A mere girl of a common scholar class is swept from her peaceful life to something bigger. Now picked upon as a candidate for the second son of the emperor, she's thrown into a world of discord and trickery. Behind the illusion of a peaceful life, power struggles revolving around love and happiness are vital for survival. Nothing is simply easy and one must fight to make it to the top.

Innocence is subjective, and power always has its price--so his elders told him. Silas Blane is destined for greatness. Born into an elite family with many skeletons in the closet, he learns to harness his inherent shamanic powers and finds purpose in the Old Ways of his ancestors. As he turns fifteen, Silas walks a treacherous edge between love and expectation and discovers the fragility of desire. Nothing is what it seems in a universe where power is fleeting, and enemies close their grasp around the last hope of the free worlds. Vintage science fiction, retro-futurism, and space opera blend in this decopunk drama. Here we have chromed fusion rockets, spooky secret societies, shamanic bone oracles, robots for every occasion, and a perilous, affluent world which hails to "Downton Abbey" and "Dynasty". The 'unofficial' trailer for the series: https://youtu.be/jces9f8i6zA *** Episode 1: "Arrivals and Rivals" received an Honorable Mention in SciKick's Starter Competition 3/2/16! "You've got a way with words and an ability to describe a scene that makes us feel like we were there. Good luck with your work." BookShelfBattle "Honestly, this is one of the best, most riveting and complex stories I've come across in some time..." RebelDynasty "Great chapter! Dialogue is completely natural. Great reveal. I love that you deliver such strong imagery and tone without anything flowery. Love this so far!" OtherEvilTwin Contains violence, occult themes, sexuality, and dark situations.

Each week, a new su-SPEC-t author will be interviewed. These are not the typical questions consisting of: "Where do your ideas come from?" or "What did you have for lunch?" We delve deeper, like "What are ya gonna have for lunch tomorrow?" Add to the questions and general craziness via the comments. We are: @OtherEvilTwin Kitten and the Cloud @BlancaWelsh The Mark of Noba @Lynn_Vroman The Pairing @Adrian_Birch Dead in Bed @Holly_Gonzalez Beauty and the Bones @FromtheBar Interregnum @krazydiamond Marrow Charm @Matt_Weber Dispatch from a Colored Room @Red_Harvey The Dark @emoryskwara Of Song and Singularity

PRIDE'S CHILDREN, Book 1, is complete. ***** Finalist for 2016 Wishing Shelf Independent Book Awards (UK)***** If you start reading on Wattpad, and would CONSIDER writing a review on Amazon (purchase not required, PM me for an electronic REVIEW Copy). The review is up to you - I won't nag. [It is published, on Amazon in Kindle Select, as of Oct. 30, 2015. The requirements for KDP are that the story not be available anywhere else, so I have taken all but 10% off Wattpad, where it had a great run. It is available in print as well.] If you like the sample here, let me know - all comments welcome. ***** WHAT YOU DO WITH AN OBSESSION COUNTS "I, KARENNA ELIZABETH Ashe, being of sound mind, do... But that's it, isn't it? Being here proves I am not of sound mind..." So begins Book 1 of the Pride's Children trilogy: Kary immediately regrets the misplaced sense of noblesse oblige which compels her to appear, live on national television-at exorbitant personal cost. What she cannot anticipate is an entanglement with Hollywood that destroys her carefully-constructed solitudinarian life. A contemporary mainstream love story, in the epic tradition of Jane Eyre, and Dorothy L. Sayers' four-novel bond between Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, Pride's Children starts with a very public chance encounter, and eventually stretches over three separate continents. ~ ~ ~ The complete blurb is on Amazon: http://amzn.com/B017AZLTLG http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B017AZLTLG ~ ~ ~ RATING: Sexual innuendo, mild swearing, occasional non-graphic violence (PG-13).

Norman is a problem. A decade of recurrent nightmares have punished his psyche severely, and after a number of delinquent actions, he ultimately ended up at St. Andria's, a school for "problem children". But in a twist of fate, his time at St. Andria's leads him to Alyssa, and somehow - perhaps through the power of love - he's finally able to find sleep, unplagued by dreams. And then the nightmares become reality.

This novella was a Hugo and Nebula nominee twenty years ago. I lost both to Charles Sheffield -- whom I married five years later. Life sometimes really is just as strange as fiction.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER -- In Cory Doctorow’s wildly successful Little Brother, young Marcus Yallow was arbitrarily detained and brutalized by the government in the wake of a terrorist attack on San Francisco—an experience that led him to become a leader of the whole movement of technologically clued-in teenagers, fighting back against the tyrannical security state. A few years later, California's economy collapses, but Marcus’s hacktivist past lands him a job as webmaster for a crusading politician who promises reform. Soon his former nemesis Masha emerges from the political underground to gift him with a thumbdrive containing a Wikileaks-style cable-dump of hard evidence of corporate and governmental perfidy. It’s incendiary stuff—and if Masha goes missing, Marcus is supposed to release it to the world. Then Marcus sees Masha being kidnapped by the same government agents who detained and tortured Marcus years earlier. Marcus can leak the archive Masha gave him—but he can’t admit to being the leaker, because that will cost his employer the election. He’s surrounded by friends who remember what he did a few years ago and regard him as a hacker hero. He can’t even attend a demonstration without being dragged onstage and handed a mike. He’s not at all sure that just dumping the archive onto the Internet, before he’s gone through its millions of words, is the right thing to do. Meanwhile, people are beginning to shadow him, people who look like they’re used to inflicting pain until they get the answers they want. Fast-moving, passionate, and as current as next week, Homeland is every bit the equal of Little Brother—a paean to activism, to courage, to the drive to make the world a better place.

In Thriller Suite -- appearing serially for the first time on Wattpad -- Margaret Atwood has gathered these new poems inspired by her long history as a reader of strange tales, from 19th century gothic classics to ghost stories to crime fiction and thrillers. Poems that cross thresholds...

When Roan’s parents and the people of Longlight perish in a raid, Roan is filled with rage. Torn between his desire for revenge and the legacy of peace he has inherited, he is taken in by a sect of warriors. Here he learns he has exceptional talent as a fighter. But Roan is haunted by visions he can’t understand. When he commits his first act of violence, he flees in disgust into the most wasted lands of all, the Devastation. It is only when Roan meets the strange girl Alandra that he begins to understand his life’s purpose and why the village of Longlight was destroyed.

Between Earth and Chaos, Six Children Battle For Our Survival An epic serialized fantasy for all ages What if you and your friends went to another world every time you went to sleep? What if you spent half your life on Earth and the other half fighting for survival against foes too terrible to be real? And what if you could never tell anyone? This is reality for the Realm Keepers: six kids from Earth thrust into a terrifying war between Midrealm and Chaos. Plucked from their ordinary lives and given extraordinary powers, they're the only thing standing between us and destruction. ˃˃˃ "An excellent beginning to this fantasy adventure. I look forward to reading more of this series." Ray Alan Nicholson, Amazon top 1,000 reviewer