B. Bentley Summers has a new MM paranormal/horror book out:
During the rise of Nazi Germany, Hagen Messer joins the Royal Air Force as an American soldier who specializes in tracking. He’s attached to British commandos and given a seemingly simple mission—to find a captive and destroy a dam—but everything goes awry. Hagen’s plane crashes into Germany’s Wehr Forest and he has to use his extrasensory abilities to track the captive to nearby Wehr Wolff Castle, a secret Nazi base where vile experiments are being conducted.
Hagen and his surviving team members must sneak into the castle and devise a way to destroy the experimental labs creating diabolical creatures. Hagen is horrified to find Nazis and scientists with no scruples, and at the most inconvenient time, he learns that he may be in love with one of his teammates, an Irishman named Liam. In order to protect his love and his friends, Hagen must feign nonchalance amidst pure degeneracy and suspicion. Hagen soon discovers, though, that he is in over his head.
What may not only redeem him, but also save his lover and friends, is a childhood past and a darkness lurking deep inside him, just waiting to be engaged.
Book One of The Wehr Wolff Chronicles.
Giveaway
Guest Post – Plot, Characters and Worldbuilding
Before I can explain how I came up with this story and plot I should share this…
I am into anything supernatural and any hybrid or type of vampire/ werewolf. I loved action movies such as Underworld and Blade. The romanticized and character driven film, Interview with a Vampire, was my favorite. Before these films came out though I had read Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, Cycle of the Werewolf, and IT.
Then there’s the World War II era which had so many complexities of new emerging technologies and so many countries and people involved that it’s hard for a doctorate of history to keep track of, let alone a historian buff. Then at that time there’s the spy networks, secret agents, and double agents gathering intelligence and manipulating their enemies to get what they need. And there’s the Nazi regime with its vast armies and weaponry; but nothing is more interesting than the Nazi’s interest in the occult.
I first was introduced to Nazi’s obsession with the occult when I watched a movie called Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark. A film that takes place in the era of Nazi Germany.
From there I started reading about the Nazi pursuit on different facets of occultism. I happened to come across the word Werwolf one day while researching. Werwolf is technically the German word for werewolf.
Werwolf it turned out was one of Hitler’s military headquarters. And second, it was a Nazi plan that began in 1944 to create a resistance force which would operate behind enemy lines as the Allies advanced through Germany. It never happened though.
This word, Werwolf, stuck with me.
I toiled with a new word and came up eventually with Wehr Wolff. I wanted to tie it to a Germany family lineage of werewolves dating to the 1500s. I even wrote a rough, very rough, first draft of how the Wehr Wolff legend began. But rather continuing with that novel I leaped a few centuries ahead and wrote about something I had been wanting do do for years – write about supernatural creatures in Nazi Germany.
So I invented Wehr Forest where everything started including ties to werewolves, actual shapeshifters.
Excerpt
Hagen – May 10, 1940
Somewhere over the border of Switzerland & Southern Nazi Germany
The wind whistled through the shattered window and into the airplane’s cabin. The draft had a cold bite, the air a metallic smell. A tremble spasmed through Hagen, and he crossed his arms over his chest and shivered.
On the row of seats facing him, blood spatter spread over the chairs and over the remaining wall. The engine nearest him sputtered.
This time, it’ll surely stop.
He rose from his seat and looked out through a nearby window to the wing. Black smoke poured from the spinning propeller but then cleared, and the engine roared back to life, setting into a steady thrum. He stared past the wing to the mountain range below. The plane passed through a heavy white cloud, and he sat back down in his seat.
One recurrent thought plagued him. If we crash, will it hurt? Breathe. Just breathe.
Raising his hands, he stared once again at the blood that had partially dried on them. Not his, thankfully. He wiped them on his shirt-front, which was soaked with blood, then reached for his forehead and winced as his fingertips dusted his wound.
Shouting from the cockpit drew his attention.
Lt. David sat in the one-man cockpit and turned so he could shout up to the white-haired pilot assistant, Alan Hodges. Hodges stood close to the pilot’s chair, holding onto a map and yelling down.
Someone grabbed Hagen’s knee and shouted at him gruffly. He met Sgt. Collins’s gaze. The man’s short salt-and-pepper stubbled face had specks of blood in it. The large man sat back on his haunches, his belly protruding over his belt. He peered at Hagen’s forehead and nodded with approval.
“Cheers, Kraut, received your first war wound.” Sgt. Collins leaned in and touched Hagen’s paratrooper jacket. “That blood yours?”
Hagen shook his head, licked his lips, and then asked, “We on the right course, Sarge?”
Sgt. Collins cupped his hand to his ear and furrowed his brow.
“Are we on the right course?” Hagen shouted.
Sgt. Collins glanced up at the front of the plane, where Lt. David and Officer Hodges argued, then brought his eyes back to Hagen.
“Have no bloody idea, Kraut. All I know is that I hope we don’t land in Hitler’s front lawn.”
Hagen nodded and clenched his fists. The sergeant shouted something else at him, but Hagen stared over his shoulder at the woman on the other side of the airplane. Roesia. He barely knew her, but it was comforting to see a survivor from the onslaught. So many had died. Her face was pasty white, and she had a vacant stare.
Sgt. Collins snapped his fingers in front of Hagen’s face, gaining his attention once again.
“Bloody hell, you’re completely out of it!” Sgt. Collins said, patting Hagen’s chest and sides, looking for any wounds. “Nothing. You’re lucky, Kraut.”
Sgt. Collins stood, went toward the tail, and yelled down to the lower gun turret. “O’Malley, say something, you Irishman!”
“Me arse is killing me, Sarge!”
A smile formed on Hagen’s face at hearing his friend’s voice.
The sergeant moved toward the tail and yelled up to the upper gun turret. “Kirby, keep your wits about you! If those bandits come at us, you take as many of them as you can.”
Corporal Kirby yelled something unintelligible. Hagen shifted in his seat and stared down as a viscous red fluid ran across the floor. A photograph lay near his foot. Reaching down, he plucked it off the ground—the one of him and his father from a year or so ago. Except half of it was now bloodstained and he could only see himself. He studied the broad-shouldered striking nineteen-year-old with a full-face grin that made him radiant. The picture could easily have been of one of those Hollywood actors, but it was of himself.
He leaned his head against the chair as his teeth chattered and his eyes became impossibly heavy.
Seems like so much has happened since then. But I arrived in England just two days ago? That’s it? Just two days?
A slap of metal caused his gaze to shift to the other side of the plane. A commando by the name of Commander Ford picked up the assault rifles and opened each ammo clip to check the bullets inside. Once satisfied, he laid them on top of a tarp that had turned a dark maroon from the blood-drenched floor. A second commando sat in a seat next to him, twirling a serrated knife in one hand.
The spinning knife mesmerized Hagen and helped him ignore the macabre scene around him.
Yes, it was. Two days ago, I rode into Shoreham Royal Air Force Base.
A freshly trained paratrooper from America with no war experience. While my brother’s mortally wounded body lay in front of me years ago, it was nothing like this.
Memories of the last couple of days reeled through his mind.
Author Bio
Bryce is a psychologist, gay author, and the founder of Queer Sense Theory.
Not sure what he wanted to do in life, Bryce spent his 20s exploring different jobs and landed one job in Bangkok, Thailand, which has yet to be topped. Deciding it was time to get a career, Bryce completed his doctorate degree in psychology at the University of Houston. Upon graduation he worked for the Department of Veteran Affairs for six years before becoming a contract psychologist who provides examinations to veterans, helping them get their disability and pension entitlements.
Bryce writes popular fiction genres that fall in the areas of Sci-Fi, Horror, Fantasy, Thriller, Supernatural, Suspense or a blend all of them, and he has a passion for gay fiction. He has self-published several gay fiction short stories and a novel that follow the character, Daemon the Demon Boy. He also published YA Post-Apocalyptic novels, Amen to Rot series as well as The Zombie Squad. The Zombie Squad was a finalist for the 2016 Readers Favorite in YA Horror. Rotville is a self-published Sci-Fi Thriller/ Horror that has been self-published was a finalist for the 2016 US Book News Contest.
He is also the founder of Queer Sense theory which provides a theoretical model on how people form attitudes towards LGBTQ+ individuals and shape one’s gender and sexual orientation identity. The theory looks closely at the interaction between social models, language, and attachment, or human connections, affect one’s feelings and thereby influence attitudes. Queer Sense is currently under review by a literary agency and will hopefully be published soon.
A new middle-grade werewolf book as well as a gay erotic urban fantasy book are in the pre-publishing phase.
Wehr Wolff Castle is the first installment of The Wehr Wolff Chronicles.