Category Archives: Soul’s Road Press

Sorcery, steampunk, ghosts, and magic

By Bundle, Dayle A. Dermatis, Fantasy/SF, Novels, Soul's Road Press

My new urban fantasy novel Ghosted is not yet available in stores, but it is available in this amazing bundle! I’m overwhelmed to be included in a bundle with these incredible authors.

Here’s the deal: You pay how much you want for the first four books. If you pay $15 or more, you get a bonus of six more books, including mine. That’s a steal.

You can also choose how much goes to the authors and how much to a wonderful charity, AbleGamers.

From Curator Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Sorcery. Steam. Ghosts. A touch of romance. Mythic creatures. Some truly violent bad guys. And one little black cat.

We have everything in this bundle that a fantasy reader could want.

Including magic.

We have magic in all forms, from the magic that gods use when they come to Earth to magic that a familiar inspires when she helps a man with limited ability keep his spells fresh. We have vampires and werewolves. We have parasols and tea and lovely chocolates. We have FBI agents facing killers and assassins who can kill with a blink.

A fantastic story for every mood, and steampunk. Not enough to call this a steampunk bundle, but enough that we could add “steam” to our subtitle. (We can also add “steam” for another reason. One or two of these books have steamy scenes, that have nothing to do with engines and everything to do with heat between humans.)

We also have new releases in this bundle. Usually writers contribute the first books in a series or a book that fits the theme but has been published for a long time. Four writers—Dayle A. Dermatis, Catherine Banks, Michelle Fox, and me—decided to put their most recent book in the bundle. In fact, Catherine and Michelle have contributed books exclusive to StoryBundle. You can’t get those books anywhere else!

(Note: This bundle offer ends on March 15, so you have a limited time to grab it.)

The Books and Authors

  • Alchemy and Steam (anthology)
  • Blood and Magic, Ann Gimpel
  • Poison or Protect, Gail Carriger
  • Familiarity, Kristine Kathryn Rusch
  • Rare Stakes, Michelle Fox
  • For Love or Vengeance, Caridad Pineiro
  • Ghosted, Dayle A. Dermatis
  • Specters in the Storm, Pauline Baird Jones
  • Valkyrie’s Vengeance & Hunger Moon (Ragnarok: Doom of the Gods 1-2), Melissa Snark
  • Alys of Asgard, Catherine Banks

How do you get your mitts on all these ebooks. Click right here to go directly to the bundle’s page!

About Ghosted

After former party girl Nikki Ashburne accidentally overdoses and briefly died, she wakes up able to see ghosts.

A good thing, because she lost all her other friends in the process. Now she runs ghosts tours of Los Angeles with her spirit-friends’ help.

So when someone starts exorcising the ghosts of Hollywood, Nikki scrambles to find the perpetrator before her livelihood—and her only friends—vanish forever.

Come for the ghosts. Stay for the snark.

Just keep your mitts off Nikki’s friends.

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Let’s take a ghostly Ghosted tour!

By Dayle A. Dermatis, Fantasy/SF, Novels, Soul's Road Press

I thought it would be fun to pull together some information about a few of the locations in Ghosted. Enjoy!

Views of tombs in Hollywood Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

Hollywood Forever Cemetery

I love old cemeteries, and even though the Hollywood Forever isn’t the moss-encroached, ancient graveyards of Britain (where I’ve spent much happy times wandering about), it’s got a rich history and is wonderfully quirky. Not to mention being one of the most iconic cemeteries in the world, with a star-studded cast of permanent residents.

I mean, I’m writing a series about a woman who sees ghosts, and where are ghosts but at a cemetery? Except, maybe not in the way you think. Aaron Schwabach, for example. He’s not nearly famous enough to be buried there…

Los Altos Hotel

Fans of Buffy and Angel will recognize this as Angel’s Hyperion Hotel, which was featured in many episodes. I’ve never been inside (it’s an apartment building now), but there’s a wonderful courtyard just outside the front door, with a rectangular fountain that’s featured in the book.

Built in 1925, it was the home to many famous people of the time. It fell into disrepair, then was revived in the 1980s. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993. A place with a history like that just has to be haunted, doesn’t it? With ghosts from various decades? That’s why it became my model for the Ballington Hotel in Ghosted.

Roosevelt Hotel

The Roosevelt Hotel is one of the surviving Art Deco hotels in Los Angeles, and although it’s not much to look at from the outside, the interior is gorgeous, especially the Spanish Colonial-style lobby. I’ve attended a couple of shows in the Cinegrill bar, where part of The Fabulous Baker Boys was filmed. You know, that scene with Michelle Pfeiffer on the piano.

Allegedly, the ghost of Marilyn Monroe haunts the Roosevelt. Or is it Marilyn…? You’ll have to read Ghosted to find out what my answer is.

Santa Monica Pier

When I lived in Southern California, the best route to LAX from home was down PCH—Pacific Coast Highway, aka Highway 1. It’s an amazingly gorgeous drive, and one I’ve spotted in commercials and TV shows. Once, was delayed because they were filming something along the stretch near Mugu Rock in Ventura County. Speaking of Mugu Rock, I can’t remember which Iron Man movie it was in, but Tony Stark leaves his mansion in Malibu intending to head into LA, and then we see him blasting north past Mugu Rock. I fell out of my seat in the theater laughing. Um, no…that’s a hell of a useless detour!

Anyway. Driving to LAX, it was always a thrill to see the Santa Monica Pier, which has been featured in movies, TV shows, music videos…. In Ghosted, Nikki rides the iconic roller coaster. Ever wonder why there’s always one seat nobody sits in? Nikki knows.

I lived in Southern California for about 20 years, and other sites in Ghosted (and Nikki short stories, and future books) are ones I’ve visited, wandered about in, and experienced. If you have questions about other places in the book, let me know!

Aaaand remember, if you haven’t picked up the Sorcery & Steam bundle that contains Ghosted, it’s around only until March 15. $15 for 10 books, including two exclusive to the bundle. I’m overwhelmed to be in the company of these authors!

(Photo sources: Hollywood Forever, © Alessandro Campagnolo | Bigstock; Los Altos Hotel, Wikimedia Commons; Roosevelt Hotel, Jason Chang via Wikimedia Commons; Santa Monica Pier, Evasion Photography via Wikimedia Commons)

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Uncollected Anthology: Heart’s Desires

By Dayle A. Dermatis, Fantasy/SF, Short Stories, Soul's Road Press, Uncollected Anthology

Heart’s Desires, the latest issue of Uncollected Anthology, is available now!

Discover how a vampire learns to love baseball, how a heart transplant starts some odd conversations, the perils of an ill-fated love spell, finding the perfect footwear, and learning to control awakening power.

Explore your heart’s desire.

Stake Me Out to the Ball Game – Guest Author Mindy Klasky
The Perfect Shoes – Leah R. Cutter
Heart Talk – Rebecca M. Senese
Love Flu – Dayle A. Dermatis
Real Girl – Leslie Claire Walker

 

Here are the deets on my story, “Love Flu“:

Isa juggles being a nanny to tween Gretchen, studying for her MBA, and honing her magical cooking skills. Time for romance? Hah!

Then Gretchen casts an ill-advised love spell, and Isa’s world gets turned upside down.

In ways nobody—including Isa, Gretchen, and Gretchen’s divorced parents—expects.

Sounds like everybody’s going to be in need of Isa’s special hot fudge sauce…

Remember, you can sign up for the Uncollected Anthology newsletter and get the full story descriptions and links well before I get around to sending them!

Explore the universes between…

By Bundle, Dayle A. Dermatis, Novels, Romance, Soul's Road Press,

As I’ve said before (probably enough time that your eyes are starting to roll into the back of your head), I love portal fantasy. I love doorways, garden gates, secret passages, moss-covered stone steps curving away into the mist, you name it. I think it’s about the potential for magic. What special secret thing awaits, just out of sight? Come with me, take my hand and we’ll go find out…

I love portal fantasy so much that I’m editing a volume of it for Fiction River. I can’t say much until the contracts are signed, but the lineup of authors is stupendous! I’ve just figured out my own story—I just need to find the time to write it!

To keep me (and you) satisfied until then, check out the Universe Between bundle from Storybundle. If I wasn’t in this bundle, I’d be making grabby-hands at it. (I still made grabby hands at it. The bonus was that I got a free download for having a novel in the bundle. Mine!) Some of my favorite authors are in this bundle: Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Annie Reed, Leslie Claire Walker, T. Thorn Coyle… (I had the pleasure of copyediting both Leslie’s and Claire’s novels, so I can attest to their marvelousness.)

Here’s the deal: for $5, you get four novels, including mine. For $15, you get five more novels and an anthology of “between” stories. Plus, you can choose to give a portion of the money to an amazing charity, Able Gamers, which helps people with disabilities enjoy the imaginary worlds of video games.

My novel, What Beck’ning Ghost, is an atmospheric gothic romance.

For more information, and to purchase this bundle, visit Storybundle.

But do it soon…this will be available only for eight more days!

If you’d like to get this sort of information—and more!—directly in your In Box each month, you can sign up for my newsletter. Each issue has publication news about stories, collections, novels, and other fun stuff. BONUS: you get a free short story every month! What are you waiting for? Subscribe today!

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Heaven Has Eyes

By Dayle A. Dermatis, Fantasy/SF, Short Stories, Soul's Road Press, Young Adult

Cassie suffers from a chronic disease and hides her sexuality from her family.

Feeling alone and adrift in her new home in Southern California, she turns to crafting little white lies—and maybe little white spells.

But when her only friend disappears, Cassie discovers a deeper magic than she ever thought existed…and must choose whether to come clean once and for all.

Especially to herself.

“Heaven Has Eyes” combines myth and reality in a touching YA short story.

Buy it at any of these fine online retailers:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Smashwords | iBooks

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Breakfast in Bed by Andrea Dale

By Andrea Dale, Erotica, Short Stories, Soul's Road Press

Jennie’s husband, Cal, wakes her up for a naughty meal involving a bit of restraint and some creative use of strawberries and crepes. Breakfast in bed never sounded so tasty—or sexy!—in this wickedly delicious short story from legendary erotica heavy-hitter Andrea Dale.

“Breakfast in Bed” originally appeared in Afternoon Delight: Erotica for Couples (Cleis Press, 2009).

Buy it at any of these fine online retailers:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Smashwords | iBooks

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Living With the Past

By Dayle A. Dermatis, Fantasy/SF, Short Stories, Soul's Road Press,

Former Hollywood party girl Nikki Ashburne sees ghosts—in fact, many of them are her friends. Okay, they’re kind of her only friends. Most ghosts stick around because they’re happy here and have no desire to move on…but sometimes, they need help.

Like when a decades-dead Marilyn Monroe impersonator wants Nikki to find her granddaughter. In Los Angeles.

Yeah. That’ll be easy.

Another story in the Ghosted urban fantasy series featuring Nikki Ashburne, “Living With the Past” originally appeared in Fantastic Detectives (Fiction River, 2014).

Buy it at any of these fine online retailers:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Smashwords | iBooks

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Run away with the Escapist Bundle!

By Bundle, Dayle A. Dermatis, Fantasy/SF, Mystery/Thriller, Novels, Soul's Road Press,

I feel like a kind of lame writer right now because I’m running out of ways to say I’m delighted, happy, chuffed, squeeing, running around the house without pants on flailing my hands about some piece of good news.

I am all of those things over the fact that I’ve been invited into to participate in Storybundle’s Escapist Bundle.

This bundle is based around the Fiction River anthology Recycled Pulp. The stories in the anthology (which is included in the bundle) were all inspired by pulp-like titles, but none of the stories are pulp. They run the gamut of genres, and they’re all unusual and a great read.

The authors in the anthology were asked to include a longer work of fiction that related to our short story. That was tough for me, because my story, “The Imperfect Otter Empire,” is a odd but touching story about a woman watching the otters at the Santa Barbara Zoo (and then Stuff Happens). I don’t have any novels quite like that.

So I suggested Waking the Witch, a gothic mystery with a hint of romance, and the bundle coordinator was on board with that. I think it makes sense. You tell me after you’ve read the story and the novel, okay?

Of the novels and collections in the bundle, I’ve read a few, and they’re marvelous. I’ve read at least something by every author in the bundle, and I’ve loved their work, so I’m pretty confident it’s all wonderful.

This bundle is available for only three weeks, so hop on board now, while you can. You can get any ebook format, worldwide.

For a mere $5 (less than $1/book), you get…

  • Waking the Witch
  • Recycled Pulp
  • Isabel’s Tears by Lisa Silverthorne, a novel about a magical inn
  • The Pale Waters by Kelly Washington, the first novella in a four-part epic journey
  • Hot Waters by Erica Lyon, a steamy sea adventure novel

For $14, you get a bunch of bonus reading material:

  • Rebecca Senese’s ten-story science fiction collection Tales of Possibilities
  • Thomas K. Carpenter’s Revolutionary Magic, a historical fantasy and the first in the Dashkova Memoirs
  • Annie Reed’s A Death in Cumberland, a moody police procedural
  • Nebula Award finalist Cat Rambo’s Neither Here Nor There, a double collection of alt-world and real world fantasy stories
  • New York Times bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s The War and After, five historical fantasy stories of magic and revenge
  • USA Today bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith’s The Slots of Saturn, the origin story for his fan-favorite superhero Poker Boy.

You can pay more, of course, if you think 20 novels/novellas/collections are worth more than $14 (seriously, just round it up to $20, why don’tcha?)—and you can choose how much of that gets donated to the charity SMART (Start Making a Reader Today), which promotes the love of reading for children in Oregon. That is a charity I can get behind one hundred percent.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to run around the house without pants on flailing my hands, then curl up and read some seriously good fiction. I hope you do, too. The reading seriously good fiction in the bundle part. But feel free to run around the house without pants on flailing your hands too.

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The Haunted Bundle is spooky good fun!

By Author, Bundle, Dayle A. Dermatis, Fantasy/SF, Short Stories, Soul's Road Press

The other day I watched a trailer for a horror movie on my computer. I use a standing desk, and by halfway through the trailer, I had backed up until my back was against a wall, as far away from my monitor as I could get. I knew what I was doing, and I was laughing out loud at my own ridiculousness…albeit it was a nervous laughter because I knew something was going to scare me in that trailer. It was just a matter of when.

Point is, most of us liked to be scared—in controlled environments. I might like spooky gothics, you might bloody slasher flicks, but there’s no denying the horror genre is here to say.

Which is not to say the stories in the Haunted Bundle are all scary. Mine isn’t. (I don’t think. It’s got a little suspense.) I haven’t read all of them yet, so I can’t say. The one thing they are all about is fantastic writing. I love the authors I’m in this bundle with!

Here’s the blurb:

Have you ever felt as though someone was watching you, but when you turned around no one was there?

How many times have you been unable to find something, then it later turned up in the exact place you’d searched over and over?

Why does your cat act as though it’s staring at something, even though you can’t see anything?

Just because you can’t see anything doesn’t mean there isn’t something there…

But don’t worry. Ghosts aren’t real.

Or are they?

And look at all these authors:

You can purchase the Haunted Bundle at any of these fine online retailers:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | iBooks | Bundlerabbit

And check out the Goodreads page!

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Uncollected Anthology, Issue 10: Fabulous Familiars

By Dayle A. Dermatis, Fantasy/SF, Soul's Road Press, Uncollected Anthology

Witches and familars go together like shortbread and tea or cheese and wine, and so Fabulous Familiars is the theme of our 10th issue. It doesn’t seem possible that we’ve put out 10 issues already. Thank you, dear reader, for being a part of this project!

Fabulous Familiars required an equally fabulous guest author, and we found just the person in Valerie Brook. Her story is a whole new take on the idea of a familiar, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, as well as all the others. I hope you do, too.

“Hedging the Witch”

An honest politician: far more rare than hedgewitches, at least in Portland, Oregon.

When one such politician asks hedgewitches Holly and Willow to investigate whether his rival employs a magical advantage, Holly’s familiar, Cam, must support Holly through a treacherous investigation…or risk losing her forever.

The first story in a spellbinding new urban fantasy series by the author of the Nikki Ashburne Ghosted stories.

Buy it at any of these fine online retailers:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Smashwords | iBooks

The other incredibly fabulous authors—go check out their stories!

“In the Matter of Snake Vs. Stone,” Michele Lang

Something wicked walks in Buffalo…

Rikki Pollard, a divorce lawyer for the down and out in gritty Buffalo, NY, makes a living out of rendering asunder what the Lord had brought together. Despite her unholy trade, Rikki never expected to encounter Old Scratch himself in open court.

But now she has to rescue her young client, Chance Stone, from a fate worse than death. It’s Rikki vs. damnation in a courtroom custody case like no other. To save Chance, she will have to outwit the devil himself, with only a little voodoo-related backup. A supernatural courtroom adventure that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

“Un-Familiar,” Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Winston’s familiar Ruby, a small black cat, avoids dogs whenever possible. So when Winston finds her in cahoots with a toy poodle-Chihuahua mix, he wants to know why.

Ruby, usually so vocal, says nothing. Her silence, that dog, and a storm in the Oregon Coast community of Seavy Village all combine into one of the most memorable days of Winston’s life.

“Rusch is a great storyteller.”
—RT Book Reviews

“The Mouse Who Laughed,” Leah Cutter

As a familiar, Ina expected to bond happily ever after with a single master or mistress.

Not two.

And certainly not three.

But when her current Master turns on her, attacks her, she breaks the bond and flees for her life.

What’s a poor mouse to do?

If you need a pick-me-up, “The Mouse Who Laughed” fits the bill nicely as a warm fantasy about learning to stand on your own two (or four) feet.

“The Reveal Within,” by Rebecca M. Senese

Eed graduates from an insect familiar to a raven familiar, but his first pairing with a pushy warlock ends in disaster. Eed barely escapes before the warlock enslaves him, breaking the rule of cooperation between witch and familiar.

But when Eed tries to return to the raven clan, he finds himself blacklisted. Facing enslavement to the warlock or getting busted back to insect, Eed turns rogue.

How can Eed clear his name before the raven clan catches up?

Guest Author

“Aunt Fabulous and the Talking Tattoo,” Valerie Brook

Magnificent Maggie Fontaine has been around the mysteries of magic all her life. But when she wakes up with an underage hangover and a talking press-on priestess tattoo on her arm, all Mag wants is for both things to go away. When Aunt Fabulous turns out to have vanished overnight, and it’s up to Mag to find her guardian, will the strange talking tattoo be a help or a hindrance?

Want More?

We do have a website and a newsletter, for the sole purpose of telling you when the next batch of stories is available. Check them out!

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