Everything has an origin story. A spooky town settled in a dried up lake bed, off the beaten path, idyllic and just this side of wrong; a town built on urban legends and folklore, on nightmares and unease, on one man's mistakes that trickle through the ages. A small town too caught up in each other's business to notice what's rising under their feet. Elijah's just lucky enough to be at the epicenter.

There's been a monster in the mirror since Ollie was eleven, and he only knows one thing: it despises the color yellow. So, when a truly terrible tragedy involving a spork and a too-long flight of stairs leaves him eyeless, and he's sent down the street to Magdalena's Emporium of the Weird & Wonderful to get a new pair, he knows just what color to choose. But the eyes are more than he bargained for. Ollie starts seeing death in everyone he touches, and the crotchety storekeeper, Susan, holds firm in her No Returns Accepted store policy. Ollie does what any reasonable twenty-something already drowning in insurmountable college debt with no fear of any god (capitalist or otherwise) would do and hires the best lawyer in town to force her hand. Well-versed in the matters of arguing, the lawyer thinks they have a real chance of winning on the grounds that, although these new eyes may be weird, they certainly aren't wonderful. As the legal proceedings develop, Ollie realizes that everyone he knows and loves is destined to die on the same day-a day that's only a matter of weeks away-and he might be the only one who can save them from the unfathomable cosmic entity that's sure to kill them. [ First draft. ]

Sekam, a shape-shifting demigoddess, and her guardian, the fourth creator good, wander a neon green toxic wasteland left in the wake of biowarfare while humankind cowers. To restore her true form, Sekam must find a cure. When she saves Dylan, a biohacker who knows more than they are letting on, her path becomes clear. Mars wants to see the world and experience everything it has to offer him, but he can't do that from inside a glass cage locked away in a laboratory. A failed attempt to create a better weapon with partial immunity to the green, Mars is a lab experiment whose cells are routinely reprogrammed to test new algorithms and their response to the green. And they're all supposed to come together and save the world. We'll see about that. Rough draft for NaNoWriMo.

a futuristic world where science is the new god, humanity is legend and technology is the norm. what happens when the most ancient species appears in the system again? © castor may 2019™