5 Vile & Ignoble Tales
  • Reads 65
  • Votes 5
  • Parts 6
  • Time 1h 8m
  • Reads 65
  • Votes 5
  • Parts 6
  • Time 1h 8m
Complete, First published Oct 07, 2021
This is a collection of five miscreant tales: "The Grotesque There Is", "A Mere Clock", "Mayara", "The Lethargy" and "Animalia". Here are the synopses of each story in this book:

"The Grotesque There Is" is actually a performance of two short stories. The first (initially called "Equine Hiring") is a mostly dialogue story about a horse in a job interview. The second tells the chronicle of the two men who stood in the rain.

"A Mere Clock" is a narrative in the 1st person that tells the adventures of a mere wristwatch. At the first impact, the characters seem far from the reader, but the last paragraph ends up in a contemporary narration.

"Mayara" tells the story of an egoistic girl that falls in love with a young man. Later, this man doesn't satisfy himself with her selfishness and ends up infuriating the girl, which leads to a series of tragedies and anguish, all due to the destructible retaliation.

"The Lethargy" is an imaginary, almost parabolic narrative where the protagonist is a sleepy student disappointed in himself.

"Animalia" is a first-person novelette of a teenage love affair between a bass player and a pretty who turns out to be a beast, making the story a real wild and raw mess.

PS.: Some of these stories may present sensitive content and metaphorical representation of violence, although I do not consider any of these occurrences really timely characterised as 'mature content' since such matters are dealt with discreetly and with no compromise. Anyway, if you are uncomfortable with any approach to mature content, I suggest not reading "The Lethargy" & "Animalia". 🧡

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Book cover art: "Sogno Del Demiurgo" by Alessandro Sicioldr.
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The Jack of Souls (Multi-award winner!)

66 parts Complete

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