[ORIGINAL DRAFT SAMPLE] She is twenty-nine when the FBI comes for her, but Catherine Themis was only seventeen, grieving and naive and angry, the first time she wiped someone else's blood from her fingers and felt the snake rise in her chest. She was seventeen when she stepped into the dark and never looked back. ***** By day, Catherine Themis is an unassuming civilian administrator for the Dedwich Police Department, but by night, she is a notorious vigilante known as The Hangman. Struggling with her violent urges and the psychological cost of her actions, Catherine becomes the target of an obsessive serial killer and a relentless FBI agent, and as the hunt for the Hangman intensifies, Catherine must decide which life she wishes to live and what she values more: vengeance or her fading humanity? A psychological thriller in the vein of MINDHUNTER and HANNIBAL, SERPENT HEART is a deep-dive into the life and history of a conflicted vigilante forced to confront her inner demons and evade a national manhunt. Catherine questions the efficacy of her own convictions as the FBI closes in and a vindictive murderer puts her family, love, and identity in jeopardy. With everything on the line and time running out, who will Catherine Themis become? --- [[AVAILABLE ON AMAZON]] [[REMOVED 24 DEC 2021]] [[2019 Watty Winner - Mystery & Thriller]]

Fleeing his home, Jace ends up starring on a reality show, playing "Orc Wars: Uprising". Only one avatar can win, and if he loses, Jace is back on the streets. ***** Facing abuse at home, Jace runs away and lives on the streets. But it's not long before he finds an opportunity to build a new life - he's going to compete on a reality series based around the game "Orc Wars: Uprising". Soon Jace is living a double life, as himself, and as his famous avatar: Lazarus the Ranger. Soon the game is growing more complicated, and factions form within the game. If Jace loses he'll be back on the streets, but if he wins, he'll have everything he always dreamed of. [[word count: 150,000-200,000 words]]

Sara and Pride escaped Verweald's dangerous streets, but their quest to kill the Sin of Envy has just begun. In search of a way to end the immortal creature's life, Pride and the dying woman find refuge in the manor of Crow's End, where the residents harbor deadly, secretive histories, and the walls breathe with the memories of a madman as old as time. As their time draws short, Pride must manage an impossible feat no other Sin has accomplished before while Sara tries to survive the madness of Crow's End and come to grips with her own limited mortality. ---------------------------------- [[SEQUEL TO BEREFT]] [[ORIGINAL DRAFT]] [[ Highest Rank: #3 in Fantasy ]] [[Winner of the 2017 Fiction Awards (Best Fantasy Story)]] [[Winner of the 2017 Cryptic Awards (Best Dark Fantasy)]]

A complete fantasy book. Technically ... a weird western. Gunslingers, hex witches, dogmen, minotaur, trains that run further than you can imagine ... Mikeos Jones is a gunslinger, faster than thinking, part of the gunlaw, a man who can seldom afford the luxury of looking past the end of any given day. Jenna Crossard is a hex-witch, but her ambitions are larger than spells and charms - the need to understand the world consumes her. They say the gunlaw keeps men safe from the endless horror of the sect, but to Jenna it's a cage and she wants out. If that means breaking open the world and killing a few gods ... so be it.

WARNING: All information contained in this document is deemed highly classified. Any breach in our code of secrecy would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Zoe Sanders, a junior detective in the U.S. government's classified Paranormal Division, is tasked with investigating one of the most mind-boggling mysteries never reported.

Not much ever seems to happen in the Appalachian coal-mining town where Ginny lives with her family. That all changes at the start of the summer of 1940, when a letter addressed to her mother shows up in the mailbox. Prompted by news in the letter, her mother announces that she will be taking care of family matters elsewhere - and leaving conniving tomboy Ginny and her introverted older brother Kody at home - while she does so. When Ginny finds herself consumed by the mystery surrounding a strange old house, she sets out to solve it once and for all. Little does she know what secrets it holds. And neither she, nor Kody, is prepared for how much the summer will change them, or for what they will discover.

After bursting onto the fantasy scene with his acclaimed debut novel, Elantris, and following up with his blockbuster Mistborn trilogy, Brandon Sanderson proves again that he is today’s leading master of what Tolkien called “secondary creation,” the invention of whole worlds, complete with magics and myths all their own. Warbreaker is the story of two sisters, who happen to be princesses, the God King one of them has to marry, the lesser god who doesn’t like his job, and the immortal who’s still trying to undo the mistakes he made hundreds of years ago. Their world is one in which those who die in glory return as gods to live confined to a pantheon in Hallandren’s capital city and where a power known as BioChromatic magic is based on an essence known as breath that can only be collected one unit at a time from individual people. By using breath and drawing upon the color in everyday objects, all manner of miracles and mischief can be accomplished. It will take considerable quantities of each to resolve all the challenges facing Vivenna and Siri, princesses of Idris; Susebron the God King; Lightsong, reluctant god of bravery, and mysterious Vasher, the Warbreaker.

Book 2 - Vincent Tucat is the most talked-about Lord in Harael, and that's not exactly a good thing. Dozens of Lords have been robbed from, and they all suspect he's the one behind it. To keep things from getting worse, he must track down an elusive thief who disguises himself as a wraith. At least, Vincent hopes it's a disguise . . .

************************************************************************************** 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.