Wolfwraith by John Bushore

John Bushore writes a variety of genres. I reviewed one of his releases, "Prisoners of Gender," and thought it was a blast (read my review here). I also loved "Friends in Dark Places," published through Sam's Dot Publishing (read my review here). Wolfwraith is his latest book from Damnation Press.

WOLFWRAITH, a paranormal/suspense novel is published by Damnation Books. And let me state clearly that, despite the cover, it’s NOT a werewolf novel, but a mystery that combines an exotic location – False Cape State Park on the coast of Virginia– with Native American mysticism, shipwreck legends and Pre-Colonial witches. I volunteered in this wilderness park (where visitors must hike or bike in) a few years back and it has enough “spooky” stuff to make anyone think twice about camping there.

Buy Wolfwraith here

John Talks About the Book

I wrote Wolfwraith several years ago as a personal challenge. Could I take a locale that I was familiar with and create an interesting story-line? At the time, I volunteered at a remote park, five miles from the nearest road. There were wild horses, feral pigs, weathered cemeteries, the remains of an old church, and plenty of legends and shipwreck lore. The park was named False Cape because the early inhabitants would use torches to imitate the lighthouses that marked the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay. Many captains were fooled into running their ships aground, where their cargoes were “salvaged.” This is how I got interested in Virginia history and I think I came up with a damned good story that will make you think twice about going camping in the wilderness.

The sequel to Wolfwraith, titled Wendigo is about halfway done. I set it aside for a while because I felt like I was wasting time writing a sequel to a work that hadn’t been published. Like I mentioned with the muse, it’s all in my head, just have to put it down.

Excerpt from Wolfwraith:

Alex cut the engine back to idle as they nosed into the marsh grass. Once in position, he steadied the boat with an oar while they considered their find.

“What now?” asked Shadow, feeling uneasy. “Do we leave her so they can get pictures or anything?”

He hoped it would be the case. He'd seen plenty of bodies in his time, but none had been a young woman and he hadn't had to pull them out of a bay. Or maybe the rocking of the boat was throwing his stomach into a cauldron of nausea.

“No, we’ll take her in. It’s obviously nothing more than a drowning.” Alex pushed the boat closer with the oar. “Can you handle it?”

“Yeah, of course.”

Shadow reached out and grabbed the dainty arm with his right hand. Bile rose in his throat at the unnatural coldness of no-longer-quite-human-feeling skin and the sponginess of slack muscles beneath. The corpse emitted no strong odor, but the rotted-fish stench of the tidal marsh, which Shadow normally didn’t even notice, clogged his nostrils. The putt-putting of the idling outboard motor seemed far away, but the reek of the engine’s oily exhaust seared the tissue inside his nose.

He sensed something else, too. His inner soul responded as he touched the cold, dead wrist. He had once shocked himself with a faulty extension cord and this cold feeling was the spiritual equivalent of that physical electrical shock—a shiver of dread whispering its way up his arm. The knowledge of evil having recently been here was intangible, but undeniable. He’d sometimes been present when his grandmother Min had called upon ancient spirits, even though she worshipped alongside her husband at the Baptist church. Now, many years later, he recognized the presence of something not of this world.

Ignoring his emotional turmoil, he concentrated on the job at hand and applied a steady pressure while he pulled the arm closer to the boat. Her brown hair floated in the water, undulating with the waves. Leaning over the gunwale, he switched and grabbed the arm with the claw and reached his clumsy right hand down into the frigid water, searching around for a grip to pull the body up. By accident, he went down into her shirt and under her bra. Suddenly, to his surprise, he cupped a breast in an obscene parody of a teen-age grope.

"He's a pervert you honor. Who knows what more would have happened if I hadn't come in?"