WATTPAD ORIGINAL EDITION After a devastating accident, trapeze artist Corey Ryder gets stuck living a normal teenage life and attempts to reconnect with the mother she barely knows. ***** As a trapeze artist, Corey Ryder is used to flying high above the rest of the world, but when a tragic accident destroys the only home she's ever known, everything comes crumbling down around her. Forced to stay in the small town of Sherwood, California, she must face the realities of being a normal teenage girl. Attending high school, making friends, and falling in love for the first time are just the beginning, because being back in California means facing a large part of her past she's been trying hard to forget-her mom. Content and/or Trigger Warning: this story contains mentions of child/domestic abuse

[Book 2 of the ARC10 Trilogy] Rampant addictions, psychotic breakdowns, and threats of mutiny keep Commander Janika Lorn up all night. Transporting two-thousand souls safely from a destroyed Earth to a new habitat aboard the refugee ship ARC10 has been a special kind of hell - especially while also hiding her illegal pregnancy from her commanding officer. She wonders if they should turn around and take their chances in the crumbling underground bunker city they abandoned, even with the hostile invading aliens still patrolling the sky. She wonders if they're capable of surviving the rest of the journey. Because it seems like her troubles couldn't get any worse, and they've only been in space for three months. As usual, Commander Janika Lorn is wrong. When she finally hits an all-time low in the confines of an alien prison, a botched rescue operation puts her life in the black-gloved hands of Captain Shin-Hyun Moon of the HMS Valediction - a notorious vagrant and patchwork monster who was stitched together with the eclectic skins of the galaxy. Despite being instant enemies, Lorn and Moon are forced to work together to salvage their separate missions that have gone totally awry. HMS Valediction is the sequel to 2017 Watty winner ARC10, the second installation of the ARC10 trilogy. Cover art by the enormously talented @FayLane

BLACK AVENUE, EASTERN AMERIKA Everything's the same. But just a little bit different. Magic. Love. Entropy. All lawless. All wild. In 1876 a talented matchmaker is kidnapped and trapped inside an ancient genie lamp, forced to coerce beautiful women into sleeping with their unsavory captor. In 1954 a closeted professor is tangled in a violent conflict when he accidentally falls for the one soul he can't have: an androgynous D'Jinn stripped of their wings. In 2022 an overachieving college student discovers he's been crowned King of the Damned and stubbornly denies the title. But his new daemon servant won't leave him the hell alone. And Remi? Well, Remi just wants to see the World's Biggest Cowboy boot with her brother without losing a(nother) leg. This is fury. This is life. This is Hellacious. Where everything's different. But more of the same. //Highest Rank #616 Fantasy//

"The chances of that happening are unimaginable for someone like you." I said, trying to picture Nolan as anyone other than the humble, easygoing man before me and utterly failing. Another sip, and a relaxed sigh. "Just because it's never been done before doesn't mean it's impossible." I couldn't argue with that. Back in Training I thought I was untouchable, forged out of pure titanium. Infallible. But there I was nine years later with a mottled chest scar the size of Texas and several bottles of prescription anxiety pills stashed under my desk, having unofficial sessions with an adorable, gay therapist who seemed to think I, of all people, had all the answers. What happened next was a natural progression. After nearly a year digging inside each other's heads, it only made sense to understand each other's bodies. I looked up at Nolan in confusion, a question prepped on my lips. It immediately deflated once I saw him staring down at his hands to the curve of yellowed skin where his wedding ring used to cling. Ours was a quiet grief.

After escaping a stalled elevator into a zombie apocalypse, Emily must learn how to trust people again or risk losing everything in this terrifying world. ***** For Emily, every day of the last two years have been a blur. She keeps her head down, takes her college courses online, and only goes out to work at her mandatory internship. But all that changes on the day the office elevator breaks down, leaving her trapped when the screams begin. And when the doors finally open, revealing a dystopian world ruined by bloody teeth and disease, Emily is launched into a terrifying run for her life, caught between the strangers she's not sure she can trust and the man-eating monsters that hunger for her flesh. Now she must learn not only how to survive in this new and dangerous world, but also how to overcome her own inner demons before they cost her something more precious than her life. [[Wattys' Shortlist]] [[Promoted by AMC]] Content and/or Trigger Warning: The story contains some gore, violence, strong language, and dark themes. [[word count: 100,000-150,000 words]]

Book 2 of The Famoux Trilogy! Updated every Friday for #FamouxFriday.

AFTER THE SMOKE CLEARED AND MANHUNT BEGAN BEAN PROMISED HIMSELF HE'D NEVER KILL AGAIN... ..:::.. Set where the Urban edge mingles with the Suburban sprawl, Kay Elle's second novel follows the story of Olive and Bean Downes -- scrappy siblings forced to flee their home and hide deep in the city after an assassination gone wrong. Over the course of two weeks they'll encounter citizens just as colorful as the country they live in, complete with a bigoted fruit enthusiast, a corrupt concierge, a stingy gun peddler, and a Korean mercenary named Elmo. It's an America where oranges are valued more than gold and homemade lip balm is as addictive as crack. It's an exploration of loyalty, glamorous nightclubs, and the well meaning pastors who inhabit them. The Illumination of Sorrow is a raw, touching story about weird love, old wallets, and the humor that can be found in true meaning of sorrow.

[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