Brief Lives

Dark Modern Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Romance with Adult Spice

While writing “Broken Shards” and the prequels “Personal Possessions” and “Ghost Ship”, I found that many of the minor characters (and some incidents of which I made passing mention) were crying out for their own stories to be told. And other characters wanted me to provide a follow-up, describing what happened to them after the events of “Broken Shards”.
“Brief Lives” serves to redress that imbalance and give those individuals their voice. This collection of tales from the worlds of the “Wandelaar van de Duisternis” series chronicles a few of those lives (or unlives). The stories featured in this collection include:

• Children of the Hunnebed
  While helping a young woman haunted by the ghost of her jealous ex, the teenage Hauke has his first encounter with the Wit Wief Agata. Visiting the time and place that she calls home in the province of Drenthe, he quickly finds himself embroiled in the aftermath of the Drenther Crusade, and befriends the spirits of the Neolithic tribesfolk who lived around the hunnebeden (large burial chambers built from rocks and covered with turf).
• Demon Bounty
  Xezbeth, a demonic bounty hunter searches for a spirit that has escaped from hell, and is torturing ghosts in his quest for information about the runaway. As a protector of the Veil, Hauke intervenes, but soon finds himself battling an opponent who is stronger, faster, and more deadly than anything he has ever fought before.
• Ghost Train
  Hired to solve a haunting on the Hoorn/Medemblik heritage steam line, what starts out as a cosy romance on board the historic train quickly escalates. Drained of strength and power, Hauke must rely on a disparate group of historic cosplayers if he is to avoid arrest and mandatory euthanasia at the hands of the government.
• Sunneklaas
  When Ameland closes to non-residents for its annual winter festival, a young journalist seeks to discover the truth about how her sister was crippled during the previous year’s Sunneklaas. Aided by a youth who travels between the worlds of the living and the dead, the pair find themselves hunted across the island. And as her investigation reveals the darkest secrets of Ameland’s history, it gradually becomes clear that even its inhabitants don’t fully understand the nature of the malevolence living in their midst.
• Día de Muertos
  The Mexican embassy and the city of Amsterdam work together to arrange a series of events (including a boat parade) celebrating the Día de Muertos. Yet problems abound, and as the time draws near, it looks as though the parade will be dead in the water.
• Persephone
  Xezbeth, the demonic bounty hunter, returns seeking vengeance against Hauke, and plans to ambush and murder the Veil-Walker aboard his houseboat, the “Tijdgeest”. What the demon hasn’t counted on is the ship’s resident ghosts… and a black cat called Persephone.
• Les Loups-Garous de Paris
  In the war-torn streets of occupied Paris, a young woman is rescued from the monsters of the Wölfe SS by a man known as the ‘Voyageur parmi les Ténèbres’.
  And when Hauke and his friend Camille discover an unusual book in an Amsterdam store, they learn that reality can become fiction, and fiction become reality in the strangest of ways.

*** CONTENT WARNING ***

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Available to buy now from Amazon for Kindle and in Paperback Coming Soon

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Excerpts

• Introduction

Bonus Material