Psychic Sleuthing

by Morgan Brice

I love pretty much anything supernatural or paranormal. That includes ghosts, psychics, mediums, monsters, magic…you get the picture.

I also really love mysteries. I’ve been hooked since I was a kid (Scooby-Doo remains, to this day, one of my favorite shows). I grew up reading mystery books, and I especially love paranormal mysteries, as well as crime dramas with a magical component.

And I’m also a big fan of books, movies and TV shows about monster hunters, including Supernatural, Van Helsing, Wynonna Earp, and the Harry Dresden books, to name a few.

On the non-romance side of my writing, as Gail Z. Martin, I write three urban fantasy series (Deadly Curiosities, the Night Vigil, and—co-written with Larry N. Martin—Spells, Salt and Steel) all of them in one way or another about hunting monsters, getting rid of cursed and haunted objects, fighting demons, and saving the world from supernatural threats.

So was it any surprise that when I started writing male/male romance it was going to be urban fantasy/paranormal? Let’s think about this: ghosts plus mystery plus crime plus sexy main characters? Hello!

In my Badlands series—which includes my Christmas novella, Lucky Town—Simon Kincaide is a psychic medium, so he gets glimpses of the future and can talk to ghosts. He teams up with skeptical cop Vic D’Amato to hunt down supernatural killers in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Simon also has made connections with what he calls his ‘Skeleton Crew’—people with low-level, untrained psychic gifts who also live and work in Myrtle Beach. Often, their abilities have caused them trouble and heartache, because they didn’t have anyone to guide them, or they didn’t understand how to use their gifts. Simon tries to teach his Crew how to manage their abilities without causing further harm to others or themselves, and they become an intelligence network for him, letting Simon know what they hear when things get dicey.

My Witchbane series also has a a big mystery at the center of the plot. Seth Tanner’s brother, Jesse, was killed by a dark warlock, part of a cycle of ritual killings that has gone on for a century. Seth vows to find the warlocks involved, and stop the murders. He never expects to fall in love with the warlocks’ next victim. Once he and Evan get together, the race is on to find the rest of the intended victims and warlocks and stop the murders once and for all—or die trying.

I try very hard to make my books solidly urban fantasy/paranormal mystery AND solidly male/male romance, which is for me, the best of both worlds. I want to give you a spooky, scary, sexy and suspenseful thrill ride, that ends with a happily ever after and the bad guys muttering, “And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling men!”

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