life could not be better. I had to keep reminding myself that I was lucky. This was meant to be.

I was living. No – I was surviving the best way I knew how. The sharp gust of wind filled my eyes with a deep sadness.

I slipped my key into the driver’s side door. I jumped inside, cranking the station to a country song I knew Steve would roll his eyes at, but his enthusiastic expression brightened my mood. I sat in the quiet interior of my truck, my head falling against the headrest, my eyes closing to the welcoming solitude. I drummed my hands on the bottom of the steering wheel.

Then screeching tires peeled around the sharp curve of the parking lot where the lot met the edge of the road, and a song about lost love faded from memory. I opened my eyes and raised my head to tires squealing. In the rearview mirror, I glimpsed a vehicle idling behind me. I didn’t notice it at first, but the car blocked me. I adjusted my seat and stared out the rear windshield at the obscure figure behind the wheel. I couldn’t see their face, but the figure looked reedy and reached an arm out the open window, pointing at me.

I thought of the ginger-haired boy from earlier, recalling the incident on the escalator and in the restroom. Had he waited for me after hours, lurking in the parking lot, ready to scare me? My mind skipped over the events playing from earlier in the day. The incident in the men’s restroom, the smartass young man apologizing for his careless behavior, making wisecracking excuses for his friends, and blaming his actions on being an idiot. “I’m sorry, man. Really — we didn’t mean anything by it. We were being dumb sixteen-year-olds.” I remembered the sound of his laugh, a meaningless, sarcastic attempt at a reassuring apology.

I stared out into the night. The only light in the area illuminated from a lamppost wavering back and forth in the stirring wind. The mysterious driver’s gray hoodie concealed most of their face.

“You got a problem?” I yelled out the window.

A big, meaty palm rose in the air like a warning, a middle finger miming the shape of a gun, as in a caution or scare tactic.

“Prick.” I turned the key in the ignition, shifted my truck in reverse, and floored it.

The driver didn’t have much time to register my sudden actions, but he — or she — managed to switch pedals. The vehicle sped off, tires shrieking, seconds before I came a hair-fracture away from nicking the driver’s side door.

In the middle of the road, I shifted into DRIVE, and followed the vehicle at an unsafe speed. I was close behind him, noticing him reaching into the passenger side for something.

Racing through the parking lot, the driver took me on a twisty ride, swerving and taking sharp curves. I followed him for a few minutes through the winding lanes, leading around the mall’s perimeter to a larger parking area on the other side of the building.

I didn’t have time to register the events, my mind feeling scrambled and numbed from the chaotic commotion. I gripped the steering wheel and turned it sharply, the back tires screeching as I rounded the sharp bend, nearly smacking against the guardrail on my right.

I heard a gun going off. The driver was firing a round of shots out his window.

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About Author Thomas Grant Bruso

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p style=”text-align: center;”>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.

Links: Twitter / Instagram / Goodreads / Facebook 

Purchase Link: Amazon

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a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Thanks so much for visiting fuonlyknew and Good Luck!

For a list of my reviews go HERE.

For a list of free eBooks updated daily go HERE

To see all of my giveaways go HERE.

Guest Post and Giveaway ~ Wehr Wolff Castle

Posted: September 23, 2017 in giveaways, Historical, horror
Tags: , , , ,
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Wehr Wolff Castle
The Wehr Wolff Chronicles Book 1
by B. Bentley Summers
Genre: Historical Horror, LGBT
 
During the rise of Nazi Germany, Hagen Messer joins the Royal Air Force as
an American soldier who specializes in tracking. He’s attached to
British commandos and given a seemingly simple mission—to find a
captive and destroy a dam—but everything goes awry. Hagen’s plane
crashes into Germany’s Wehr Forest and he has to use his
extrasensory abilities to track the captive to nearby Wehr Wolff
Castle, a secret Nazi base where vile experiments are being conducted.
Hagen and his surviving team members must sneak into the castle and devise
a way to destroy the experimental labs creating diabolical creatures.
Hagen is horrified to find Nazis and scientists with no scruples, and
at the most inconvenient time, he learns that he may be in love with
one of his teammates, an Irishman named Liam. In order to protect his
love and his friends, Hagen must feign nonchalance amidst pure
degeneracy and suspicion. Hagen soon discovers, though, that he is in
over his head.
What may not only redeem him, but also save his lover and friends, is a
childhood past and a darkness lurking deep inside him, just waiting
to be engaged.
 
 
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Enjoy this guest post from the author
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Wanda is my pen name for Young Adult novels and she is my maternal grandmother. Bentley is my mother’s maiden name. Summers is the surname of my father.

I think somewhere when coming up with an author name I wanted to honor all the people who had a strong influence on my creativity, aspirations to be a writer, and the drive to keep me going despite all the obstacles author’s face when starting.

Those people I wanted to acknowledge were my father, mother and maternal grandparents.

Wanda, my grandmother, was a survivor of the Great Depression. Her family lost their farm forcing them to move into the city and she had to quit school during middle school in order to work and help the family with money. My grandmother was not known as a great listener and looking back, she had severe Attention Deficit Disorder. Conversations never stayed on topic and she’d lose interest if you were talking. She was certainly one of the most friendly person you’d ever know, but somewhere down deep, I think there was a emotional disconnect.

She was married to my grandfather but that was a cantankerous relationship. Before my grandfather I gathered she had been in loved with her first husband who had been electrocuted; and I’m guessing there was other personal history that contained some trauma that people of that generation did not share. I discovered my mother had never been close to her as a child even though everyone in the neighborhood considered my grandmother to be a saint. No doubt she loved my mother the most, but I’m guessing somewhere along the line she forgot how to express love or perhaps there was too much risk in acknowledging her love to another who was so close to her.

But Wanda one thing was certain. She was a prodigy in painting and drawing; though she never received any formal training she left what I consider great pieces of arts. To this day I keep one of her paintings with me wherever I have moved.  An Indian woman looking over a cliff out into a sea. When I saw the photograph she used to make the painting I realized the person looking out was not a woman, but actually an Indian man. She had transformed the cheekbones, skin texture and hair to create this mysterious and beautiful woman. I had this tingling sensation then. I realized she was a true romantic. Someone who only knew how to express love through her artwork. This painting has become a talisman for me over the years.

Her husband Walter, whom she married years later in her life, was a vociferous reader. He was also an ex-Catholic, a self-proclaimed atheist and had a very morbid sense of humor. Every week in the summer we always one made one stop at an old fashion ice cream parlor and then to the library to return his books and borrow more. From him I learned he valued books and stories contained in them than ever did of material goods or money. He also loved history and it was teachings, rather than any formal school, where I learned much of my U.S. History.

My father was a structural engineer who had a knack for what I would simply call divergent thinking. He seemed to have an inborn sense of thinking “outside the box” and look at problems with a singular perspective I’ve never yet seen. I’d say that gave my creativity a sense of complexity that allows me to put unique spins on plots.

And my mother was a straightforward woman who has and probably always be a reader of history. She was never a World War II buff as she detested the Nazi regime and the stories that went with them. But she did always have a sense of appreciation of not just the history before her, but the history she was living. In everything I write I am mindful of the history of each character and how those past experiences create internal motives for this character to now make decisions.

As I wrote Wehr Wolff Castle I had a deep appreciation for the people who shaped me. I attempted a story with a twisting plot with some complexity, likable characters, narrated a romance, added some morbidity along with dark humor; and everything was indeed embedded in the Nazi Germany time period.

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Bryce is a psychologist, author, and the founder of Queer Sense
Theory. 
Bryce writes popular fiction genres meant for all audiences under Bryce
Bentley Summers, and pens gay fiction under B. Bentley Summers,
although he’d argue that anyone would enjoy his gay fiction pieces.
Bryce’s full time work is at the Veteran Affairs where he has been employed
for five years. He has extensive history of working with people
diagnosed with PTSD and he used these experiences when writing Fresh Meat.
The novel, Fresh Meat, recently won Dan Poynter’s Global eBook Awards for
best gay fiction. This piece is more than just a book, but embraces
gay identity while deploring the hateful violence that happens in the
U.S. prison system, and across the world. The book parallels the
vicious Man-Punk prison system to the long ago abolished American
Slavery System. However, Fresh Meat is not non-fiction, but fiction,
and it’s genre is best described as Supernatural Horror.
Rotville and The Zombie Squad, are two of Bryce’s recent completions. The
Zombie Squad is a teen Post-Apocalyptic Thriller that recently
received Reader’s Favorite 5-Stars. This novel has humor and is fast
pace, that follows four teens in New Orleans who find themselves not
only chased by psycho gangsters, but in the middle of zombocalypse.
Rotville is a new adult/ adult Sci-Fi Post-Apocalyptic Horror that
takes place in the near future, in a city called Rotville where
people with a rot disease are quarantined. Inside this city is the
mega prison Colleseo, where inhumane experiments are carried out on
inmates. It’s also the birthplace of Dylan, a super soldier who must
fight his way out, save a couple of youths from the new deadly
mutants, and keep from being re-caught by the greedy director.
Bryce is also the author of the fiction Young Adult Dark Fantasy/ Sci-Fi
series AMEN TO ROT. The novel NYTE GOD is the conclusion to this
series. The Amen to Rot series and Nyte God pit Ace and his friends
against alien invaders who are turning humans into mutant creatures.
Bryce authors popular fiction with a style that entices readers of all
backgrounds to consume, and makes every attempt to make his
characters diverse.
As noted, Bryce does dabble in gay fiction, and pens it under B. Bentley
Summers, though in truth, these works are meant for everyone to read.
Bryce is the founder of Queer Sense, a theory that describes how
people form attitudes. The theory provides insight into how specific
components in cultural contexts shape our beliefs and values, which
ultimately form our attitudes. The nonfiction book, QUEER SENSE: How
Are Attitudes Formed? A Revolutionary Guide for Teens, Parents,
Mental Health Professionals and Anyone Interested in Queer Theory, is
due out by 2016.
 
 
Follow the tour HERE
for exclusive excerpts, guest posts and a giveaway!
 
 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 
 

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Thanks so much for visiting fuonlyknew and Good Luck!

You can find a list of my reviews HERE.

For a list of free eBooks go HERE

To see all of my giveaways go HERE