Friday, June 26, 2015
New Site!
Thank you all for your support over the years! To stay in touch, with the most up-to-date information on my writing, please follow me at Dave Ferraro's Comics-and-More. I'll be sharing writing and updates on my projects, as well as talking about the art that inspires me, including comic, books, music and movies. Many of the features you enjoy on this site have transferred to the new site, so please check it out!! :)
Monday, January 12, 2015
Second HOTD Omnibus
For those of you who need to catch up on Hunters of the Dark, a second omnibus has been released, collecting books 4-6!
Thursday, January 8, 2015
The Abyss On Sale!!!
The Abyss (Hunters of the Dark #6) is on sale now! Find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords!
The hunters have been divided.
The hunters have been divided.
Those still under the tutelage of Valor are in hiding as
Agent Ross hunts them down with their former friends. But Shanna Hunt and her friends are still
fighting the good fight, and decide to use Amelia’s power source to create a
gateway to the realm of Paimon, a terrible demon who would devour their souls.
When things go terribly wrong in Paimon’s dimension, the
hunters find themselves thrown into a dark world that has many similarities to
their own. While Shanna doesn’t quite
understand what is going on in this broken world, she does see that the choices
of the hunters themselves have dire consequences for their future.
Wednesday, December 24, 2014
Merry Christmas!!!
My gift to you: Secret Santa for FREE!!! Just use coupon code ZY45Z upon checkout at Smashwords. Hurry because it's only good through the 26th! Enjoy, and I appreciate all of you!!!
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Secret Santa - The First Chapter!!
Chapter
One
“Watch
where you’re going!”
Holly
Hamilton jumped at the harsh voice, her hands immediately shooting up into the
air, as if to prove that she was holding nothing.
A
large woman in a fur coat, carrying a little white dog far too adorable to
belong to such an ugly person, glared at Holly, her round cheeks flushed, her
eyes searching Holly suspiciously.
Holly
grinned back as an apology until the woman turned on her heel with a practiced
“Hmph.”
Letting
out a deep breath, Holly lowered her hands and searched the crowded street for
the man in the business suit she had been about to pickpocket before Miss Hmph
had forced her to abort her mission. She
scowled as she saw the man duck into a nearby shop. It was one thing to “accidentally” bump into
someone on a crowded street to grab their wallet. It was quite another to try to pick a pocket
in a store with few exits, and no crowd to disappear into.
She
debated for a moment on whether she should wait for him outside and try again,
but the crowd was already noticeably tapering off. She would have to target someone else,
although she hated losing such easy money.
As
she scanned the people milling about, hurrying home after work or running
errands, she scolded herself for not being more careful. She was actually lucky that the woman had
yelled at her. Had Holly been in the
process of grabbing the man’s wallet when she’d bumped into Miss Hmph, she
would have been in a real pickle. She
had to be more observant before she made a move. Normally she was more attuned to her
surroundings, but with the meager prizes she’d managed to swipe that day, she
had to make up for her losses by being quicker, and thus, more daring than
usual. Or Mr. Grott would really make
her pay. She would be lucky to get
anything to eat tonight.
As
if on cue, her stomach growled, and her determination soared. She would
be eating tonight. On a cold winter
night such as this, she needed a nice hot meal to top off the day.
She
felt the inside pockets of her coat, assuring herself that the lumps of wallets
and jewelry that she’d procured so far were still there. She had more than enough for Mr. Grott to
approve of her work. She was a natural
sneak-thief, probably the best of his “students.” Her younger brother Matthew, on the other
hand, was clumsy and awkward at it, and usually ended up with only a wallet or
two to show for a full day’s work. Which
is why Holly had to work so much harder.
She could have easily gotten by herself, but she had to look out for her
brother. She’d promised her parents she
would, and she never broke a promise.
Turning
to take a gander in the other direction, Holly gasped as a woman carrying a
pile of boxes up to her eyes, walked right into her.
The
woman let out a startled cry and fell forward, crushing the largest box, and
spilling the contents of one of her bags.
Holly landed on her butt in a pile of slush, which quickly soaked
through her jeans and sent an icy chill up her spine. She jumped to her feet in a flash, then
thought better of it and leaned over to help the woman gather her pyramid of
boxes.
“Oh,”
the woman surveyed the damage with a worried expression. She blinked through thick glasses as she
turned to Holly. “I’m so sorry. I hope I haven’t injured you.”
“Not
at all,” Holly assured her as she dropped several chains of jewelry back into
the bag, carefully sliding two of the more expensive-looking ones up her coat
sleeve. She handed the bag to the woman
and looked down at the crushed box sympathetically. “I’m afraid one box didn’t make it.”
“Quite
so,” the woman agreed with a sigh. She
pulled off the box top to regard a broken toy airplane. “Such a shame too. It was a beautiful toy.” With a shrug, she carried the box over to a
nearby trashcan. The box wouldn’t fit,
so she dumped the contents into the garbage, before leaving the box propped up
against it. Then, without giving it a
second thought, the woman hefted her stack of boxes up again, and continued on
her way.
Holly
stared after her for a moment as the teetering mountain of boxes disappeared
into the crowd. Some people have more money than they know what to do with, she
decided as she walked over to the trash can.
But they make for easy pickings,
at least.
She
lifted the lid of the trash and gazed down at the airplane. It gleamed white in the fading sunlight, a
candy apple red stripe down one side, from propeller to tail. One of its wings had broken off, but it was
otherwise in perfect condition. A little
superglue would probably do the trick.
She reached in and carefully pulled the plane out, as well as the remote
control that had been dumped unceremoniously beside it. With a smile, she placed the items into the
crumpled box the woman had left behind.
Matthew would love it. He was
only nine, four years younger than herself, and still loved playing with toys
like this. She imagined his eyes
lighting up when he saw it, and quickly made for home, deciding that the extra
jewelry would be enough to earn them supper for the night. And if she got home before him, she could
quickly glue the wing back on and it would be waiting for him when he arrived.
As
was her custom, she stopped by the public library on the way home. On really profitable days, when she was able
to secure a good amount of valuables early in the afternoon, she wiled away the
hours in the grand building, walking up and down the aisles and sitting down
with a stack of books to lose herself in tales of daring young men, and girls
with magical powers. But more often than
not, she made a very brief stop, as she did today.
Climbing
the wide staircase, she looked around quickly before ducking behind one of the
stone lions that stood sentinel on either side of the double doors. Squatting down, she pulled on a loose brick
and peeked into the hollow space behind it, a dark hole that only she knew
about. She reached her hand inside and
felt the reassuring presence of a wad of bills.
She always went through the wallets she swapped, and took a few bills
for herself. She liked to think of it as
a tip. One that Mr. Grott didn’t need to
know about. It wasn’t as if he actually
paid them anyway, so it served him right.
And one day, she would have enough saved up so that she and Matthew
could leave, and start a new life for themselves. A Life that didn’t involve petty crime.
She
added two twenty dollar bills to her hidden cache and replaced the brick,
before slipping back down the stairs and hurrying home.
As
luck would have it, Matthew hadn’t returned, and she had just enough time to
glue the wing onto the plane and figure out the instructions while it
dried. Holly considered the plane, which
glistened in the light filtering in through the dingy windows of the orphanage
bedroom. There were four beds in the
room, fitted with rough sheets boasting holes and smelling of mold. Whenever an inspector came through, Grott
would change the bedding, but until then, they would keep washing and bleaching
the same sheets themselves, with the meager cleaning supplies he allowed, until
they were all but rags.
“What’s
that?” Patty, a girl the same age as her brother asked with interest, as she
knelt next to the table where the plane sat, awaiting its first flight.
“A
present for Matthew.”
Patty
squinted at it and poked at the propeller, which spun weakly under the probe.
“Don’t
touch,’ Holly hissed, slapping her hand away.
“It’s drying.”
“I
never get presents,” the girl pouted, crossing her arms. “Why does Matthew get one when he can’t even
pick a pocket properly?”
“Patty
picked a pocket properly,” Aaron, an older boy, said with a laugh as he entered
the room. He froze when he saw the
plane. “Whoa!”
“Whoa,
what?” Matthew asked, coming in behind him.
His gaze fell on the plane and he tilted his blonde head curiously, his
blue eyes sparkling as they drank in the toy.
“Whoa!”
Holly
smiled with satisfaction. “A present for
you, Matthew. It was broken, but I fixed
it up, right as rain.” She puffed out
her chest proudly. “What do you think?”
“Whoa,”
Matthew repeated, stepping up to the table shyly. He picked it up quickly, causing Holly to
wince, but the wing held as he examined it.
“Does it fly?” he wondered, his gaze shifting to the remote control.
“It
flies,” Holly confirmed, and watched with pleasure as he immediately began to
fiddle with the controls.
“Let
me try!” Aaron demanded, pushing him out of the way. He always was sort of a bully.
“It’s
Matthew’s,” Holly said sternly, glaring daggers his way. “You can try it out after Matthew, if he allows it.”
With
a grumble, Aaron relented. “It’s lame
anyway,” he decided as he plodded out the door.
“I bet it doesn’t even fly.”
But
fly it did. Patty clapped happily as
Matthew flew it around the room expertly, his tongue sticking out from between
his lips in concentration. He had
mastered sharp turns and kept flying it quickly toward the walls before making
it veer away at the last second. It gave
Holly a heart attack every time. He was
just getting the hang of loop-de-loops when the bedroom door opened with a
thunderous crash as it swung into the opposite wall.
Matthew
paled and turned his attention toward landing the plane as Holly sauntered up
to Mr. Grott, her eyes not missing Aaron lingering in the doorway, a wide grin
on his face. The dirty rat.
Mr.
Grott’s beady eyes grew even smaller as he took in the scene before him. His thick mustache twitched beneath his
hooked nose, his dense eyebrows lifting in response to the plane. He had a receding hairline, which he tried to
hide by combing his hair forward, but it only served to accentuate the hair
loss. Holly theorized that he grew out
his mustache to make up for his head, but whatever his reasons, the overall
look screamed “villain.” And that’s
exactly how he acted, and how Holly perceived him. Perhaps he’d realized that he was a bad guy
and figured he may as well embrace the look.
“Hello,
Mr. Grott. Did you get today’s
donations?” she asked sweetly.
He
called them “donations,” like it would fool them into thinking that the people
they stole from had willingly let them take their valuables. Usually Holly refused to call them by the
term, but she didn’t need to provoke him at the moment.
Mr.
Grott ignored her, sidestepping her so that he was in full view of the plane
that Matthew had managed to land perfectly.
Matthew was a genius like that, and managed to get the hang of things
really quickly. He read manuals for fun,
for Pete’s sake, when his nose wasn’t stuck in his favorite book, that
was. The dictionary. Talk about boring. Before the accident, their dad had even let
Matthew watch him take apart an engine.
Matthew had been in seventh heaven.
“Well,
well,” Mr. Grott said in an oily voice as he cracked his knuckles before him,
as if in anticipation. “What is this,
then?”
“It’s
Matthew’s,” Holly said matter-of-factly.
“Is
that so?” His eyes pounced on her. “And how did Matthew manage to procure such a
fine airplane?”
Matthew
looked like he was about to cry, which made Holly’s blood boil even hotter than
it already was. She knew she shouldn’t
talk back to Mr. Grott, that it would only make matters worse, but she couldn’t
help herself.
“Not
that it’s any of your business, but some lady was throwing it away, and I saved
it. It only needed a little TLC and it
worked fine.”
“Hmmm. So, you’re saying that you didn’t buy it?”
Mr. Grott prodded. “Perhaps with some of
the…donations?”
Holly
gritted her teeth to keep from screaming.
“I told you how I got it.”
Mr.
Grott nodded, like it all made sense to him now. “So, you’re saying that you’re not skimming
off the top of the donations you bring to me?”
He snorted. “Well, I guess I’ll
have to trust that you wouldn’t cheat me.”
And
with that, he took a step in Matthew’s direction, making sure to step directly
on the airplane, earning a definitive crunch.
Holly’s
heart sank and she avoided looking her brother’s way. When he was upset, his lower lip trembled and
his eyes shined with tears. She couldn’t
face that right now, or she would punch the smug grin off of Mr. Grott’s face,
and that wouldn’t be good for either of them.
They wouldn’t have a place to sleep tonight, let alone something to eat.
“How
clumsy of me,” Mr. Grott said in mock surprise.
“You
did that on purpose,” Patty frowned.
He
sneered. “A lesson in life. For free.
Quite a bargain.” Then he turned
and swept out of the room, an evil-sounding chuckle following him. He had to have worked on that laugh. It sounded way too super-villainy to be
natural.
“No
fair,” Patty grumbled. “I didn’t even
get a turn.”
Holly sighed, staring down at the remnants of the plane. The wing had come free again, but that was the least of its problems. It was crushed and shattered in places that simply couldn't be repaired. Without looking her brother's way, she turned on her heel. "I'll get a dust pan and broom."
Suprise Book Release!
Ahead of the release of the new Hunters of the Dark book, I have released my first middle grade novel, just in time for the holidays!
Here's the synopsis:
"Holly Hamilton hates Christmas.
Since her parents died last year, she's been watching out for her brother in an orphanage, where they pick pockets for the unforgiving Mr. Grott, who's some sort of supervillian-in-training. The looming holiday brings back painful memories for Holly, and her brother getting his hopes up for presents he will never receive serves to make her feel angrier than ever.
That all changes one day when circumstances (and a sleigh pulled by a gaggle of ornery reindeer) whisk the orphans to The North Pole, where they meet creatures they'd only read about in fairytales. Thus begins Holly's adventures in Tinseltown, where she learns the logistics behind Christmas, and uncovers the secret origins of the elves, and even Santa himself."
I wrote Secret Santa last year, and poured all of my enthusiasm and love for Christmas into it. I hope you all love it as much as I do! And if you're a fan of Oz, you're in for a nice treat!
You can purchase the ebook now from Amazon Barnes & Noble and Smashwords.
Here's the synopsis:
"Holly Hamilton hates Christmas.
Since her parents died last year, she's been watching out for her brother in an orphanage, where they pick pockets for the unforgiving Mr. Grott, who's some sort of supervillian-in-training. The looming holiday brings back painful memories for Holly, and her brother getting his hopes up for presents he will never receive serves to make her feel angrier than ever.
That all changes one day when circumstances (and a sleigh pulled by a gaggle of ornery reindeer) whisk the orphans to The North Pole, where they meet creatures they'd only read about in fairytales. Thus begins Holly's adventures in Tinseltown, where she learns the logistics behind Christmas, and uncovers the secret origins of the elves, and even Santa himself."
I wrote Secret Santa last year, and poured all of my enthusiasm and love for Christmas into it. I hope you all love it as much as I do! And if you're a fan of Oz, you're in for a nice treat!
You can purchase the ebook now from Amazon Barnes & Noble and Smashwords.
Sunday, November 9, 2014
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