 It's Monday again, but this is a very special Monday! Today is the release day for BURNING MONDAY, the sequel to MANIC MONDAY and the second Dane Monday novel! In this novel, you'll find the same ridiculous over the top adventures by your favorite over-caffeinated investigator! Ghost cars! The White Beast of Avalon! Bikers - no, WEREWOLF bikers! A Chinese Fire cult! And through all of that, the hidden past of one of Dane's trusted allies comes back with a vengeance. Chinatown is ready to burn! Read more in Burning Monday!
Burning Monday on Amazon Manic Monday on Amazon
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 Not everyone is a fan of Valentines Day. For those readers I offer this excerpt from the first Damned Lies book, which is also the first chapter. Entitled "Worst Date Ever", it is not a happy coupling and it is not the most honorable narrator either. But it may be amusing. And remember, you can get DAMNED LIES! for free on Amazon!
Worst Date Ever Excerpt DAMNED LIES FREE ON AMAZON  Now you can read the first chapter of the upcoming BURNING MONDAY, the sequel to MANIC MONDAY! Read the excerpt here on my website! Or if you have an ebook copy of Manic Monday, get a new version of it from Amazon and you'll find the chapter at the end! Look for Burning Monday on it's release day February 22nd!
Excerpt: "The Need for Rocket Enhanced Speed" Preorder on Amazon Dane and Abby ride again - in a modified El Camino using experimental rocket boosters! And that's not even the main story! After a brief stint of ghost drag racing, Dane follows a lead which brings him far below the city where he and Abby escape the jaws of death to find a strange device. Before they can find out what it is, the device is stolen by an outlaw motorcycle club who are harboring a violent secret. Meanwhile, their friend Wong's long buried past is coming back to haunt him with an explosive vengeance. In this Dane Monday adventure there's fire, a gigantic beast, mystical martial arts, a long buried past, and howling enemies. Chinatown is ready to burn - can Dane and Abby stop it? Find out in Burning Monday!  This weekend you can get my Scooby Doo style mystery gang urban fantasy The Case of the Dead Girl in my Apartment for free on Amazon! This New Avalon story involves monsters, men in black, good vs evil, and maybe some actual investigative work. Go check it out!
Amazon When Jake arrives home to find his not-quite-girlfriend Melody murdered in his apartment, things seem like they couldn't get any worse. But when the killer, a ferocious man turned monster, is still there and looking for something of Melody's, Jake fights for his life, just barely getting out of the apartment to safety. Now he's on the hook for the murder of Melody. To clear his name, his college friends put together a reluctant Mystery Gang: Anna, the mystery-obsessed Criminal Justice Major; Eva, Jake's best friend and escapee from New Avalon's high society; Nathan, cynical Philosophy Major; and Thomas, the weird Physics grad student from across town. Together they investigate the murder and the object they murderer was looking for, stumbling onto something bigger and stranger than they ever imagined. Monsters, memory wipes, magic, men in black, and a secret war of Good versus Evil for the fate of the city and possibly the world. Mysteries have never been this strange. Authentic Avalon: The White Beast of Avalon
by Abby Connors If you've lived in New Avalon long enough, you've heard the local folklore. I'm not talking about historic figure in Avalon's history or the secret menu at Lazy Mary's. I'm talking about the stories we trade back and forth, the things that may not be true that we simply like talking about. Things like the Will O' Wisps in the Husks, the Legend of Gallows Hill, the Tall Man, or even the Ghost Greaser. Much has been said of the things that go bump in the night in the Avalon area, but all of those are minor figures. If you're a hardcore cryptozoologist, you'd know that Avalon has one very notable creature. While other places might have Bigfoot, Chupacabra, or even the Jersey Devil, locally we have something else: The White Beast of Avalon. There are those who dismiss the White Beast of Avalon as simply the low rent local version of the Loch Ness Monster, finding both of them unreal and unlikely. Aside from the disbelief, the comparison isn't entirely unfair - both are believed to be serpents or reptiles and both have been glimpsed in or around bodies of water. And like Scotland's favorite creature, reports of the White Beast go back a long time. "People think the White Beast is something new, as if it were some fad," said David Forsythe, member of the New Avalon Cryptoozological Society. "But it's not. The White Beast has been with us for a while. Ellis Husker, the founder of Huskerville, saw it. One day he saw a big white serpent, and it scared him so much that he swore he would never step foot above water again - not on a boat or a bridge." Naysayers point out that while there is an entry in Husker's memoir about a white "snake", that entry was late in his life, when it was widely believed that dementia had taken him. Even the greatest believers will admit that Husker's handwriting is more wild in animated in the section of the memoirs where he mentions the snake - not that handwriting is any admission of insanity. "The White Beast is a common claim for why people won't enter the lake or river," said Wilson Davis, author of Lake Avalon, Lake Fear, a book about people who suffer a particular phobia of our local lake. "Of those that fear the lake, there are many reasons. The so-called White Beast is not always the most common reason, but it surges in popularity, particularly when there is a stretch of lake-based disappearances - a phenomenon which is unfortunately periodic in Avalon's history." Disappearances, you say? That's correct, according to both Davis and Forsythe, there is a pattern of people vanishing that extends back decades. Every few years people disappear, their last known location near the lake or river. These aren't just cases where people went out on the lake and didn't come back, some are people vanishing when their friends were away for just minutes. "These disappearances do tend to give those with a preexisting phobia of the lake a rationale for their feelings," said Davis. "It doesn't make it true. Even if people have been disappearing, their fears are still irrational, as nearly everyone who suffers from the phobia had it before they learned of the missing people. It's merely a coinciding fact that plays into their malady." But even believers don't say the disappearances prove the existence of the creature. "I can't say for sure it's the Beast causing people to vanish," said Forsythe. "In the NACS, we acknowledge the existence of various creatures in the New Avalon Basin that defy conventional classification. To see a pattern of deaths and simply assign it to the Beast because water was involved seems sloppy. We need evidence." "Sometimes people just drown," said Davis. "Unfortunately, it sometimes is as ugly and unsatisfying answer as that." Very recently, there have been sightings of a white serpent that would fit the description of the White Beast. Both of these sightings were in Riverside - in one case, witnesses claim it destroyed one of the docks. In the other incident, the beast broke through a city street, leaving a hole for city services to deal with. Unfortunately, even in our day of phones and cameras, nobody was lucky enough to catch it on film - something I write with great disappointment. "Unfortunately, no one in NACS was around these incidents," said Davis. "I'd love it to be the beast, but these days we always show up after the black suited government guys, and there's nothing left to see. Just gas leaks. This city really needs to move away from natural gas." Ultimately, we have no way to verify that the White Beast of Avalon exists. No matter our personal beliefs on the matter, we have no proof - no film, no pictures worth anything. Even the recent reports do nothing to confirm its existence. We are left simply wondering what the Beast is, and if it exists, what does it want? We may never have the answers to those questions. But know that should it exist, by reports it is currently active, so be careful near the river and the lake. I also have a tip that says to avoid the underground waterways, such as overflow tunnels and the sewers. As a final question, we asked both Davis and Forsythe if they were planning to go swimming or take a boat on the lake this season. Davis looked uncomfortable for a moment, then gave a muted headshake. "No," he said finally, his tone low. "Absolutely not," said Forsythe with a smile. "Who'd be dumb enough to do that?" This is Abby Connors signing off. Want to know more about the White Beast of Avalon? Check out Jabberwock Jack or the upcoming Burning Monday! |
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