The Love-Haight Case Files is Up for Inclusion in

The Books of Horror Indie Brawl
 

The Love-Haight Case Files, Book 1 is on the Books of Horror Indie Brawl intention list for 2024. For one day only on April 1, there will be a round of voiting for Books of Horror Facebook members only for the first group of books which will be included in the one of the intial March Madness style bracket showdowns. If it makes that cut, the public will vote on each bracket later on. I'll send reminders, but watch this space! You must already be a member of the Books of Horror Facebook group for this initial vote, but you will not need to be for the eventual bracket voting and membership will reopen before that happens. Just so you know, The Love-Haight Case Files, Book 1, won three Silver Falchions at Killer Nashville the year it came out: Best Fantasy, Best Urban Fantasy, and Best Multi-Genre Novel. Here's a bit about the setting:

Ever since the Summer of Love, the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco has been known for attracting weird and unconventional souls, but things got even stranger when the monsters moved in.

Magic has returned to the world and with it a host of supernatural creatures--not just vampires and ghosts, but sentient gargoyles, ghouls, sprites, faeries, and more. The frightened citizenry, holier-than-thou bigots, headline-seeking reporters, and harried police refer to them as OTs (Other-Than-Humans), but Thomas Brock and Evelyn Love believe even magical creatures have legal rights.

Delve into their case files for a genre-bending mix of mystery, horror, investigatory suspense, pulse-pounding thrills, courtroom drama, and romance. The city’s OT element is sometimes malevolent, sometimes misunderstood, and often discriminated against. Brock and Love represent them all, dead, undead, or alive—whatever the case, whatever the species.

Love-Haight is a comedy, locked within a mystery, hidden in a horror story... Wonderfully clever, stylish, and ghoulish. Delightfully twisted fun! —William C. Dietz, New York Times bestselling author

Go to the Books of Horror Facebook Group

now to vote.

Here's some rules details slightly edited from the Books of Horror FB site:

Monday, April 1st is the first of FOUR preliminary polls. (Don: That's the group LH is in.) The brawl authors have been divided into four groups of 98 books to choose from. In each group, readers will select their top 32 choices to advance. At this point, you are NOT required to have read a book in order to vote for it. You can vote for any book where you’re familiar with the author or if you think the synopsis sounds amazing. (Don: Or, you can check out the prequel: Buzz on the Street--see below.)

We assume everyone can be adults about this. Please stick to choosing only 32 books in each group.

Only official Brawl books will be counted. If anyone “adds” a book as an option, it will be disqualified and that individual will be disqualified from future brawls. The first four days of polls are prescheduled, and they cannot be edited at this point.

The top 32 from each group will be combined together to a final preliminary poll on Friday, April 5th. The top 32 finishers from that group will be the final 32 for the Indie Brawl Bracket. Tune in on Saturday, April 6th for the unveiling.

We’ll follow up later with the rules for the bracket. In the meantime, remember this is about having fun. Play fair, be nice (or roast, because that’s how we roll).

Click HERE to Vote

By the way, if you are a fan of The Love-Haight Case File series, of just want a taste of the series to see what the tone and humor of the series is like, I've written a short prequel story you can find here.

Don't forget to check out these other promos and stories, too.

I've also got a number of fantasy stories available on DriveThruFiction. They're tie-in fiction in the Chronicles of Ballidrous Campaign Setting, but they are fine fantasy tales even if you are not playing the system. The latest out is Murky Business, but I also have Scavenger Hunt and Displaced, at just 99 cents each. Tacitus has great art and treats its writers very well, so be sure to check out these and all their other great products.

Keep scrolling for more great book promos.

Don't Fade Away: A Ghost Story

by

Natalie Pearce

What's the only thing worse than being stuck haunting a share house?
Being ignored by the first person to sense your presence in years...

Ever since her unfortunate demise, Elle's been forced to watch her living housemates come and go with nothing to fill her days except a crush on longstanding housemate, Dean, who literally doesn’t know she exists. Talk about unrequited love.

Just as she despairs at being stuck halfway to the other side for the rest of her afterlife, the newest resident sparks hope for something more.

As far as mediums go, Ethan barely knows he is one. He just wants a place to knuckle down and finish his degree. But as soon as he moves in, he senses a presence. He tries to ignore it – but Elle is insistent…

The more Ethan uncovers about Elle, the more he suspects her death was no accident. Can he help her move on before she really does fade away?

Don’t Fade Away is a spooky contemporary ghost story combining humor, romance and mystery that will tug at the heartstrings!

The Guardian of the Palace, Book 1 of The Guardian League urban fantasy series by Steven Morris.

Everyone knows magic isn’t real.

Alien invaders? Ha!

But something destroyed an entire skyscraper in a never-before-seen implosion. Can one skeptical security guard stand between monsters and magic that threaten the world?

Disillusioned with her military career, Red Hernandez crawled back to civilian life as a second tier security lead for an engineering marvel meant to cram more people into the tiny island of Manhattan. She expected her biggest struggles to be integrating back into a society where social media and closet space reigned supreme. But when mysterious forces destroy a building similar to the one she’s chartered to protect, in an implosive blast never before seen, all notions of a cushy retirement job go up in smoke.

With lives on the line, but big money pushing to continue construction, Red finds the steely determination that she'd lost in the desert of her past. Monsters lurk in the shadows, forcing her to re-evaluate everything she believed to be true... and all that she imagined.

Can one woman save the world, or will disbelief be her undoing?

The Guardian of The Palace is the action-packed first book in The Guardian League fantasy series. If you like magic intruding on reality, exploring new worlds, and a good chuckle, then you'll love Steven J. Morris's inventive tale.

Buy The Guardian of The Palace for a monstrous serving of adventure today!

By the way, you can always follow me on social media @donaldjbingle, including on Facebook, Instagram, Goodreads, Twitter/X, Blue Sky, TikTok, Pinterest, Amazon, BookBub, and now on Threads. I appreciate your follows, shares, likes, comments, reviews, quotes, retweets/rexeets, and rethreads.

The Dick Thornby Thriller Series

The omni version of The Dick Thornby Thriller Series became available this year. Now you can give an entire series of exciting spy thrillers about a regular guy who takes on some of the biggest and most bizarre conspiracy and disaster theories you can find on the world wide web in one honking big book. If ebooks aren't your thing, you can grab Net Impact, Wet Work, and Flash Drive in print here. And, both Net Impact and Wet Work are available in audio. See the links at the end of this newsletter. And, if you want to start off an Audible subscription with either Net Impact or Wet Work, go here or here, respectively.

Dick Thornby isn't Hollywood's idea of a spy. He's a new kind of spy for a new kind of world.

Donald J. Bingle is the author of seven books and more than sixty shorter works in the horror, thriller, science fiction, mystery, fantasy, steampunk, romance, comedy, and memoir genres. His books include Forced Conversion (near future military scifi), GREENSWORD (darkly comedic eco-thriller), Frame Shop (murder in a suburban writers' group), and the Dick Thornby spy thriller series (Net Impact, Wet Work, and Flash Drive). He also co-authored (with Jean Rabe) The Love-Haight Case Files series (a three-time Silver Falchion winning paranormal urban fantasy about two lawyers who represent the legal rights of supernatural creatures in a magic-filled San Francisco; Book 2 just came out). Don also edited Familiar Spirits (an anthology of ghost stories). He also put out the oddest book you've ever seen. Morse Code Mysteries and Missives has three tales (two stories by Don and a relevant piece of non-fiction) presented in Morse Code text, then via links in audio dots and dasher, then in plain English.

Many of Don's shorter works can be found in his Writer on Demand TM collections.

Get the audiobook version of Net Impact at Audible.com, Amazon, and iTunes and the audiobook version of Wet Work at Audible.com, Amazon, and iTunes.

Full disclosure: Various links in my newsletter or on my website may include Amazon Affiliate coding, which gets me a small referral fee (at no cost to you) if you purchase after clicking through.