Life for Rose is a game. A deadly game. She lives in the squalor of Subterran Prime: a sprawling underground world where mad gods sleep around the fools who serve them; where the savage Justicars seek out criminals and undesirables for swift justice at the end of their bronze beaks; where hapless slaves are branded with the mark of the cypher and fed to the starving masses or the gluttenous ruling class. In this world Rose has two things: her intersex lover, Jay Chimera, and her imagination. Geared with both, she hurtles through dreamworlds and virtual realities, until she discovers the ultimate gift: a drug, the Haze, that makes her dreams reality. But in order to get the Haze she must put herself in the way of the Justicars and face their terrible thirst for punishment. Can Rose and Jay play the game and reach the next level in their quest for escape, or will they lose everything? This is a self-contained novelette that serves as a taster of my current work-in-progress, the full-length novel Troglodyte Rose. This is loosely adapted from a novella published in 2009 by Cadaverine Publications, which was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. The interactive website that accompanies this story is available at troglodyterose.com. Artwork by Kurt Huggins and Zelda Devon. Interactive website designed by Michael Bryant.

Ex-US government assassin and Hong Kong Police martial arts enforcer Mike Delaney is kicked out of the force on a trumped up charge along with his partner Bob Messenger.Delaney drops out and joins a reclusive esoteric monastic brotherhood while Messenger forms confess-confess.com - a global crime busting website where ordinary people fight back against injustice, each with their own code name. Delaney falls in love, leaves the monastery and marries. One year later his investigative journalist wife is brutally murdered by a contract serial killer known as 'The Priest'. She is one of many. Delaney vows to track down 'The Priest'. He discovers his wife was about to expose a global plot known as The Renaissance Project involving the richest and most powerful people on the planet who pay huge sums to attain true immortality. The 'Priest' is their tame assassin (but Lucius Gynt is not as tame as they think he is). On the confess-confess website Delaney's code name is 'The Monk'. His search for 'The Priest', and uncovering the labyrinthine Renaissance Project will test his skills to the limit and put his life on the line.