[Book 1 of the ARC10 Trilogy] **Winner of the 2017 Watty Storysmith award** The President created an underground safe-haven for the survivors of the alien invasion. He built it to save them all from total annihilation. He protects them, feeds them, keeps them under his ever-watchful gaze so they can live. All he asks is that they obey. Captain Janika Lorn doesn't want to obey. Not if it means spreading her legs and contributing to the President's precious eugenics program. As a perfect candidate for the Human Hope Project, she is obligated by law to make more citizens for the dying society. But all she wants is her freedom to fight the Invaders and protect the people who already exist. If the mandated program wasn't bad enough, the worst part is trying to fulfill it with Captain Dean Freyer, her scientifically matched partner and best friend of sixteen years. Just as Captain Lorn is about to succumb to her fate, another opportunity arises. A mysterious commanding officer asks her to lead a human refugee ship--to save humanity by evacuating the destroyed Earth and shuttling the remaining population to a new habitable exoplanet 400 light years away. The mission is perilous. Especially because now, standing between her and her freedom is the hostile alien hosts of her ship, the ARC10, a sister returned from the dead, an array of impossibly confusing alien tech, a rekindled heat between her and Dean, and a sexy militia chief she can't seem to keep her hands off of. ARC10 is a romance-heavy sci-fi with the speculative horror of Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and the military action of Battle: Los Angeles. Cover art by @FayLane Copyright © 2016 by LL Montez

**A Blue Beard retelling** Based on Charles Perrault's fairytale, this YA Historical Fantasy short story set in Victorian England mixes romance, magic and mystery. After agreeing to an arranged marriage to escape her greedy relatives, 18-year-old heiress Amelia moves into her husband's manor determined to start a new life. But the gothic mansion's forbidding surroundings, the servants' strange demeanour and her husband's mysterious past soon awaken her suspicions. If Amelia truly wants to become the lady of the house, she'll have to discover what secrets lie beyond closed doors and unravel the mystery of the old house's forbidden room. But sometimes secrets are kept for a good reason... HIGHEST RANKING IN HISTORICAL FICTION # 44 Copyright © 2017. All works posted here are the property of EM Castellan. Please do not use without permission. Any duplication or reproduction of all or part of the work without explicit permission by the author is illegal. Cover artist: @seventhstar