* 4 Sample Chapters * Inquisitive heir, Charlie Fine's obsession with the truth makes him an excellent fraud investigator, but there's one mystery he's never been able to solve: the identity of the girl who gave him the greatest kiss of his life during a high school game of 7 Minutes In Heaven. Twenty years of experiments attempting to recreate the chemistry of that kiss have gotten him nowhere but frustrated and he's about to resign himself to a life without relationship fireworks when an invitation to his high school reunion steels his resolve to get answers once and for all. Accompanied by his binge-drinking best buddy, Martin, he heads home to grill his lovely suspects only to find his skills better put to use in solving the disappearance of an old friend's father and the sabotaging of a maple farm. Thwarted by a shady detective, distracted by a former classmate's troubled sister, will Charlie be able to find out who done it and who done it best? Will the same suspect hold the answers to both mysteries and will her identity be that of the dream girl he let get away? Who kissed Charlie Fine? You could skip to the end, but you'd miss more bear attacks, booby traps, pickled cabbage, flying cardboard, dry lightning, ghost parrots, creepy crawlers, maple syrup and tea cozies than in any cozy mystery about smooching you've ever read! Please know this story contains mild cursing and three F bombs - one of which is totally necessary. *Cover art uses "On-De-Fence" by Gil Elvgren which is to the best of my knowledge in the public domain. *No part of this story may be reproduced or used in any manner without express written permission by the author. © All Rights Reserved

[Completed] A U.S. expatriate is cast into a rainy, foggy corner of Europe. He went there on the pretense to work on his research, but he actually wanted to put as many miles as possible between himself and his ex. The university he works for has found an apartment for him. It's in a house inhabited by a set of strange characters. The mess begins with a broken egg. And it continues with his neighbor being murdered. A story somewhere between general fiction, mystery, gossip, romance, and humor. Book of the Month (June 2017) over at Wattpad's official @AdultFiction profile. First place in Mystery/Thrillers and second overall in the Iron Lace awards over at @ElisabethTepes profile. First place in Mystery/Thrillers in the Blank Sheets Contest over at @Blank_Sheets . First place under Mystery in the New Beginnings Writer Awards 2019 (Tagged as #adultfiction not for mature content--there's no real mature stuff here--but for sporting some characters that are thirty and older)

#WATTYS2017 Winner - HIGHEST RANKING # 5 - DOWNTON ABBEY meets Libba Bray's THE DIVINERS in this YA Historical Fantasy set in 1922 England. Unlike all the Debutantes she knows, eighteen-year-old Vita couldn't care less about her coming out ball. Trapped in her gloomy country estate, all she wants is to spend the summer dancing to jazzy numbers in East End clubs with her best friend Izzy. Freshly returned from a year abroad, Izzy is ready for the thrill of the London Season, with its endless whirl of balls, shopping sprees and horse races. Most importantly, she's counting on Vita to help her find the rich and handsome husband every high society girl deserves. But when Vita is kidnapped and found barely alive in an East London alleyway, the carefree summer the girls had planned turns into something much stranger than they could ever have imagined. With flappers turning up dead all over the city, and Vita terrified of hybrid monsters she swears she can see lurking in Mayfair's marbled houses, Izzy can't help noticing that darkness is seeping into their lives. As Vita starts to believe she's turning into a monster herself, Izzy suspects her friend's sanity is slipping away. Both girls have to find out what's happening before they lose their friendship and status, and their crowd of Bright Young Things becomes a thing of the past. *** A Wattpad Featured Story from 16/02/17 to 25/07/17 HIGHEST RANKING: # 5 on the Wattpad Historical Hot List *** THE BRIGHT AND THE LOST Pinterest Board: http://uk.pinterest.com/emcastellan/the-bright-and-the-lost/ *** Cover designer: Amalia Chitulescu *** Copyright © 2016. All works posted here are the property of EM Castellan. Please do not use without permission. Any duplication or reproduction of all or part of the work without explicit permission by the author is illegal.

***WATTYS 2017 WINNER*** When the newly single, 40 year-old Jeff Dempsey suffers an agonizing humiliation at his high school reunion, he comes to realize he has accomplished almost nothing with his life. Armed with this new found insight, Jeff charges headlong into the bold new adventure of becoming the man he always wanted to be. With the help of Ashley, his enthusiastic life coach and guide in this new journey, Niko, his best friend and legendary womanizer, and Louie, the schlubby lord-of-the-idiots, Jeff commits to embracing all the daring life experiences that passed him by. Because 40 doesn't have to mean that your best days are behind you. 40 doesn't have to signify the countdown to the end. For Jeff Dempsey...40 is The New Twenty.

2017 Watty Winner "The Breakthroughs" Dee is an unemployed accountant managing an anxiety disorder and an eviction notice. She's also a powerful witch, but she doesn't know that yet. Until one fateful night, when her reality cracks wide open. Two witch hunters attack her, and she finally learns the truth. Well, part of it. As a descendent of Joan of Arc, her family is the "guardian of the ring." Uncovering this information only leaves her with more questions. Why did her coven banish her for three hundred years? Why is the ring so important? Why has her true identity been kept a secret from her? To put all the missing pieces together, she must go on a series of mind-altering quests. She'll risk life and limb to recover the facts traveling through time from the court of the Sun King Louis XIV of France to the Salem Witch Trials. Meanwhile, she searches Chicago's shadows to find and translate her family's grimoire pages, only to discover she's the guardian of King Solomon's ring and the power it holds to command good and evil. From the safety of reality to the underbelly of a secret world, she must take her rightful place to protect witches and humans from the ring. This is book one in a three-part trilogy. Delilah Recovered Delilah Forsaken Delilah Saved Delilah Recovered © Copyright 2016 Amelia Estelle Dellos

A coming-of-age story about a snake girl called Kay and her shape-shifting friend who accidentally uncover a conspiracy and wind up changing the world. ***** Kay is a sarcastic, ordinary high school girl who enjoys her weekends and doesn't think much about anything. Kay is also a green-skinned, reptilian-human variant. In her world, all children born on any given day look the same, all over the world. Nobody knows why. There are extreme mutations: tentacles, wings, fur, horns, and abilities to leap tall buildings or breathe fire. That's just how it's always been and Kay thinks nothing of it, until she meets Cal: a shape-shifter who is on the run and needs her help to uncover what's really going on. Wattys 2016 winner: Trailblazers category "This book is Jumper. . meets terminator... meets...twilight zone." shadowgirlzzz Content warning: This story includes themes of bullying and prejudice.

2018 • [ A CROOKED TALE, a phantom's whisper, watch it burn, feel it blister. ] • A forest. A hut on chicken's feet. A fence of blood and bone. Before she was Baba Yaga, she was just a girl. Fuelled by spite and hatred for the world around her, Yaga Izeva has always had two faces. A beautiful one, the tailor's girl and a perfect wife, and the other, far darker than anyone could've ever imagined. Because things like that didn't happen in their village - until they did. With the blood of her village on her hands and nowhere to turn to, Yaga runs to the open arms of the forest, where the water runs black and the trees are haunted by ghosts of the past. Power is a pretty thing - before it consumes you. Go to sleep, children. And watch out for Baba Yaga. (cover by @wanderess_4) •1st place Morningtides Awards Winner •Reader's Choice Winner - Best Story Description •Chaos Awards 5 - 2nd Place in Fantasy •Youngblood Awards - 1st place in Fantasy

--Watty winner-- In Victorian London, monster hunting isn't just a job, it's a way of life. Freddie Westman, a reporter for a paranormal magazine, is one of the best in the business, but now it's personal. His childhood friend, Jim Penderry, has disappeared, and the signs point to sinister forces from beyond the grave. If Westman wants to save Jim, he'll have to face his worst fear. No, not fighting a demon with only a cake to hand. Something far more daunting. Sceptical Sophie Penderry doesn't solve mysteries or go on adventures. She's more at home in the library with her nose in The Botanist's Guide to Plants and Fungi. But she puts the science books away to help Westman find her missing brother, whether he likes it or not. Which he really doesn't. Westman is a loner, reluctant to lead anyone into danger. According to him, the supernatural is not just the stuff of folklore and children's nightmares, and a world of black magic awaits them. Now Westman must decide if he should push Sophie away for her own safety, or take a leap of faith and accept an offer of help and friendship. Either way, time is running out to find Jim, and worse still, they may not make it back in time for tea and biscuits. ~Featured story (Sep 2014 - Aug 2017) ~Selected by R.L. Stine's 'Slappy' (Goosebumps Movie's sponsored reading list) ~Winner of the Wattys 2014 HQ Love Award

Wattys 2017 winner in The Originals category!!!! This is NOT a romance between the main character and some hunky guy. These are the adventures of vampire Lena as she lives her life from day to day alongside her human flatmate Carmen. Together they encounter human rights activists (not what you think), overly attached exes, vampire geeks, quarrelsome shapeshifters, some really chill people, and a boy band. Let's Go For A Pint is a satire/genre parody revolving around tropes associated with vampire fiction (mostly tv and film portrayals but written works may be alluded) Season 1 is up. While marked as complete, expect ongoing editing and bonus content to appear. Cover made in Canva

After an offended Greek goddess sends Kenna back in time to Elizabethan England, she discovers she must stop the theft of Shakespeare's best known tragedy before returning to her century, all while resisting the charms of the theatre's Romeo. ***** After being dumped via voice note, Kenna Fernsby is convinced there was never a tale of more woe. Offended by the insult to true tragedy, a Greek goddess banishes Kenna to Elizabethan England, where she stumbles upon a plot to steal the priceless first draft of "Romeo and Juliet" from right under William Shakespeare's nose. Determined to outwit the thieves, Kenna dives into the intrigue, even when doing so may tangle her healing heart with a man from the past and force her to choose between the 16th century life she has fallen in love with and the fate of the play she loves as much. [[Wattys 2021 Winner in Historical Fiction]] [[Word count: 80,000 - 90,000 words]] The quotes from Romeo and Juliet used in this story were taken from the iBooks edition of the play. The text was originally from playshakespeare.com. ©2005-2022 PlayShakespeare.com. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this information under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. Terms at http://www.playshakespeare.com/license