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The Books of Horror Brawl – 1 Week to Go!

Getting brawl-ready!

Can you believe it? This time next week, the first round of the Books of Horror brawl will have begun. It starts on Tuesday, 5th September which means there is just 1 week to go!

In preparation, I have been running up flights of stairs, psyching out random passers-by with a killer ice-stare, and speed-skipping to stay in the zone. Well, okay, I just bought some boxing gloves and took some fun pics ready for the brawl.

Who, Me?!

But I am psyched! I still can’t believe how this has all played out. Back in March, The Suffering had only been out a couple of weeks when the brawl deadline was set. Authors had until the Sunday night to throw their book into the ring. After which the members of the Books of Horror group would vote on which 32 books they wanted to see go head-to-head.

I didn’t expect to get picked. But I was attempting to be bolder, forcing my introverted ass to put myself out there. Being selected was one of the most shocking things that has ever happened to me, and I have loved every second of being involved in the brawl readings, reviewing, and comments from the incredible BoH community in the months since the draw was revealed.

I’m over the moon that the ghosts of The Suffering have resonated with so many of you.

Books of Horror Brawl Round 1 Schedule

Here is the schedule for the first round:

The first head-to-head begins on 5th September

If you aren’t already a member of Books of Horror but have read many of these awesome books and would love to vote for your favourites, be sure to head to FB and join the Books of Horror community today!

Want to know why The Suffering made it into the brawl? Pick up your copy now!

Just For Fun

Get The Hangover from Hell with The Suffering Cocktails

The ghosts of The Suffering want you to suffer in any way possible. Including giving you the hangover from hell! Have the (last) night of your life with The Suffering cocktails!

The Suffering Cocktails

1. Jarvis Rice’s Exposed Brain Shot

Lose your head with Jarvis’s Exposed Brain

Ingredients:

  • 50ml Limoncello
  • 30ml Grenadine
  • 10ml Baileys Irish Cream
  • A tall shot glass
  • (Hanging noose optional)

Method

Add the limoncello to the shot glass. Gently pour in the grenadine until it settles at the bottom so you have a layer of red and a layer of yellow. Pour the Baileys into the centre of the limoncello, until you get what looks like a congealed brain (you may not need much!).

Tip: Down this shot in one, as it’s as nasty as Jarvis Rice himself!

2. Lisa Vaughan’s Bloated Corpse Float

Share it with your horde

Ingredients:

  • 280ml lemonade
  • 50ml Curacao
  • 25ml Dark Rum
  • 1 scoop vanilla ice cream
  • Serve in a pint glass

Method

Pour the Curacao into the pint glass. Gently add the lemonade, leaving plenty of room at the top of the glass (Lisa likes to make a squall). Add the dark rum and watch it darken the stormy seas. Finish by placing a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top and batten down the hatches!

3. Connor Rourke’s Vertigo Vertical Cocktail

You won’t be able to get up the stairs after a few of these!

Ingredients:

  • 200ml Apple Juice
  • 25ml Irish Whiskey
  • 10ml Blue Curacao
  • Stirrer (a chopstick or straw is fine)
  • Be careful on the stairs

Method

Set your glass up in a precarious position on the stairs. Add curacao. Carefully pour in apple juice, followed by the whiskey, and gently swirl the drink with a chopstick or drink stirrer so the colour changes to green.

4. Anthony Pile’s Hellfire & Brimstone Hangover

Let Anthony take you straight to hell with this decadent drink of the devil

Ingredients:

  • 25ml Violet Gin
  • 25ml Vodka
  • 125-150ml Tonic Water, depending on how evil you want to be
  • Champagne flute
  • A few stolen coins as garnish

Method

Light a candle. Add the violet gin and vodka to the champagne flute. Chant to Pluto. Gently pour in the tonic water. Descend into your cave and sip.

5. Po’s Peruvian Sunrise Slammer

You’ll want Po to rip your head in two the next morning

Ingredients:

  • 50ml Cointreau
  • 100ml Pineapple Juice
  • 5ml Grenadine
  • Short tumbler
  • Stones for protection

Method

Mix the pineapple juice and the Cointreau (don’t shake too much or it will go frothy and Po will get angry). Add the grenadine so it sinks to the bottom and creates the sunrise. Using a straw or a chopstick, give it a gentle swirl so some of the grenadine bleeds into the pineapple juice. Po likes it when things bleed.

If you’re not already suffering with the hangover from hell after drinking all of the ghosts’ favourite cocktails, why not spend a day relaxing with a book. If you haven’t already picked it up, you can get your copy of The Suffering at Amazon US, Amazon UK and other international stores. The Suffering is also available at Barnes & Noble, Walmart, and other top retailers.

Click here to learn more about the Ghosts of The Suffering!

Just For Fun

The Students of Brackenby House

Within the walls of Brackenby House, 5 students reside. They know the dark history of the Victorian townhouse, but it’s never really bothered them. That is until Halloween 2016, when the group attempt to recreate the notorious séance of 1876. One by one, the students find themselves haunted by the spirits that were responsible for The Suffering massacre. As each of the residents deal with the oppression their attachment causes, they find the essence of their personalities falling under attack. Before they lose themselves completely, they must find the truth about the original séance, and the ghosts that grow more violent every day. Before it’s too late…

Kyle

A distant relative of famed Victorian psychic, Lucius Holgrove, Kyle is proud of his ancestor. In 1876, Lucius was unwittingly drawn into the chaos of the Suffering séance and, as the sole survivor, his ability to banish the ghosts within the walls of Brackenby House is legendary. Kyle is also proud of the fact that he and his friends can use Brackenby House as their student digs, paying peanuts in rent thanks to his descendant purchasing the property following the massacre.

An anthropology student, Kyle finds the rumours of the ghosts fascinating. He’s especially intrigued by the monster known as Po, using his thesis to try and uncover the ancient Incan giant’s secrets. It’s Kyle’s idea to host another séance, paying homage to his relative. But his blind trust in Lucius’s abilities means that he underestimates just how eager the ghosts have been to come back out to play. Thankfully, Kyle’s obsessive research gives the group some clues as to how to uncover Brackenby’s secrets, and he’s determined to make amends and defeat the spirits before his friends succumb to the ghosts.

Tad

Kyle’s best friend, the pair met through a pen-pal scheme at their schools. Emigrating to the UK from Japan, Tad is all-too-happy to accept Kyle’s offer to move into Brackenby while he completes his engineering degree. He knows his friends are envious of his male model looks, but Tad sees them as nothing but a hinderance. He’s invented a prototype for a method to turn sewage into renewable energy, and as far as he’s concerned his looks are holding him back.

Stoic and sensible, Tad calmly assesses the spiralling situation in the house, trying to ignore the strange sounds and smells that seem to escalate after the Halloween spirit session. But it isn’t long before he begins to spot the ghosts’ individual patterns. Worse still, he sees that each of his friends are being targeted by one of the spirits. And, judging by the sound of an axe slapping against an impatient hand throughout the night and the smell of rotting flesh that follows him around Brackenby House, he is connected to the ghost that frightens him the most.

Pete

Known for his quiet and brooding nature, Pete falls further into solitary when the séance leaves him with physical symptoms that he just can’t shake. He loves to hike in the mountains to clear his head, but an unrelenting spell of vertigo means that he’s stuck on low ground, confined to his bedroom most of the time. He finds it difficult to confide in his housemates – even Cassie, who has been his best friend for as long as he can remember. There is a wedge growing between him and his friends, through no fault of his own.

The footsteps that patter down Brackenby’s landing seem to stop right outside his room. And when a sudden spell of vertigo stops him in his tracks, he’s sure he can hear a sinister chuckle emanate from the stairwell. Most concerning of all, he finds himself drawn to the banister, his body lurching to the edge in an unconscious effort to throw him over. For Pete, his choices are bleak. Either stay trapped in his room or step out and fight. But there are a lot of high spaces out there. And the pattering footsteps seem to follow him, even outside of Brackenby…

Cassie

Living in a house full of boys, Cassie fights hard to give a good show of herself. But her impulsive and brash personality sometimes lands her on the wrong side of people. Particularly the other women in her life. Still, she has to keep an edge about her if she’s going to successfully swim the Channel. Training is going well, despite the fact that the other girls in her swim team are forming a vicious clique against her. But she’s having bigger problems than bullies. Damp seems to follow her everywhere, with droplets of water appearing in impossible places. She smells the dank depths of the sea, even though the team are still training in the university pool.

Before long, her lone swim sessions begin to get treacherous. Unseen hands touch her under the water, preventing her from breaking the surface. Her friend, Martin, turns up at the pool, his expression trance-like. In the shadow of the sea witch, Lisa Vaughan, anything can happen in the water. And, even when Cassie stays away from the pool, Lisa’s powers may just bring the water directly to her.

Lance

With his perky nature, bouncing blond curls, and giddy personality, people could be forgiven for thinking that Lance is the extrovert member of the bunch. But crippling anxiety plagues him, meaning that all of his attempts at employment have ended in disaster. Because of this, Lance is keen to set himself up as an influencer, pulling in income from behind his laptop and phone screens. His friends know that navigating the trolls of the online world are often more challenging than anything Lance could face in an office, but he’s determined. Aside from his constant Insta posts and dreams of setting up a YouTube channel, Lance becomes more and more distracted by the scent of smoke and neighbourhood cats yowling in the grounds of Brackenby.

A dark figure hangs around the porch, its shadow visible through the hallway windows, and Lance is driven crazy when he constantly finds the spare stool pulled up to the table in the kitchen by unseen hands. His ghost is Hellfire Club member, Anthony Pile, and the more Lance learns about the club’s history, the more fearful he becomes. The club had a habit of pulling up a chair for the Devil, and the freezing cold seat of the stool means that perhaps Brackenby is getting visits from a presence even more terrifying than the ghosts themselves. And Lance is in his sights.

Join the students as they piece together the puzzle of the original Suffering séance and navigate the oppression that plagues Brackenby House. Can all of them survive The Suffering?

The Suffering published by Wicked House – Available now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Walmart, and other top retailers

Just For Fun

Meet The Suffering Ghosts

Which one will haunt you?

When Professor Josiah Grant called upon young Victorian psychic, Lucius Holgrove, to host a séance in 1876, neither of the men could have been prepared for the massacre that followed. Under Grant’s instruction, Lucius called forth 5 spirits that would represent the elements needed for his divination spell: Strength; Stealth; Frivolity; Deception; and Malice.

After the deaths of all of the attendees at the séance, Lucius managed to banish the ghosts within the walls of Brackenby House, where they have been waiting for another chance to come out.

Now a student home, Brackenby House finds itself the setting of another séance. A distant relative of Lucius Holgrove has called out The Suffering ghosts, unleashing them back into the house. The only trouble is, unlike his notorious ancestor, Kyle has no clue how to banish them.

And the ghosts are determined to continue The Suffering…

Connor Rourke (Stealth)

A thieving factory worker, Rourke was caught stealing and tried to escape his punishment, plunging to his death through a trapdoor.

The poor wretch who is haunted by Rourke is plagued with vertigo, and the fast and endless echoing footsteps of Rourke’s final run through the factory rafters before his deadly fall will drive you slowly insane. Worse still, you may find yourself giving in to the sudden urge to leap over the railing and tumble to your death. It’s not the call of the void. It’s Rourke. And he won’t stop until you take the plunge.

Anthony Pile (Deception)

A member of The Hellfire Club who committed Satanic rituals to keep his stolen fortune in the afterlife.

The squeal of tortured cats and the smell of burning follow you when Pile is attached to you. You might find chairs pulled out around the house, the seat cold from the touch of a sitting devil. Your money may go missing, but poverty is the least of your worries when Anthony Pile is following you. He made a pact with the devil. And he wants to take you with him back to hell.

Lisa Vaughan (Frivolity)

A teenaged fortune teller who, in the early 1700s, cursed the sailors who sought her wares. Days later, the men would jump from the ship into the sea, joining her woeful spectral horde.

Powerful oracle Lisa Vaughan doesn’t have to lift a finger to torment her victims. You’ll find damp and condensation in the strangest of places, and the smell of the deepest, darkest seas will permeate your clothes. She has the power to drown a person where they stand, and, if you try and fight, her horde of lost sailors will stop you in your tracks. Beware the foghorn moan of Lisa’s horde. It may mean you’re next.

Jarvis Rice (Malice)

A corrupt 17th century executioner who enjoyed his profession so much he murdered women and framed their husbands for the killings, having them sent straight to his axe block. In the final moments before their death, he would whisper the truth in the doomed innocents ears.

When Rice chooses you as his next victim, expect to hear the thudding of an axe handle slapping against an impatient hand throughout the night. A smell of decaying flesh will follow you wherever you go. And, as he gets stronger, be sure to duck if you hear the swish of an axe cutting through the air. Executions are Rice’s favourite hobby. And he doesn’t intend to stop any time soon.

Po (Strength)

An ancient Peruvian monster. Not much is known about Po, apart from the fact that he has nothing in the sockets under his brows and 3 hate-filled eyes across his forehead. And that he’s the size of a truck.

Crashes and creaks in the basement just might mean that the Incan giant, Po, is lurking in the shadows. A tickle of breath on the back of your neck or a grunt in your ear may mean he’s edging closer. And, when the giant gets too close, close enough to touch you, you may just fall victim to the brute’s huge hands, ripping you to pieces in the blink of one of his 3 eyes.

As each of the 5 students at Brackenby are targeted by one of the ghosts, they face a race against time to uncover the secrets of the original séance before it’s too late. But the ghosts are growing stronger every day. And there’s no guarantee that Kyle, Cassie, Pete, Tad, and Lance will ever make it out of the second Suffering alive.

The Suffering – Prepare to Suffer! Available at Amazon

Meet the Students of Brackenby House!

Uncategorized

Would you want to live in a haunted Victorian murder house?

How about if the rent was dirt cheap?

That was the dilemma faced by Cassie, Pete, Lance, and Tad, when they first moved into Brackenby House. And it wasn’t too much of a dilemma at the time. The house was famous in the local area, and it had featured in a few dark history books, but the students were sceptical about the rumours that the home was still haunted. Their friend Kyle (housemate and son of the current homeowner) liked to tell them regularly that his distant relative, the psychic Lucius Holgrove, had managed to banish the ghosts within the walls of Brackenby House after the séance massacre of 1876. So they accepted Kyle’s offer of low rent and the 5 of them settled into both university life and Brackenby in no time. That is until Halloween night 2016, when the group decide it will be fun to hold a séance of their own. Nothing bad will happen – not in this day and age. Right?

Plus, the jury was still out on what really happened that fateful night back in 1876. Did Lucius’s séance really pull forth 5 cursed ghosts from hell in order to fulfil a spell found in an ancient book? Did the hapless group of wealthy merchants and professionals, guests of Brackenby’s then-owner, Professor Josiah Grant, really die gruesome deaths at the hands of each of the ghosts? Or was Lucius the only survivor for another reason. A reason no-less dark. After spending months in jail awaiting trial, and then being freed into a sanitorium, Lucius was finally freed. The judge and jury hesitantly agreed – surely one young man couldn’t have been responsible for the carnage discovered at the house. A house that would claim another victim, when Lucius leapt from a cliff to his death shortly after being released. Victorian newspaper records detailed the initial carnage, Lucius’s graphic and terrifying testimony, and the news of his untimely death all too thoroughly. The séance was dubbed The Suffering, a sensationalist name that had lasted, almost 150 years later.

Kyle loves to big-up his distant uncle and his astonishing abilities not only to resurrect the dead but to send them back to whence they came. But trying to emulate him for a Halloween party trick doesn’t go the way he’d hoped. Now, the 5 ghosts are released back in the house: Jarvis Rice, a 17th century executioner who framed men for murder so he could get the thrill of killing twice. Connor Rourke, who died falling from the rafters of the grain factory he stole from, his footsteps a constant echo along Brackenby’s landing. Anthony Pile, a member of the Hellfire Club who struck a deal with the devil so he could keep his ill-gotten riches in the afterlife. Lisa Vaughan, a fortune teller who cursed the sailors who visited her, forcing them to jump into the sea and join her deadly hoard halfway through their next sail. And, most terrifying of all, the ancient pre-Incan giant, Po. Rumour has it Po has nothing in his eye sockets, and 3 eyes on his forehead. And he’s now residing in Brackenby’s basement.

Each of the ghosts latches onto one of the students, the individual hauntings driving them all to the brink. But the students soon learn that they can’t leave Brackenbury. When they do, the people around them are at risk, and the ghosts only grow stronger. Only Kyle’s uncle Caleb can help. Unlike their distant ancestor, Lucius, Caleb isn’t dashing, charming, or remotely psychic. But, as gruff and rude as he is, Caleb has his uses. He’s been trying to get to the bottom of the house’s secrets for years. And he may just have found a solution that turns the reported history of the séance on its head. The housemates must each do battle with their own individual ghost. But not all of them can make it out alive…

The Suffering, published by Wicked House Publishing – coming soon!

Next up: Meet The Suffering Ghosts! Which one will haunt you?