An ONC shortlister! The long-forgotten god of chaos awakes when a small child drops a piece of candy onto his altar, unwittingly becoming the high priest of chaos. The god is beholden to his priest and his priest's people--AKA: his kindergarten classmates. The children are all-too-delighted to serve the whims of mayhem until the chaos becomes too much, even for them. They forbid the god from using his power. But when disaster strikes and the whole school is in danger, a bit of bedlam might be the only thing that can save the children, the town, and the god's budding romance with a schoolteacher. Based on the Open Novella Contest 2023 prompt: #73 - You are a long-forgotten god. A small kid leaves candy at your shrine and you awaken. Now, you must do everything to protect your High Priest/Priestess, the kid, and their entire kindergarten class, your worshippers. #ONC2023 #OpenNovellaContest

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ONC2023 CHALLENGE! One dark and stormy night a family went missing, they left taking absolutely nothing with them. When their disappearance was reported, nobody, including the police could figure out what happened. The mystery has gone unsolved for almost 10 years, then a call comes in from an unknown source that changes everything. The job now is to figure out who the caller is, if the family is still alive, and how you will expose what happened.

Ava Kingsley is basking in her post-senior year summer- until she gets a phone call that sends her universe spinning in a completely new direction. - The disappearance of 22 year old diner waitress Jamie Clark and her son Tyler is a cold case closed 10 years ago, until a phone call dialed to the wrong number causes Ava to be spun up in the secret life of Jamie and the secrets she was keeping from the world in order to save the mother-son duo before their kidnapper grows bored of the game they are playing. - ONC 2023 Longlister ONC 2023 Shortlister - FEATURED on Stories Undiscovered for the Month of April Under 'Be THAT Girl' - cover by the talented @MuniWilliams

Reviewing restaurants is normally a safe pursuit, but Kate and Lorne face torture and death when they try to unravel organised crime's infiltration of the fine dining scene. Kate is a novelist and a dining columnist. Lorne is a lawyer, a prominent wine writer and an incognito restaurant reviewer who, since his teens, has believed he's asexual. Playmates when they were toddlers and friends ever since, they are now thrown together by increasingly dangerous circumstances as the Mob targets them. The intensity and closeness trigger Lorne's deeply buried sexuality and Kate's long-suppressed desires. Will they be able to set their passions aside and focus on evading and entrapping the Mob?

Born in a society where an AI ran the daily lives of every human being including deciding their spouse, Ava never questioned her role. However, the day the handsome stranger who had haunted her dreams manifested into the real world, she knew she would never be content with the life that had been planned for her by the Unity. To be with the one she truly cares for, Ava must join up with the resistance to fight to free humanity from the Unity's control.

The mission - colonize the slopes of Olympus Mons on Mars before the Pacific Alliance lands. The challenge - something isn't quite right with the site foreseen for the colony. Explorations reveal a cave where the support struts for the home dome are supposed to go. It gets worse - not only does the cave move, but it contains the impossible: a human skeleton. And there's a writing on the wall. What starts off odd, soon descends into total madness. But the next shuttle back to Earth doesn't launch until next year. ONC Prompt 59. The year is 2042. The first astronauts landed on mars. They find a cave with a single human skeleton and four words written on the wall.

For as long as anyone can remember, the kingdom of Nilemah has been overrun with rats. No one quite knows the cause, but there were rumors of someone going town to town and ridding them of the infestation. Gwen Weatherby thought they were nonsense until the day he rode into town and changed everything. A vain fae prince who played with one too many hearts, Lyron was cursed to watch his friends and family turn into beasts, and the people of his kingdom become victims of the curse. The only way to free them all is to find his true love and make her fall in love with him. The caveat? She cannot know of the curse or who he is, and he only has one month to win her heart. Each failed attempt curses the town the girl left behind and causes its people to turn into rats when the sun goes down. Rats that only respond to the pipe he plays. After a thousand years of searching, Lyron has long since lost hope, until fiery Gwen bursts into his life. A prince in need of a lesson and a girl in need of adventure? What say you fate? Shall we let them dance? Based on prompt 43 for @OpenNovellaContest You have waited a thousand years to find your true love, what's one more day? Pied Piper of Hamelin X Beauty and the Beast ✨️ ONC 2023 Longlister ✨️

Humans have discovered a way to Mars and need a group of volunteer astronauts to be the first humans to see if it's safe for more of the population. Sil has dreamed of this her whole life so it's no surprise when she volunteers as captain, along with Eliza, Axel and her childhood best friend Tarquin. While investigating the planet, a sandstorm catches them unawares so they hide in a cave for safety, but end up discovering secrets that could just make or break their mission. Confusion, betrayal, friendship, all lead to this one point, but in the end: A sacrifice has to be made.

Everyone knows the band Zenith, but nobody knows how they managed to rock Zerkovkia's youth into starting a revolution... until now. Tolya Viktov is coming of age in the 1980s to the tune of spinning records, cheap liquor, and Zerkovkia's nine year war with neighboring Blivdova. The perms and denim jackets are hip, but it's the underground music he's most excited about. By the time he enters university, his lyrics and his talent have helped him break through on the student musician scene. Tolya, a duo of genius guitarists, and a bandless drummer soon come together when a producer realizes the key to achieving radical change in Zerkovkia is getting them to make music. What happens next is the stuff of legend and a whole lot of love, revolution, and rock and roll. Honors/Awards: ONC 2023 Honorable Mention ONC 2023 Ambassadors' Pick (Round One) "VIKTOV LIVES!" is featured on @music's "mighty drumset" reading list @storiesundiscovered's "feast on fiction" reading list @flexiblebookexchange's "read these gems!" reading list @opennovellacontest's "2023 honorable mentions" and "2023 ambassadors' picks" lists Copyright © 2023 Elle Chaika Open Novella Contest VI (2023) | Prompt No. 44

|𝟏𝐱 𝐅𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐄𝐃/𝐎𝐍𝐂 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟑 𝐀𝐌𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐒𝐀𝐃𝐎𝐑 𝐏𝐈𝐂𝐊𝐒| When the apocalypse arrives 𝐊𝐀𝐍𝐄 is ready to accept death after living a cursed life. But fate has other plans for him. Whisked away by a mysterious taxi driver with a silver tongue, Kane finds himself caught up in the world of faes, vampires, werewolves and even dragons! What was supposed to be a quest to get answers regarding his family's elusive past transforms into a journey to make him into a warrior capable of saving his dying world. Enter 𝐓𝐄𝐌𝐏𝐄𝐒𝐓. Blessed by the gods and a Lady of the Lake, her tongue is as sharp as the blade she wields. She has no love for Earth and could care less about its demise. But she too has a troubled past that she wants to rectify. If there's any hope at getting what she wants, she needs to whip Kane into shape as efficiently as possible. Kane is cursed. Tempest is blessed. Together they have the power to silence the banshee's world ending scream before it causes Earth's annihilation. 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐬: 𝐎𝐧𝐠𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: 𝐅𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐬𝐲 & 𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐝: 𝟎𝟐/𝟎𝟑/𝟐𝟑 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐝: 𝐍/𝐀 𝐑𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: 𝟏𝟔+ 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐠𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐦𝐮𝐭 & 𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫: @𝐗𝐚𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐡