After being kidnapped and thrown into a VRMMORPG, 17-year-old Suzuki Mato must find the line between his real and in-game personalities before it kills him. ***** Following the death of his popular online persona, seventeen-year-old Suzuki Mato decides it's time to retire from professional VR gaming. However, his plans are abruptly cut short when he's kidnapped from his high school and forced to be a guinea pig for Genaco Gaming, the world's largest esports and entertainment company. Armed with nothing but his wit and a new online persona, he's thrown headfirst into the virtual reality of "Live No Evil," a VRMMORPG littered with overpowered bosses, secretive NPCs, and backstabbing gods. His mission? Find a way to conquer this new world and get back at the company that took over his life, all while avoiding 'Parallel' -- a condition that would make it impossible to separate his real and virtual personalities. Because in a world obsessed with VR gaming, Parallel means death, and Suzuki just doesn't have time for that... [Parallel Vol. 1 & Vol. 2 out now, Vol. 3 coming soon] Content/Trigger Warning: some transphobic language

Imagine living a full life, dying months after your beloved wife passes and being buried. Only to wake up 300 years later, called out of the grave to fight a final war against an alien invasion. Join Max Niekro, formerly living and now Risen as he deals with this reality as the forces of Earth, both living and dead, are marshalled in a last ditch effort to save the world. **cover by hellvis

Removed due to Publication - Please look out for the release of the Atlantis Deception in 2018. Lost cities, secret societies, Nazi archaeology and Atlantis. Join Dr John Hunter in his unrelenting quest to unveil the hidden and explosive beginnings to civilisation. Believing he has discovered the key to unleashing the weapon that sank Atlantis, a German property developer requests the help of Dr John Hunter to validate his mysterious find. Hunter's acceptance leads the maverick academic on a journey from the headquarters of a clandestine organisation in England, to a lost city in the heart of the Brazilian Rainforest, and climaxes inside a chamber hidden deep beneath Egyptian Heliopolis. Pioneering theory is spliced by epic battles, daring escapes, and elaborate schemes aimed at unravelling a secret history hidden from humanity for the past twelve thousand years.

In one day, the world succumbed to a pestilence that decimated the living. In its place rose a new species: vicious, gruesome, wandering zombies with an insatiable hunger for the living. Still in her twenties, Cash has watched her friends die, only to walk again. An office worker with few survival skills, she joins up with Clutch, a grizzled Army veteran with PTSD. Together, they flee the city and struggle through the nine circles of hell, with nothing but Clutch's military experience and Cash's determination to live. As they fight to survive in the zombie inferno, they quickly discover that nowhere is safe from the undead...or the living. (100 Days in Deadland is a journey through the first poem in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, the classic tale on the horrors of hell... zombie apocalypse style!) (Note: This is a draft so please excuse any errors. The finished novel is available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook).

Dua puluh lima anak melangkahkan kakinya di kehidupan SMU dengan harapan yang beragam. Mereka ditempatkan dalam sebuah kelas yang tidak lazim dan mendapatkan guru yang memandang mereka tidak lebih dari sekumpulan kelinci percobaan. Seakan belum cukup sial, ternyata bencana-bencana buruk yang diramalkan seorang anak mulai menjadi kenyataan. Nyawa mereka menjadi taruhan. Dan tak satupun dari mereka tahu ada tragedi besar yang menanti di hari keduapuluhlima. Berikut adalah diary kelas yang mereka tulis secara bersama-sama. Diary yang akan menceritakan padamu, betapa mengerikannya hari-hari yang mereka lalui.

************************************************************************************** An outcast rogue must break a curse put on his fate, or die on his nineteenth birthday. To survive, he'll need the sword of a maiden, the aid of an immortal, and the power of forbidden magic that could cost him the only girl he ever loved. ************************************************************************************ *** THE JACK OF SOULS won a Silver IPPY this year! *** THE JACK OF SOULS won 1st place in the PNWA Competition in Fantasy! * *** THE JACK OF SOULS won 1st place in the Southwest Writers competition! * *** A "Featured Book" on Wattpad! * *** Now a "Staff Pick" on Kickstarter! * *** Available on Amazon in paper, hardback, and ebook ! * *** My contract with Kindle Select won't allow me to post more than 3 chapters here, but... *** Sign up for my newsletter on stephenmerlino.com for alerts when it's free on Amazon! * MY INSPIRATION I wrote this out of pure love of trickster rogues; I love the wit over brawn motif -- Odysseus over Achilles, Raven over Eagle -- so I like to play with it in my stories. In JOS I set the rogue and con-artist Harric against a foil of warriors in a land threatened by magic and civil war. Whenever possible I turn familiar tropes on their heads: instead of a handsome young Lancelot, I cast a broken-down ex-champion addicted to pain-killing herbs; instead of a dashing Squire Brian, the old knight reluctantly takes an ambitious young woman as squire. Similarly, I re-imagine the standard medieval milieu by infusing aspects of two of my favorite historical periods, Elizabethan England, and The American Frontier. Both eras boast a kind of nationalistic arrogance that borders on hubris, and a magnificent spirit of resourcefulness and re-invention that is fun to play with. SERIES The Jack of Souls is first in a series. I am posting parts of the sequel here now (The Knave of Souls), to help me refine the story.