WATTYS 2021 WINNER - PARANORMAL Olivia Porter is well acquainted with death- or so she thought. With the passing of her only friend, she's given more than she bargained for when the estranged and mysterious Lee Noble enters her life. Lee brings with him more than his bad attitude and mysterious past. He's Olivia's gateway to a dark and terrifying underworld she never knew existed. The Edifice; a dimension parallel to their own, separated for a very good reason. It's a world of magic, where warlocks, fiends and monsters walk the streets in strained coexistence. Stranded in a foreign land at the mercy of its citizens, Olivia has no choice but to accept the help of Otis- a deity masquerading as a fickle young man. With seven days to escape the consequences of the deity's contract, Olivia's humanity is on a perilous countdown. Otis promises her the world if she can hold out- while Lee will sacrifice anything to see her gone. Because Otis's gift to her is worth dying for... and all of the Edifice knows it. - cover by @newsies- ~90,000 Words Mature and Horror Themes CONTENT WARNINGS for death, family trauma, adult language, kidnap, coercion, drug and alcohol abuse, suicidal ideation, mental illness, graphic violence and references to racism and homophobia..

Evoking the paranoid tension of Rosemary's Baby and the unnerving atmosphere of the cult horror film Jacob's Ladder, The Cracks in the Labyrinth is a disturbing psychological thriller set in present-day Caracas, where the government has devolved into a "democratic dictatorship"-a creepy suspense novel meant to challenge your deeper, subconscious fears of losing control. It consumed the sanity of an entire country... And it was not from this world. It couldn't have been. Whatever caused the incident known as "The Red Christmas" drove Venezuela into madness. Even ten years since it happened, none of the survivors of that night dare to attempt to make sense of it all, including Adam. Living ostracized to hide from the brutal way of life in Caracas, he's working tirelessly as an online writer to help his brother and sister flee the country. Now, as he's about to have enough money to take them to safety, he receives an email from his old girlfriend ... which is remarkable, considering she's been presumed dead for years. Adam tries to think nothing of the email or the broken video file attached to it. He convinces himself that it has to be a computer virus of some kind until he discovers something terrifying: the video might link his sister to the worst night of his life, the night his girlfriend went missing, the night of "The Red Christmas". Then he realizes this could be a threat; his sister's life could be in danger. As he starts to investigate who sent the video, Adam begins to uncover dark truths about his neighbors and finds evidence that there might be a larger conspiracy at play. The problem is that he's starting to suffer from hellish hallucinations that make him question what is real. Soon, the only clear thing to him is that someone doesn't want him to dig up the past. Will Adam be able to stay sane long enough to find out what really happened the night of "The Red Christmas"? Will he succeed in helping his family escape the country?