Various collected short stories and poems of the fantastic and the macabre and the whimsical. Take a journey through the wardrobe... © All Rights Reserved Jack Pagliante 2016

The first volume in the epic fantasy series Soulwoven. Litnig Jin has spent his life yearning for the power to weave the souls of the dead into magic. His brother Cole has spent his believing in nothing bigger than his own two hands. When a dragon sinks its claws into their nightmares, both of their lives will change forever. A dream of moving statues, shattered chains, and seething clouds of darkness sets the brothers on a journey into the unknown. A prince asks for their help. A necromancer hunts them. The bloom of first love gives Cole something to believe in. And as the brothers travel the world of Guedin seeking to prevent the hatred of a god from coming to life, Litnig learns that there are prices to pay for all power, and that the power he seeks may cost him more than he can possibly imagine. Soulwoven is a story of high fantasy, high adventure, and high soul searching in eight points of view, written with people between the ages of 15 and 30 in mind. I love it, and I hope you will too. Edit: An updated version of Soulwoven is available commercially. Help me write more and buy a copy! The print book will look great on your shelf, I promise. :-) Favorite reader blurbs! "This is the finest piece of literary work I've read in months." - @yakotseal "Very very like a piece of steak" - @incipient "THIS BOOK IS SOOO DAMN AWESOME A.K.A COOOOOL" - @jewell122 "Once it picks up it's impossible to put down." - @RonDoolin -JS

In Elemental magic you can be one of four magic types; water, fire, earth, and air. The only problem is Violet is none of these things. Is she what they call a magic dud, or is she something rarer, more powerful, and more dangerous than anyone could have imagined!? Teasers, "Em, most girls sneak out for a boy, you sneak out for a unicorn." I began to cry as it reached for my face."No!" I screamed. "Please No!" I went to pull back the shower curtain, but some nagging thought in the back of my head stopped me. I didn't have a little brother, so why was there a little boy in my bathroom? I gulped and with shaking hands pulled back the shower curtain. "What!? How could that be!?" I yelled, and covered my hand with my mouth. Shouting wasn't such a good idea right at this moment. If someone heard us and came up here to investigate the noise we were making, they would find a boy and a girl, a bloody knife with both their finger prints on it, and a very very dead body. "Don't touch her!" he hissed and lunged at Henry. Running through the night wearing nothing but a flimsy hospital dress, while waving a dismembered hand in his hand, was a strangeness no regular person could hope to inspire to.

Chosen when a child, Lady Joselyn is trained to be a ruthless killer. She is destined to be the English king's assassin and protector. Only he and the guild master are supposed to know. It's a life and death secret that must be kept. For an assassin survival is precarious. Life is something you simply cannot take for granted because the next day is never granted. Despite her privileged upbringing, Joselyn quickly learned how to survive on her own and to never trust a soul while following the Guild without question. Upon her return to England, a murderous plot against King Cassiush is discovered. Joselyn is shocked when she finds out who the fiend is. She's even more shocked when the King proposes marriage, a lot. An assassin has never married her king before. The last one who fell in love had her tongue ripped out and was burned alive. Letting her emotions cloud her judgment, Joselynfalls for Cassius and agrees to the marriage, jeopardizing not only his life but her own. Disobeying the Guild means death. Now she must figure out how to keep them both alive and not piles of smoldering ash.

In a world with two suns, Tesni Kendrick has been taught to fear the blue sun and the people it shines over. In the South, the Wilde can harness the blue sun's power to perform great and terrible feats of magic. Tesni makes her home in the North, where the Wilde are the enemy, the blue sun doesn't shine and magic doesn't exist. Or at least it's not supposed to. For five years, Tesni has hidden her ability to wield magic and suppressed her powers. But when her father, the king's most loyal general, captures a group of Wilde men, Tesni's curiosity gets the best of her. From a handsome Wilde boy, she learns there is more to her magic than she ever imagined. Tesni's quest for knowledge--and the consequences it brings--takes her on a journey to the Wildelight, where the blue sun shines in full force and magic runs rampant. Can she learn to tame her magic from a people as wild as their name?

Thief. Murderer. Mage. Prince. Warrior. Heroes. 16 year-old Sabin's plans to join the army change when he learns he is a Serien - a warrior who wields an element. With a sentient sword, he must find the other Seriens. His goal: unite them into a force capable of defending humanity from the Guan, a humanoid race believed to be extinct. His charges are a belligerent thief, sarcastic assassin, adorable mage and arrogant prince. Each with their own agenda. Stand together or die alone. The hero price is never fair. ------------ Book 1 of the Path of Light and Fire series. Book 2 - Dragon & Phoenix (Completed). Book 3 - Frozen Light (Under Construction) The Appendix and extras can be found in the companion book "A World of Light and Fire."

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

[Featured Story and Wattpad Prize Winner 2014] When Malachi, an exiled murder, activates a magic relic and duplicates his world, he uses his newly found power to win over the Larks, dog-like creatures from the North. Seeking to locate his missing daughter and plot revenge on those responsible for her disappearance, Malachi marches south, leaving destruction in his wake. Whik Winfield, a young, adventurous Hemonstalian, is swept up in the chaos. He escapes with fellow survivors to the mysterious island of Sebolt, leaving everything he knew behind, including his best friend Sonora. Whik hoped peace could be restored in his new home, but when he finds a mysterious device and creates a world of his own, his troubles double. Can Whik understand how to wield his world-building power before Malachi takes it all away? When the path of worlds can change with a shift in the wind, Whik learns that all second chances come with a price. This dark fantasy novel interweaves Whik's story at ages 9 and 17, as he comes to terms with creating another him, attempts to stop the fall of his nation from a ruthless murderer, and realizes that in order to save the girl he loves in one world, he may have to die in another.

Arcadia's Knight Academy is the premier school for young men hoping to become a Sorceress's Knight. Only nobles, people with power and prestige, are allowed within these hallowed grounds-which explains why Caspian Ignis del Sol is hated by everyone. He's not a noble, or of even slightly noble lineage. He's a peasant. Caspian is tasked with delivering a letter to a Sorceress, but he soon finds himself in over his head, when the Sorceress in question is attacked by an elven assassin. Now he's become the temporary Knight for a Sorceress nicknamed The Succubus, and he must protect her from more assassination attempts. However, Caspian is beginning to suspect the Sorceress might be more dangerous than the assassin. Complete!

Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, better known simply as Gulliver's Travels (1726, amended 1735), is a novel by Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of the "travellers' tales" literary sub-genre.