The entity living inside Callan's soul orphaned her at age eleven. By the time she's sixteen, it's ensured her being shunted from one foster family to another. Her thirteenth foster assignment should be routine. Except... it's not. A psycho in medieval armor kidnaps her and she ends up in a magical world. There, she accidentally discovers a secret her parents had kept until the day they died. Both actually came from this magical world, but left before Callan was born. To cover their tracks, they'd lied about everything. Even who they really were. Driven to find out where she comes from, Callan's trapped in a race for life and death. Walking away isn't an option, but if she stays too long, the entity will find its next victim. In this world where secrets are sacrosanct and grudges are remembered, finding the truth will be near impossible. Especially when Callan has her own homicidal little secret to deal with. A secret with a taste for destroying her life.

The house known as Pemberley stands in an isolated valley on the edge of the High Peak, as intriguing and inaccessible as Sleeping Beauty's briar-shrouded castle. To historian Liz Pargeter it's a mystery to be solved. How can a stately home of such importance have sunk into obscurity? What happened to the former owners - the Darcys - who disappeared from local records after the early 19th century? And why is so little known about Pemberley's current residents? Fitzwilliam Darcy, the former Master of Pemberley, has been dead for many years. When Liz walks through the door of his ancestral home, she awakens more than just his curiosity. She may also be the key to his salvation. Eternal Flame is a contemporary fairytale romance. It is a sequel to Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice", set two hundred years after the events of the original novel. A Wattpad Featured story between March 2015 and July 2017 .

"Mooooorrrrrrrreeeeeeee, this book is like air, i need it!" @noromance101 "These chapters are written BEAUTIFULLY! You are, without a doubt, my favorite writer on this site. " @nagykt "Reading this feeds my soul." @Yrthraethra Sixteen-year-old Mirra can see people's memories. She is a Shadow Weaver, one of the outlawed, glitter-eyed race feared in her land and forced into brutal slavery as children. She and her brother Kel have escaped their fate by hiding near the frozen mountains. But when bounty hunters snatch Kel, Mirra injured and unable to track long distances will lose him unless she gives herself up to his captors. As as a Shadow Weaver who's survived childhood and whose golden-flecked irises have faded, concealing her talent, Mirra's own value is priceless on the black-market. Taken to a lawless town in the northern territories, Mirra convinces her captors to sell her to a mysterious young man destined for the same province as the officer who has bought her brother. The young man is the Kingdom's missing Prince, feared dead after his escort was attacked on an expedition. He has been in hiding, waiting for a Shadow Weaver whose skill he can use to discover who ordered his assassination. But before he will risk breaking his father's law and taking Mirra to the royal court, he must test her talent and her ability to hide it. If Mirra fails, her hopes of seeing her brother again will be cut by the noose around her neck. HIGHEST RANKING #1 in Fantasy on Wattpad. #1 Amazon Sword & Sorcery This book was taken down in DEC 2017 due to publishing restrictions. It is now possible to put it back up on wattpad. From March onwards 2 chapters will be posted per week until the completed book is available.

(Check out the previews at the end!) "Highly recommended!" - Jay Bonansinga, New York Times bestselling co-author of THE WALKING DEAD: THE ROAD TO WOODBURY "Very interesting...very cool." - Scott Sigler, NYT Bestselling author of NOCTURNAL, PANDEMIC and many more great books. "Intriguing and exciting as hell! If you don't pick up this novel ASAP, you're missing a terrific bet." -No. 1 Kindle bestselling author Shane Gericke, TORN APART In this paranormal thriller, an escaped mental patient must battle both a racist mastermind and a man whose powers are even more dangerous than his own in order to save the woman he loves and keep their city from burning to the ground. Look inside for contests and giveaways!

Seventeen-year-old April Parker wakes up in an underground facility, a shock bracelet on her wrist and a five-day countdown on the clock. Dozens of other teens share her inexplicable fate, but their unseen captors never intervene no matter how brutal conditions become. When the ruthless - and unnervingly magnetic - Marcus seizes control, April's trauma-forged instinct is to lay low. But protecting her friends drives her to bargain with the boy she should fear most - a boy whose reality fractures with every tick. Then the countdown ends, and the real terror begins. Powers ignite. Alliances shatter. And predators are born. And with a saboteur among them determined to keep the doors closed forever, escaping what comes next may be the only way to survive it.

Can a natural killer learn to be human again? Regan's unique talent for murder makes her a perfect assassin. After a lethal encounter leaves her broken body washed up on a beach, she finds herself adopted by a group of teenage bodyguards. She doesn't intend to stay for long, but soon Regan finds herself faced with a choice: become a hero or stay a villain? *** The boy played with the flat brim of the cap in his hands and looked around the room. He sat back in his chair, trying to look casual, but the heel of his hi-top sneaker drummed rapidly on the concrete floor. Regan sat opposite him with her legs crossed and her hands folded on her tartan skirt. She watched him without a word and brushed a strand of blue-dyed hair behind her ear. Somehow this seemed to unsettle him more. 'Calm down,' she said. 'It's just murder.' *** Author's Note: Darkness Girl: Trickster God is represented by Louise Fury from The Bent Agency. P.S. The epic cover was made by Paul Kopetko (you can stalk him at paulkopetko.com). Enjoy!

SAMPLE OF PUBLISHED BOOK THAT WAS FIRST WRITTEN ON WATTPAD. Fletcher was nothing more than a humble blacksmith's apprentice, when a chance encounter leads to the discovery that he has the ability to summon demons from another world. Chased from his village for a crime he did not commit, he must travel with his demon to the Vocans Academy, where the gifted are trained in the art of summoning. The academy will put Fletcher through a gauntlet of gruelling lessons, training him as a battlemage to fight in the Hominum Empire's war against the savage orcs. Rubbing shoulders with the children of the most powerful nobles in the land, Fletcher must tread carefully. The power hungry Forsyth twins lurk in the shadows, plotting to further their family's interests. Then there is Sylva, an elf who will do anything she can to forge an alliance between her people and Hominum, even if it means betraying her friends. Othello is the first ever dwarf at the academy, and his people have long been oppressed by Hominum's rulers, which provokes tension amongst those he studies alongside. Fletcher will find himself caught in the middle of powerful forces, with nothing but his demon Ignatius to help him. As the pieces on the board manoeuvre for supremacy, Fletcher must decide where his loyalties lie. The fate of an empire is in his hands ... Did you know that the Wattpad version of Summoner: The Novice is just a large sample of the first draft? The professionally published version is longer and 100% completed, with more demons, more lessons and more action! You can buy it now in all good bookstores and online, including Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, Amazon, Kindle, iBooks, Google Play, Kobo and Nook. Please vote, follow and add my book to your reading list if you like my writing :) The cover is by Małgorzata Gruszka, one of my favourite artists: This book is represented by Juliet Mushens at The Agency Group.

************************************************************************************** An outcast rogue must break a curse put on his fate, or die on his nineteenth birthday. To survive, he'll need the sword of a maiden, the aid of an immortal, and the power of forbidden magic that could cost him the only girl he ever loved. ************************************************************************************ *** THE JACK OF SOULS won a Silver IPPY this year! *** THE JACK OF SOULS won 1st place in the PNWA Competition in Fantasy! * *** THE JACK OF SOULS won 1st place in the Southwest Writers competition! * *** A "Featured Book" on Wattpad! * *** Now a "Staff Pick" on Kickstarter! * *** Available on Amazon in paper, hardback, and ebook ! * *** My contract with Kindle Select won't allow me to post more than 3 chapters here, but... *** Sign up for my newsletter on stephenmerlino.com for alerts when it's free on Amazon! * MY INSPIRATION I wrote this out of pure love of trickster rogues; I love the wit over brawn motif -- Odysseus over Achilles, Raven over Eagle -- so I like to play with it in my stories. In JOS I set the rogue and con-artist Harric against a foil of warriors in a land threatened by magic and civil war. Whenever possible I turn familiar tropes on their heads: instead of a handsome young Lancelot, I cast a broken-down ex-champion addicted to pain-killing herbs; instead of a dashing Squire Brian, the old knight reluctantly takes an ambitious young woman as squire. Similarly, I re-imagine the standard medieval milieu by infusing aspects of two of my favorite historical periods, Elizabethan England, and The American Frontier. Both eras boast a kind of nationalistic arrogance that borders on hubris, and a magnificent spirit of resourcefulness and re-invention that is fun to play with. SERIES The Jack of Souls is first in a series. I am posting parts of the sequel here now (The Knave of Souls), to help me refine the story.

Jules is a young man barely a century old. He's lived long enough to see the cure for death and the end of scarcity, to learn ten languages and compose three symphonies...and to realize his boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World. Disney World! The greatest artistic achievement of the long-ago twentieth century. Now in the keeping of a network of "ad-hocs" who keep the classic attractions running as they always have, enhanced with only the smallest high-tech touches. Now, though, the "ad hocs" are under attack. A new group has taken over the Hall of the Presidents, and is replacing its venerable audioanimatronics with new, immersive direct-to-brain interfaces that give guests the illusion of being Washington, Lincoln, and all the others. For Jules, this is an attack on the artistic purity of Disney World itself. Worse: it appears this new group has had Jules killed. This upsets him. (It's only his fourth death and revival, after all.) Now it's war...

Meet Joe Nobody . . . and pray he never meets you. He's average height, with an average build, and average looks - an instantly forgettable face in the crowd. Joe also happens to be a hit man, quite possibly one of the best in the world. He's so good, in fact, that most of his work life has settled into a comfortable routine, where everything goes according to plan, and nothing at all is surprising anymore. He's been just about everywhere, and he's seen it all. But Joe hasn't seen everything. Not yet . . . **WARNING** - This work contains several curse words and some extremely violent themes and situations throughout. I mean, the main character is a hit man . . . there's your first sign. You've been warned. **ADDITIONAL WARNING** - This is soooooooo first-draft-ish, so any problems you see logistically, thematically, or grammatically are all the fault of a combination of absinthe and overzealous fingers. And please, for god's sake, if you see something glaringly wrong, tell me about it! :)