The Variant Effect: MADHOUSE 3


Book Description

THE VARIANT SQUAD barely had time to get back on its feet before the screaming started. Someone was getting skinned alive, and they knew it. But many of their comrades have just fallen to their deaths, and others are still missing, so Captain Beachboy knows that answering the cry for help would be suicide. Skin Eater packs are still hunting on the levels above and below them, and it’s only a matter of time before their ugly craving returns and they attack again. And that’s not the end of it. A murderous Kill Squad sent by an unknown enemy must have followed them underground. It has the Lazarus team’s innocent blood on its hands, and Beachboy suspects the unknown assassins are committed to spilling 9-Squad’s too. And the old myths about the basement are proving true. Something with an appetite for pain is haunting the bunker complex and feeds its hunger through the Biter packs. It has also poisoned the place with the Varion molecule that causes the lethal new form of the Variant Effect, forcing the squad to remain sealed in their bag-suits. And they’re running out of air. Variant Squad veteran Joe Borland knows that there are forces within the squad that might not want to win the battle underground, and would prefer leaving his bagged-comrades buried with the incriminating evidence they have found. So he’ll have to pick a side when his life’s on the line. In the meantime he and Beachboy take the squad survivors on a desperate search for a rumored escape tunnel while dark forces gather on all sides, and a secret clock winds down to doomsday and the final Variant Squad protocol of Ziploc, Gas and BURN! Explore the MADHOUSE to the END with BURN, third stage in the final chapters of The Variant Effect Series.




The Variant Effect: MADHOUSE 2


Book Description

JOE BORLAND and Captain Beachboy deliver Lazarus team scientists to Bezo Metro Headquarters and find things in upheaval, so the rest of 9-Squad is ordered in to provide security. The Variant Squad has been shaken and bloodied over the last twenty-four hours with a rising body count, and there hasn’t been time for wounds to heal or for the dead recruits to be replaced. But the Bezo Board of Directors has put Lazarus specialists in charge of efforts to halt the Variant Effect outbreak in Metro, and end the Ziploc that holds the city in quarantine. The veterans Borland and Hyde are suspicious of the change in command but cannot override their questionable orders or abandon their squad to a dubious mission. As they prepare to join the scientists underground and open research labs that have been sealed for decades, 9-Squad finds the enigmatic company man, Brass, is working the graveyard shift and overseeing a top secret project of his own. Brass is in survival mode and his “Plan B” has hit a few bumps, but that’s not the worst of it. There have been reports of unusual sounds and sightings that lend some truth to the old rumors that the HQ basement levels are haunted. The squad must investigate the eerie phenomena, but all the signs point to something far more tangible and terrifying than the dead. Borland, Hyde and the frazzled 9-Squad must decide who they can trust as lethal forces gather, and avenues of escape begin to close. The only way to save their skins and protect the public from annihilation may involve a terrifying descent into darkness. Explore the MADHOUSE with Gas Light, second stage in the final chapters of The Variant Effect Series.




A Coral Pillow


Book Description

ONE FATEFUL NIGHT, a lonely lighthouse keeper climbs into a rowboat and sets off to visit a mainland tavern in search of company. When his boat capsizes on the rough sea, he sinks into the cold abyss expecting death, so he is surprised to awaken on shore in the morning light. He’s still alive, but he’s no longer alone! Love, legend, and loss drive this dark fantasy.




The Variant Effect: GREENMOURNING


Book Description

WHILE HYDE hunts for a Variant-enhanced serial killer, a fight with a skin-eating granny almost sends Borland back into retirement. Skin eaters, secrets, and murder close in as the squad scrambles to contain the Variant Effect. VARION was a popular medication that could cure anything from Anxiety and Depression to Schizophrenia and Zoophagia. Everybody took it back in the day, because there were no side effects ... AT FIRST. By the time they learned about the Variant Effect it was too late. It’s been twenty years since Borland battled the Variant Effect, and twenty since he let his partner get skinned alive. Now they have been ordered back into action to meet a terrifying new threat.




Dracula of the Apes: THE URN


Book Description

DRACULA OF THE APES picks up where Bram Stoker’s Dracula left off and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes began. Genres collide in this thrilling horror/adventure fiction hybrid. Dracula’s Gypsy servant Horvat has the special duty of preserving his master’s body if the worst should ever happen—and the worst has happened! Van Helsing’s team of vampire hunters has decapitated the count and reduced him to dust and ashes. Horvat’s instructions are simple. Dracula’s remains must be stored in a special urn and bathed in blood while en route to South Africa where a mysterious ally will see to his resurrection. But fate steps in off the African coast and a shipwreck casts Horvat and his precious burden into the jungle setting of another literary classic.




Of The Kind


Book Description

NATHAN CHAMBERS and his bride-to-be want to rekindle their romance after they were forced to cancel their wedding at the start of the pandemic, and the stressful lockdown that followed left the relationship on rocky ground. Nate hopes some quality time at the treasured family cottage will help them put things right. The young couple arrives with nature promising blue skies despite the looming storm clouds, but they quickly realize that rain will be the least of their worries. Something weird is happening on the lake. The locals are distant, the animal life is scattered or missing, and Nate senses a threatening presence in the trees. When a mysterious group moves into the abandoned cottage on the lot beside theirs, a neighbor’s death soon after raises the specter of the pandemic’s return, though the truth is more horrifying—even if it sounds insane. The strangers next door are a dangerous breed, but they’ve been followed to the lake by something worse. A time of reckoning has come, and blood will mark a return of the Kind that first terrified in BENT STEEPLE.




The Variant Effect: BLOOD ANGEL


Book Description

BACK IN THE DAY ... People didn’t know that it was happening, so it was totally out of control by the time authorities understood that something serious was going on. As a result, the worst of it incubated in the shadows, hidden behind closed doors and far from view, where the true horror played out in isolation. Where no one could hear you scream. The Variant Effect was impossible to detect until you were already infected. There was no way to tell if it was near, if it was cooking in you, or if it had passed you by altogether. First responders were the first to document evidence of its existence, the first to see it happening, and often the first to feel it boiling in their blood. Stress set it off and fear fed it, so it was a perfect fit for cops, firemen, and EMTs. But in the beginning all they could do was file incident reports and wonder. Here is a short story from early in the day.




Dracula of the Apes: THE CURSE


Book Description

AS GAZDA GROWS to manhood he drifts away from his adoptive family to search out his true origins and others of his kind. When American and European castaways arrive at his lair, he believes they are from his real tribe; but, he dare not approach them until he can resist the siren song of the blood that flows in their veins. When his new friends are captured by cannibal pirates, Gazda races to the rescue. Will winning their freedom reward him with love or damn him eternally as Dracula’s unspoken curse returns? Dracula of the Apes picks up where Bram Stoker’s Dracula left off and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes began. Genres collide in this thrilling horror/adventure fiction hybrid.




Dracula of the Apes: THE APE


Book Description

A GRIEVING SHE-APE whose son was murdered by an ambitious alpha male, mistakes Dracula’s regenerating body for a newborn of her species, so she names the foundling “Gazda” and takes him to her tribe to raise as her own. With only a “child’s mind” and no memory of his true identity, the unusual orphan uses his budding abilities to survive in the jungle and grow from social outcast to trusted member of the tribe. As Gazda matures into a peerless hunter, he wins friends and enemies among the bull apes who compete for dominance; and while his differences raise questions about his origins, the call of the wild overpowers their doubts. Dracula of the Apes picks up where Bram Stoker’s Dracula left off and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes began. Genres collide in this thrilling horror/adventure fiction hybrid.




Bent Steeple


Book Description

Something is in the trees... A blizzard isolates a remote northern village that was stricken by a fatal and unknown disease thirty years before. Some survivors believed a vampire stalked the frozen forests, but their suspicions sounded like insanity. Now their secrets have drawn them back for vengeance, salvation and for blood.