ONC 2021!
2 stories
Silverweaver by CeeMTaylor
CeeMTaylor
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When a simple job goes horribly awry, ghosthunter Anya must prove she has what it takes to do spirit work or risk losing her job, her brother, and a second chance with the One Who Got Away. *** Second-rate ghosthunter Anya Iteri comes from a family of metalweavers -- powerful mages who can forge iron, shape steel, and even bend blood. Down on her luck and struggling for work, Anya bribes her little brother, a city guide, to let her drum up business on one of his tours. The plan is simple. Summon a hibernating ghost to give the tour a good show, return it to its slumber, and collect a hefty tip. But the moment the tour begins, Anya encounters a ghost of a different kind: Eleira Soti, talented hunter and former love of her life, newly returned to the city after years away. El's familiar face leaves Anya fighting distraction and attraction alike on her way into the city's most haunted grounds. The night goes from bad to worse when the wrong ghost gets summoned and fingers are pointed Anya's way. A malignant spirit emerges from the veil, bent on destroying the tour and everyone on it. Racing against time, Anya must team up with El to trap the ghost, save her brother, and prove, once and for all, that her abilities aren't as second-rate as others think. *** Silverweaver is now available across all major platforms. Once titled just "Weaver," it won an honorable mention in the 2021 Open Novella Contest.
BioSynth | ONC 2021 WINNER | MM Romance | Sci-Fi | Complete by MonicaBGuerra
MonicaBGuerra
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[ONC 2021 WINNER: 3rd place] When a car accident reveals a shocking secret even he didn't know about himself, an android finds himself hunted by his own husband. BioSynth is one half of a duology of novellas. Both follow the same sequence of events from different PoVs. BioSynth is Quentin's tale; SynTracker is Ian's. Collectively, they're known as Syn. ≡≡≡ Photographer Quentin Morgan has almost everything he could ask for. With a dream job that takes him all over the world, married to the love of his life for the past eight years, it's only his husband's line of work that leaves a bad taste in his mouth. Ian is a SynTracker, someone who hunts down BioSynths - obsolete yet incredibly dangerous synthetic self-aware weapons that can pass as humans - and returns them to the government, to be reprogrammed and repurposed. Quentin finds the job distasteful, but Ian says they're weapons, and weapons don't weep. A car crash that could have killed Quentin reveals the shocking truth: he, himself, is a BioSynth. Hurt, scared, and now hunted by the man he loves, who thinks him an impostor, Quentin is thrown into a suddenly hostile world, where the stakes are his very existence. ≡≡≡ BioSynth was written for the Open Novella Contest 2021 and is based on prompt #4: You're a weapon, and weapons don't weep. It features a romance between two men. ≡≡≡ ONC Winner: 3rd Place ONC Round One Ambassador Pick Speculative Fiction Awards, Sci-Fi Category: Winner