Celia Jones can talk to the dead, but getting on with them is a different story. She always has at least three spirits following her around, complaining about their relatives, or the inadequacy of their funeral arrangements. The latest is a murdered actress, Maude Domby, but she's less interested in denouncing her killer than in accusing the understudy of stealing her favourite pearls. When the charming but utterly fraudulent medium Stanley Winter holds a séance to contact Maude, Maude insists she and Celia should attend, to see people mourning her 'properly'. But the séance ends up implicating an innocent woman, and now Stanley Winter is banging on Celia's door, begging her to help him find Maude's real killer. Unfortunately, helping Stanley Winter could lead Celia to confront her other power - the one that's both lighter and infinitely darker than talking to the dead. ONC Prompt: 72. A real necromancer sits in on a fake séance.

Do you ever feel like you're living the worst day of your life over and over again? And that, if you could somehow do things differently, get it right this time, you might finally be free? Jason Durand is a bodyguard, tasked with protecting a politician and his daughters, in one of the most inhospitable places on earth: the mountain-island of Mosken in northern Norway, which is uninhabited, choked in mist, and guarded by treacherous tidal currents. But his life on the island isn't what it seems. There are strange repetitions in the patterns of the clouds, bouts of déjà vu that leave him gasping, and - weirdest of all - a flock of black birds that mob him every morning like an avian alarm clock. And then his worst enemy - the cockney contract killer he's supposed to be guarding against - tells him they're both prisoners, and offers him a deal...

Supervillain Ranvi De Witt is somehow not in prison yet, but her superhero nemesis is. When he asks her to consult on a murder-case that could free him, at first, she's thinking only of the money (well, at first, she laughs in his face, but after that, she's thinking only of the money). But when her dim-witted minion (and actual best friend) is brainwashed to act like a fairytale princess, she realises this murderer is targeting her as well as her nemesis. He's got a lot of power, even if he's literally butchering the fairytales he's forcing his victims to recreate. And he's supposed to be dead. 'Surrounded by Idiots' is a comic fantasy novella about morally grey areas and the power of stories: how some of them can cage you, while others can set you free. ONC prompts: 50. A supervillain has a midlife crisis and decides to become a superhero. But redemption might be harder than they imagined. 59. I am the pages of the past and the ink of the future. I course through the veins of many, though few truly notice me. I am what they search for in others, yet I cannot be bought. I am the beginning, the middle, and the end. Tell me your story, and perhaps I'll grant you the love others have failed to find.

Eleven years later, in the city of Oxford, he met her again for the first time... In 1870, Jack Cade is admitted to the new-breed stronghold of Pandemonium, a colony of people just like him: descendants of the vanished demon race, all of them extraordinary in little ways, and deranged in much bigger ones. There, he falls in love with Ellini Syal, a shy, insular woman who spends most of her time scampering barefoot over the Edinburgh rooftops. In 1881, he meets her again, but has no idea who she is. All he knows is that there are dark, horribly suggestive gaps in his memory, and that Ellini is running from something she refuses to talk about. Can he work out who she is and what she's done in time to save her from the creatures pursuing her? Can he save himself from the amnesia and the creeping indifference that are eating him up piece by piece? Or is amnesia preferable to the kind of memories he will have to unearth? The Great Ellini is the first book in the epic historical-fantasy-romance The Powder Trail, a series where the past and the present meet, part, and reunite with explosive consequences. AWARDS (for full list see Author Notes): 1st Place - Paranormal (The Misfit Awards 2022) 1st Place - Fantasy (Clouded Ink Awards 2022) 1st Place - Fantasy (The Pink Cloud Awards 2023) FEATURES (for full list see Author Notes): StoriesUndiscovered - Into the Abyss (01/10/2022) StudsandVixens - On-going Beaut (27/09/2022) WattpadDarkFantasy - A Kingdom in Shadows (11/09/2022) Lowfantasy - A History Unlikely (05/12/2022) Rankings: #1 Oxford (23/09/2022) #1 victoriangothic (09/09/2022) #1 darkfantasyromance (09/09/2022) #2 wellwritten (24/10/2022) #9 historicalfantasy (15/09/2022) #14 gothic (31/10/2022) #20 mysteryromance (24/10/2022) Cover and graphics by the amazing @AnnamitaMuscaria