Title: The Search for Sasha Lockwood
Author: Thomas Grant Bruso
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 02/25/2025
Heat Level: 1 – No Sex
Pairing: Female/Female
Length: 10250
Genre: Paranormal, Genre/lit, paranormal, family-drama, new adult, lesbian, bisexual, camping trip, schoolfriends, disappearance, Bigfoot, police
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Description
Something is stalking the campgrounds at Pine Hill Creek.
Rumor has it that local folklore about the notorious Bigfoot is responsible for the mystery of a missing young woman.
When eighteen-year-old high school senior Sasha Lockwood vanishes without a trace while camping with her friends, fear and horror sequester a small community. Local and federal law enforcement officers begin an exhausting twenty-four-hour investigation of seventy acres of vast forest, looking for the victim.
The tight-knit community is in an uproar, horrified by these unexpected events. An unrelenting sheriff’s department and a media-savage system doggedly interrogate Sasha’s parents and close friends.
What happened the night Sasha Lockwood disappeared? Is it real or part of a cruel joke? Is Bigfoot responsible, or is something more sinister at play in the deep, dark woods?
The Search for Sasha Lockwood
Thomas Grant Bruso © 2025
All Rights Reserved
Journal #1
December 23, 2021
Last day before Christmas break. Today was another shitty day of catcalls and sexual harassment at Bedwell County High.
Being everybody’s target is exhausting. Going to school five days a week is an energy drainer, but putting on a mask to hide my true feelings is burdensome. My presence in school elicits red warning signs all day: walking down the hall, sitting in class or in lunch, minding my business. I get called “freak, whore, monster-chaser.”
Other students ridicule my interest in folklore and the supernatural. I don’t care what anybody says. I believe in Bigfoot and vampires. Who cares? Apparently, everybody, even my close friends, who look at me strangely when I talk about finding Bigfoot.
He’s out there. I know it.
Journal #2
January 1, 2022
I hate living. I hate people. If I’d had it my way, I’d be home-schooled. But then, I’d have to deal with my suffocating, obnoxious parents.
I stayed home from school today. It was quiet and pleasant to have the entire house to myself. No distractions from my loathsome mother who checks in on me every fifteen minutes when I’m not feeling well or just to be nosy.
She drives me crazy. I’m glad my parents are out of my hair—today, at least. I can finally breathe.
I slept most of the morning and early afternoon. Leon called to see if I was all right. I told him I was fine, but I didn’t need anything. He’s clingy like my mother sometimes, but I can bear him. I talked to Annie, who told me she wanted to come over and hang out. I told her I wasn’t feeling well—I hate lying to Annie. I like her a lot. She scares away all the darkness from my life. I really want Annie and me to move in together one day. That’d make my life so much more bearable.
Journal #3
February 3, 2022
Annie wanted to watch a movie after school tonight. I told her it’d be awkward because my parents were fighting. I hate when my parents fight. They’re loud. My dad takes it from my mom like a champ, but I know he’s hurting too. He’s so aloof and quiet it makes him look weak, though. He lets my mother walk all over him until he can’t take it anymore and yells back.
Journal #4
March 21, 2022
Annie called again today because she missed our weekend sleepover. I like when Annie stays over. All my problems disappear when Annie is around.
I invited Annie to dinner tonight. But it got strange real fast. My parents are weird when Annie comes over. Like she’s a stranger or something. They give off bad vibes, Annie tells me. I feel it too. That’s why we eat in my bedroom, away from my parents. And then we go for a walk after dinner just to get out of the house.
Girls are very different than boys when it comes to romance and relationships. My life is confusing. But I think it would be a whole lot happier if Annie and I were together.
That’s why I told her I liked her more than a friend during one of our after-dinner walks. She got quiet and didn’t say much. But she still held my hand as we walked through the woods, away from prying eyes.
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Thomas Grant Bruso knew at an early age he wanted to be a writer. He has been a voracious reader of genre fiction since he was a kid.
His literary inspirations are Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Ellen Hart, Jim Grimsley, Karin Fossum, Sam J. Miller, Joyce Carol Oates, and John Connolly.
Bruso loves animals, book-reading, writing fiction, prefers Sudoku to crossword puzzles.
In another life, he was a freelance writer and wrote for magazines and newspapers. In college, he was a winner for the Hermon H. Doh Sonnet Competition. Now, he writes book reviews for his hometown newspaper, The Press Republican.
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