Every year a student is chosen to get a scholarship to graduate at the official Werewolf Committee. No one gets to meet or even see the high society wolves unless they are lucky enough to be born into a family of wealth, or to be chosen as a scholarship graduate. Elina Weitzel is the year's chosen scholarship graduate and she is the person who was least expected to be chosen. However even if she doesn't know it, she has the qualities the Werewolf Committee were looking for: Confidence, Academic, Athletic, Ambitious, and Compassionate. Little does she know, one of the powerful Alphas turns out to be her mate. [Highest Ranking; #1 Werewolf #1 Teen fiction] [Currently in featured section]

To move on from her past, an extraordinary girl must tear down the walls she has built to protect herself. Mackenzie Douglas seems to have it all: good looks, a great boyfriend, a passion for biking, and a little sister who worships her. But under the veneer of perfection lie the emotional scars of her childhood, inflicted by her father. Though her memories have faded with time, the wounds on Mac’s subconscious remain. Having vowed to never be a victim again, Mac focuses on a journey she’s always wanted to take: a summer bike trip on her amazing new RoadCap bike. But as the excursion finally gets underway, memories Mac long ago buried start to claw their way back to the surface, forcing her to confront a past she has done everything she can to forget. To prevent her sister from enduring the same trauma, Mac must let go of everything in which she’s found refuge. To break a cycle that needs to be broken, Mackenzie summons her strength and risks shattering the world she has so carefully built, exposing hidden secrets, long-told lies, and a horrific crime. Hello, Readers! It took me nine years (seriously!) to finish this YA, Dancing With the Devil, and Diversion Books has published it both digitally and in paperback versions. But guess what? I'm also putting it up here on Wattpad, free. Serialized, so it might make you crazy, but still, cool, right? And the whole thing will be here. I'm serializing twice a week every Sunday and Wednesday and the completed story will be one of the Wattpad Featured Stories starting on June 6th. You'll just have to wait to read the whole thing. After it's all up, I get to answer questions in a LIVE Q&A book club! Talking to readers will be a dream come true. Sign up here to make sure you don't miss the event: http://katiedavis.com/devilbookclub

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

"I want to grow up" Did you say it when you were a kid? I know I did. Have you regretted growing up at some point in your life? Have you wished you could be a careless child once again? I know you have. Everyone has. The more you grow the bigger the challenges, the obstacles, the pain. Life gets serious. You get serious. You forget to smile at the morning sun shining down your face. You are too absorved by your problems to notice the beautiful world surrounding you. And when life gets hard, you wish more than anything to turn back in time and be that small child who did not know anything when he said "I want to grow up"