QSFer Alex Silver has a new MM (gay/Trans FTM) paranormal romance out: “Dan’s Hauntastic Haunts Investigates: Goodman Dairy.”
When ghosts reach across the veil, Daniel Collins is there to tell their stories.
Dan is a vlogging ghost hunter. He has devoted his life to documenting paranormal activity. In his converted van, he travels around the country exploring haunted sites. He loves the thrill of filming restless spirits.
Chad Brewer, skeptic, works for an insurance company. He doesn’t believe in ghosts, but watching Dan’s vlog is his guilty pleasure. The cute vlogger is accident prone. He has Chad’s work extension on speed-dial. The two talk whenever Dan gets hurt during an investigation, a frequent occurrence.
When Chad loses his job for approving too many claims, Dan offers him a position as his personal assistant. The pair sets out to investigate a haunted dairy barn for the vlog’s next video series. The catch is that they must live and work together in Dan’s tiny traveling home.
As the paranormal activity at the haunted dairy ramps up, so does the romantic tension between the two men. Can the love between a skeptic and a social media sensation conquer a vengeful ghost?
Dan’s Hauntastic Haunts is a paranormal MM romance between a gay vlogger and his trans personal assistant. Buckle up for a hauntastic good time.
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Excerpt
Dan Collins, ghost hunter, was trending on social media. This was it. The moment I’d been living for since I started my vlog channel. My moment to shine.
Too bad that instead of incontrovertible proof that ghosts walk among us, I’d become an overnight vlogging sensation because I fell. Through—not down—the rotted out steps of the old deserted building I was investigating. Over a quarter of a million views and everyone was yucking it up because I almost broke my neck.
At least I had good insurance, the ambulance trip and treatment for my broken leg were both covered. And my phone survived the fall, even if some of my ghost hunting equipment did not.
The footage captured the characteristic lens flare of a ghost in the corner of the frame right before I took my plunge back to the ground floor.
No one cared about that. No, all they saw was my expression of shocked horror as the ground gave way under me. My arms windmilling, my expensive gear smashing down the stairs and then I fell out of frame.
People posted reaction videos to my video. Kids reenacted my facial expression at the moment the ghost touched me. None of them seemed to notice the evidence of a spirit pushing me onto the rotten stairs. Only my most devoted subscribers pointed out the other presence in the frame.
The social media frenzy took off with me stuck in a hospital bed with nothing but my phone for company. Stacy quit once it was clear I would not die. She claimed she hadn’t signed on to risk her neck as my personal assistant. In all honesty, I couldn’t blame her. This wasn’t the first time I’d ended up with injuries while capturing footage.
It wouldn’t be the last time. Not that it was my fault. It was just that hauntings drove the living away. So they showed up in places that were falling apart.
By the time they generated enough buzz as urban legends to reach my ears and became accessible to the public, haunted places got rundown.
It also wasn’t the first time I’d lost an assistant to my injury prone nature. Stacy had lasted for almost a year. Zack, the assistant before her, quit after a couple months. Others had come and gone too. Martha, my first hire, quit after our first haunting.
Martha preceded me into the building to film my entrance. Her first step into a spider web had resulted in her screaming at coming face to face with the web’s occupant and then running back out of the building. Martha hadn’t been my best hiring decision ever, but I was still new to figuring out the whole employer thing.
My vlog, which I started after high school, took off enough to consider supporting myself with it when I was a community college freshman. I developed a loyal core of followers. And I put out quality content.
My brand started as more of a ‘dare me to stay overnight in the spookiest spots on earth’ gimmick. But after my experiences road tripping to various spooky spots all around the Northeastern US, I’d started to believe in ghosts. How could I doubt with all the weird stuff that happened?
My subscribers agreed. Ghosts were real, and we were on a quest to prove it. I started getting gifts of ghost hunting gear and researching it more myself.
A good quarter of my webisodes were just talking about the ways we could measure paranormal activity. On my site fans discussed what would constitute incontrovertible proof of a haunting these days. In an age with digital media being what it was, skeptics could refute any evidence we found.
The other half of my video archives were the hauntings. Like the Old Miller House. Where I fell.
I sighed and refreshed my landing page. The view counts had ticked past three hundred thousand now.
I got an email notification. Since my video took off, my fan-mail had increased on a massive scale. I considered ignoring it. I used the term ‘fan’ in a loose sense, most of the people writing to me after the accident thought I was a joke.
But the preview in the notification for this message showed it was from my insurance carrier. They had denied my latest claim. Not again, ugh.
It probably said something about me that I had my favorite insurance agent’s extension saved to my speed dial. Heck, it said something that I even had a favorite insurance agent.
Stacy said it wasn’t normal. She joked that I should add a channel to my vlog rating the nation’s ERs since I spent so much time in them. Setting bones and getting stitches.
I suspected she was right about the not normal part. But my job could be dangerous. It wasn’t like haunted sites were famous for their impeccable maintenance. I dialed Chad’s direct line. He picked up on the third ring with his usual professional greeting.
“Chorus Insurance, Chad speaking, how may I help you this evening?”
“Hey, Chad, it’s me again, your favorite customer.”
There was a beat of silence.
“Mr. Collins?”
“Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner!”
Chad sighed into the phone. Well, that was a break from the cool professionalism, progress on my campaign to wear him down from a call center bot.
“What can I do for you this time, Mr. Collins?”
Author Bio
Alex Silver grew up mostly in Northern Maine and is currently living in Canada with a spouse, two kids, and three birds. Alex is a trans guy who started writing fiction as a child and never stopped.
| Amazon Buy Link | https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YSV2ZNQ |
| Author Website | https://alexsilverauthor.wordpress.com/ |
| Author Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/groups/PsionsofSPIREreaders/?ref=bookmarks |