What happens when all your apocalyptic nightmares seem to be coming true? In this lyrically poignant piece, Margaret Atwood reflects on growing up in the age of the scarlet fever, diphtheria, polio and the whooping cough that swept Canada in the 1940s. Yellow signs with the words 'QUARANTINED' became a signature of the era and marked doors in neighbourhoods across the country. Drawing from her own experiences and the experiences of her parents who lived through the Spanish flu, Atwood sings words of encouragement, "Take heart! Humanity's been through it before. There will be an Other Side." And while nothing is scarier than an enemy you can't see, there is always hope and there is always another side. In a way that only she can, Atwood takes a look into the past and the present to give us words for the future. Copyright belongs to O.W. Toad and this piece first ran in The Globe and Mail.

Fear the dark. Bar the doors. Don't breathe a word. Wait for the Hooded Men to save you. The people of Nictaven live in fear of the night; governed by magic no one save a few can control, in a land plagued by demons and cannibal tribes, and isolated from all other worlds for centuries, they're right to. Only the Unspoken, a secretive guild of warriors linked with the land and its magic, provide any safety when darkness falls. For centuries, it has stayed like this. But in an abandoned crypt worlds away, Jordan Haverford is about to change that. It wasn't quite the holiday he had been hoping for. Plunged into a world where who you are and what you believe can kill you, a world of demons and knives in the dark and wars fought from behind the doors of the rich, Jordan's gentle Oxford upbringing isn't quite sufficient preparation. Instantly a pawn in a deadly game, separated from his sister and watched from the shadows by an assassin with a vendetta, he finds himself in the company of an Unspoken who has an uncanny knack for finding the Gifted - and Jordan can't seem to get rid of him. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © SEHarrison/Elinor Harrison *This book has previously been partly stolen and published on Amazon without my permission. I only post my work on Wattpad - please notify me if you find it anywhere else! Thank you.* The gorgeous cover is by Acacia H. - Caysaaaa on Wattpad!

[#1 Romance] [#1 Dystopian] "What's the girl who's being hunted by the entire universe supposed to act like?" Reckless. That's what the handsome alien who I only met after running into a spaceship during an alien invasion calls me. But I think otherwise. My name is Burn Archer and I'm living a dystopian nightmare. To the universe, I'm known as a walking bomb.