Product by Ian S McCain
Fifty-year-old Ernie Chase is just another liquor-soaked husk wandering the streets of New York City looking for his next drink; his body is broken and his mind is a slave to addiction. Things change when he is shot while witnessing a back alley drug deal. He imagines that his life is finally over, but instead he awakens to discover that he is handcuffed to a cot in an abandoned hospital and is somehow sober, healthy and 25 years younger.
Ernie is told that he has been infected with a dangerous virus which requires him to consume human blood to stay alive. He is given a simple choice by his captor; receive continuing treatment for his strange new condition in exchange for lifelong service, or face certain death.
His job is simple now:
Recruit for the Farm.
Distribute the Product to the Infected.
It all seems so uncomplicated until other Infected start to descend on the city, looking for their next fix.
Find more from this author on:
About the author:
By day Ian works in Information Technology as the Director of Operations for an IT consulting firm. At night, while his family is sleeping, he writes; trying hard to strike a balance between creative and business worlds. Ian lives in Orlando, Florida, with his wife, two sons, and their neurotic dog.
What inspired you to write your book?
This was a film script idea I had been kicking around for about 5 years. I had mapped the whole story out and realized that it would likely be easier and more impactful to write as a novel first.
Here is a short sample from the book:
It’s cold. A single incandescent bulb glows hotly in the night air, its fire luring mosquitos and moths, daring them to break through the clear glass shell. The light paints shadows on the narrow alleyway below.
The walls of the buildings reach high into the sky, ten stories at least. Sounds from the bustling night-time city are only muted echoes here, in this hidden alleyway, this cave within a vast metropolis.
Ernie, scruffy and unshaven, urine stains blanketing the front of his two-sizes-too-large trousers, tucks himself further into his makeshift pillow. He coughs; pieces of phlegm fill his mouth. He gathers them up with his tongue and propels them out past his lips, and out of the “door” of his “home.”
–Fucking New York. Fucking poisoned air.
The words that come out of his mouth are just a jumbled approximation of his actual thoughts. His body is fevered and his head is still poisoned with drink. Scotch? The Vicar’s stash? Or is it the Sterno?
He tires of these deep thoughts and rolls back on to his right side, tucking his arms under his head and right knee to his chest. The left leg doesn’t bend. It can’t. The scar tissue from Charlie’s shrapnel has calcified. The VA hospital has treatments for him—gout medication, therapies, physical therapists—but he’ll never go on his own. And the chances of his daughter finding him, well, they are slim. Without her, he won’t be convinced to go anywhere or do anything.
Ernie misses her. He wants to see her. Desperately. He just hates disappointing her. He hates watching that concerned look of disbelief at how bad he’s gotten wash over her face. Hates the thought of her eyes resting on him. He is a failure in all ways that a person can fail, a vile shell of a man. He’d have killed himself years ago and saved the pain of it all, if he wasn’t such a selfish coward.
In fact, it has been almost a month since Marie has seen him, and not for her lack of effort, either. Somehow, even in his drunken fog, he’s been able to avoid her—to avoid her open arms and gifts of care packages, filled with food, clean clothes and baby wipes, the small vestiges of civilized life that he left behind years ago when he wondered just how far he could fall into the bottle. The answer: all the way in. How can he see her again, looking like this?
He lets out another cough. The backs of his teeth are sandpaper on his tongue, the gaps where teeth once resided a painful reminder of the man he’s become.
He has seen her flyers around the city. They have been placed near most of the locations he can often be found passed out and soiled. The picture of him is maybe five years old, with a lovely young Marie, her arm wrapped around him, smiling joyfully from the inside of some soup kitchen. She’s had someone else at the shelter take the photo for her, and the image simply highlights what a wreck he is, and how undeserving he is to have her in his life.
He pulls a neatly folded copy of the missing person flyer out of his pocket. He ripped it down from the north corner lamp post on Thirty-Second St and Lexington last week. It is also the reason he finds himself heading further downtown, well beyond the usual self-imposed boundaries.
He can’t remember what “happy” feels like.
He loved Marie, still does, but his shame has become too painful to bear. She wants him to get better, to sober up. He won’t, so the debate simply becomes an argument, and the pain of watching her tears becomes more reason to drink.
Mmmhh. Drink.
His lips smack at the idea. He’s still fevered, but no longer spinning, which means it is time to plan where and how to get the next drink.
He found the Vicar’s stash at Our Lady of the Resurrection on Nineteenth Street. He went there earlier in the day when they were having one of their sparsely attended outreach efforts and jimmied the lock open to a room on the far side of the vestibule. He was hoping to nick something of value to sell for booze, but then he saw the bottle, golden filigree dancing around the base and opening. It was hidden in the back of a cabinet. He figured that his quest could just cut out the middleman, skip the stealing, skip the selling and get straight to the drinking. He had no idea what it was. Some fancy port? Sacramental wine? Whatever it was, it was more viscous than some of the other things he was used to drinking, but still put a fire in his belly, even if it did taste of rust and raisins.
The name plate on the desk in the office read “Vicar Anton Parese.” He’d taken a few sizeable pulls and put the rest of the bottle back in the case. It didn’t have the kick that his refined palate was accustomed to, the tear-wrenching burn of chemical degreaser, but it was something. He imagines it will have been replaced by now, knowing how the Catholics are.
Ernie’s mind starts to drift and plan as he drops in and out of consciousness for the next half-hour. Suddenly there is a sound out of place. You wouldn’t know it from looking at him and his oft grotesque mannerisms, but he’s always been a particularly observant person, able to memorize the patterns of his surroundings, connect dots that others don’t even know about.
Even in his compromised state of mind he knows by heart the sounds of the alley: the moths and flying insects on their kamikaze mission into the sole light bulb in the alleyway, the scuttle of nearby roaches and vermin rummaging through garbage, the hum of distant city traffic and excitement, the hollow bang of the latch to the rear exit of the Korean restaurant two doors down. He knows their cuisine rather well; the discarded leftovers are responsible for some of the food stains in the front of his pants and for all of the post-dining stains down the back. At least that is the case with this pair of pants. He hasn’t been a “clean” man by any definition in a very long time.
Perhaps it’s instinct, perhaps it’s some relic of his military training, or perhaps it’s simply a sense of self-preservation, but there is no denying it. Some new sound has been introduced to the environment, something that doesn’t belong.
There has been a lot of talk at the soup kitchen about the homeless disappearing lately. He has no conjecture on what the cause could be, but the Food Pantry is alive with speculation—aliens, covert relocation efforts, squatters taking up in abandoned luxury condos. All he knows for certain is that there is always violence against the “residentially challenged,” and that it’s better to avoid conflict one hundred percent of the time. Using what little coordination he has left he balls his body up as tightly as possible, breathing soft deliberate breaths.
A low rumble moves closer as a black Range Rover with darkly tinted windows rounds the bend and rolls slowly through the poorly lit and narrow alleyway. The tint is so dark that Ernie cannot see any faces, only shadowed movement from the people inside.
The vehicle maneuvers to avoid all the obstacles: overturned trashcans, the pile of garbage bags that have torn, spilling their guts (often Ernie’s dinner) into the street. As it moves further through the street it comes dangerously close to the refrigerator box that has been Ernie’s home for the last four or so days. He stays frozen. Cars don’t come through here. Even the Koreans from next door don’t bring their car through the alley.
The SUV slowly passes Ernie and comes to a halt at a small opening in the alleyway about forty feet away, a gap between two brick buildings constructed well before codes and building standards. The gap is maybe three feet across and has a poorly constructed fence blocking entry into it. The alleyway is filled with rubbish and puddles of standing water. Ernie has walked past it a dozen times, but only once when it was night time. Something about the nature of the space and how the only light that made it into the gap between the buildings was from the stars and moon. It gave him the creeps.
The SUV stops, its brake lights illuminating the alleyway like a red spotlight. Three doors open and three men exit. Ernie can see them through the square hole made by the overlapping bottom flaps of the box. They look like young business professionals, clean-shaven, neat clothes. One of them looks like something down on Wall Street: thin lapels, smartly tailored jacket, black dress shoes that shine like onyx. No flamboyant accessories or jewelry. These are the kind of folks who could spare a few thousand dollars, but are reluctant to even hand over a few Christmas-time quarters.
Ernie’s breaths are shallow and soft. He wonders to himself, Who the hell are these guys?
The driver takes up point at the front of the vehicle and the passenger from the back positions himself as rear guard of the vehicle. Both men stand with their arms crossed, surveying opposite sides of the alleyway.
The man who was riding shotgun makes his way to the fence. There’s something about how he moves—it’s fast but graceful. As the man approaches the chain-link fence he sniffs the air and then looks around, surveying the alley, before putting his fingers to his mouth and making a high-pitched whistle. Within half a moment there is another figure standing in the alleyway just behind the fence, their face cloaked in shadows. Only the white skin of their arms can be seen in the light. The pale man pulls the chain-link mesh aside and slides a steel briefcase through the gap in the fence, into the gloved hands of Mr. Armani, as Ernie is now referring to him in his thoughts. Mr. Armani signals to the man at the rear of the vehicle, who opens the boot of the SUV and takes the briefcase from Mr. Armani and places it into the back.
This process repeats itself a dozen times, until the back of the SUV is completely full of silvery briefcases. Ernie knows that he should not be witnessing this, that his watching this drug deal or whatever it was could cost him dearly. Sure, no one would believe a bum, and no one would give a fuck if one went missing. Ernie leans back, his face nowhere near the thin slit in the box that has been his window to this event, and remains as still as possible, taking controlled breaths.
His chest crackles slightly with his exhale. He feels a tickle and knows a cough is coming on. He limits his breathing to something akin to panting, short in-and-out breaths. It’s just a matter of time. His broken-down and polluted body has been brewing a lung-er and it is going to come out in a few moments, whether he wants it to or not.
Mr. Armani nods to the man behind the fence, who recedes into the shadows of the alleyway, and then turns back to the car. The other two men close up the back of the SUV and get into their original places in the vehicle. Mr. Armani gets back into the front passenger seat.
Before he closes the door to the SUV, Ernie lets out a throat-clearing cough. His mouth fills with hard balls of phlegm.
All three doors immediately swing open. The men jump out and eyeball the alleyway, making a quick assessment of what could have caused the out-of-place sound.
–Show yourself.
Ernie doesn’t move. He doesn’t breathe. A few seconds pass, but it is an eternity to this feeble and broken man. The sounds of several sets of feet echo down the alley from another gap in the buildings in front of the SUV.
–All right, nigga, we show ourselves, but you going to step back from that ride.
Five black youths in baggy jeans and an assortment of oversized shirts step out. Bright yellow handkerchiefs across their faces cover everything but their eyes. All of them have some form of weapon. Ernie can barely make it out, but it looks like at least two handguns and some kind of shotgun: a formidable array of weapons. The tallest banger calls out again.
–You mothafuckas hear me? That’s our ride now.
Mr. Armani calls back.
–You aren’t taking this vehicle. If you leave now, we may let you live.
–Ha. We ain’t just taking your ride, son, we taking your product too. Ya dig? Now back the fuck up ’fore we ghost your ass.
None of the men move.
–That’s not happening.
Related products
-
Desired By the Wolf: Part 1 (BBW Werewolf / Shifter Romance) by Mac Flynn
A mysterious stranger. A full moon. A strange lust.
Lenore Anderson’s plain world changes the night she meets the newcomer, Nick Connor. The new owner of a deserted old house, he exudes charm and questions. Why did he move to their small town? How is he so rich? And why does he look at Lenore with such hungry eyes? Those questions lead her into his strange, dark world and into his strong arms, and he’ll never let her go.
Desired By the Wolf: Part One the first entry in the three-part Desired By the Wolf serial, and is not intended to be read as a standalone story.
-
Aloft by Ben Rovik @BenRovik
Junior technician Ensie Thalanquin is the odd girl out in the Aerial squad. Building flying machines should be an exciting life, but years of being alternately teased and ignored by her fellow Petronauts have turned it into a grind.
Cooper Carper is a hard-working machinist whose boss has made him his personal whipping boy.
Love was the last thing they were looking for when they went to work. But sometimes love pops up in the most unlikely places…
Can they keep a relationship afloat despite the differences in their backgrounds, the meddling of their superiors, and the pressure of a dangerous flight test a few short weeks away?
I’m an author, actor and dad living outside Washington, DC with my wife, baby girl, and a brawling pair of cats.
My current projects are the humorous fantasy series “Mechanized Wizardry” and a related series of medium/short length pieces called “Petronaut Tales.” The Petronaut Tales are set in the same fantasy world, but give me license to play with new characters and genres, including romance.
With “Aloft,” I was inspired to write a romance about characters who weren’t especially beautiful, and who spent most of the lives feeling overlooked and out of place. Meeting each other is what lifts them up to do great things, even through adversity and danger.
Why not write about a passion-fest between two supermodels? Because most of the world’s passion-fests are between ordinary folks. I wanted to explore the reactions of two characters who didn’t ever imagine themselves capable of feeling a love that strong, let alone inspiring it in someone else. And I wanted to show how love can make people stronger, which was easier to do with characters starting from a lower-status place.
Sample from Book:
Ensie smoothed out the dog-eared corner of the blueprints for the dozenth time. She shifted her weight on the bench, feeling the warmth of the sun on the back of her neck. She was too poor to own a watch, but she resisted the temptation to duck out into the hallway again and check the sepia-faced clock mounted on the wall. It had been 10:20 on the spot when she’d checked it moments ago. That meant that, by now, twenty-five minutes at most had passed since she’d left Mister Upforth and the rest of his team. And Upforth had said Cooper—or was it Carper?—would meet her in fifteen minutes. But the drafting room might be hard to find, for a civilian who’d never seen the Aerial compound before. And there had been an awful lot of wood left in that cart for just one person to move quickly. Even someone so tall, with those big arms and broad shoulders…
“You need to get a hold of yourself,” she said aloud, pressing her palm against the desk. She closed her eyes.
You’re an Aerial technician. Your ‘naut wants a consultation from a civilian firm. You’ve been trusted with getting information vital to the success of your project. This is Business with a capital B. Not some kind of private—
—and don’t you dare even finish that thought, because seriously: this is Business.
She scratched the space between her too-thick eyebrows as she looked at the door.
And even if it wasn’t Business, the morose thought crept through her defenses, it’s not as if anything’s going to happen. Any friendly vibes you’re getting are because he’s good at his job. Do you really think that there’s anything about you that would inspire unprofessional thoughts in a civilian guy like him? When he’s meeting all the other wisecracking Aerial girls and the Parade squad knockouts on the same day? Count yourself lucky you’re getting to talk to him at all. You’re just—
The door inched open. Ensie leapt to her feet behind the desk. There he was.
“There you are,” she said, rubbing her hands against her hips.
“So sorry,” he mumbled, turning sideways to come through the narrow door. He sounded a little out of breath. “I… I thought I heard you say ‘third building on the right,’ but I must have misheard. That’s actually the, uh, fuel center, I learned, where you guys are doing some crazy things with petrolatum…”
“Oh, gosh, you went to the refinery?”
“Yeah, through a back door. Got a little turned around with the fumes. But then someone—I forgot his name—pointed me here…”
“Spheres, I led you to the refinery without a mask! I am so sorry. I don’t know why I… I meant to say ‘first building on your—’”
“You did. I’m sure you did. I just heard it wrong—”
“No, no, I’m sure I said… I don’t know what I said!”
“Listen, with these ears, all bets are off. It’s a miracle I’m here at all.”
“It is.”
They stood facing each other with their hands flat against their hips. The sunlight illuminated the lower halves of their bodies.
“I’m Ensie,” she said, for no reason.
Why, oh why, oh why do I speak?
He smiled at her. His teeth were a little small and his gums were a little long, so when he smiled he looked like a kid, with a child’s whole-hearted good humor. “That makes, what, the third time we’ve done introductions?”
“I’m sure, probably,” she laughed. She touched her fingertips to the desk and found herself leaning towards him. “My third time, at least. And somehow I’m still not sure what your name is! Carper? Cooper? Caper?”
“Cooper Carper, actually.”
She felt herself smiling like a porpoise. She ordered her lips to stand down. Business. “Nice to meet you, Mister Carper,” she said, very professionally.
“You too, technician.”
She tilted her head at him. ‘Technician?’ Who are you, Sir Tomas? “You can call me Ensie.”
“Well, then,” he said, pressing the door closed behind him with a click, “you can call me Cooper.”
Business!
“I’m on a project now for a concept craft called the Flicker,” she said, brushing the blueprints with her hands as she stared fixedly at the parchment. Cooper came over to the side of the desk to look. His hands floated in space for a moment as he considered resting a big palm on top of the desk to lean over the plans, as she was doing, which would have brought their heads very close together. But instead his hands interlocked behind his back in a sort of parade rest and he just bent his head to look down. Ensie tried not to watch him as she folded the dog-eared corner back into place for the thirteenth time.
She laid out the specifications for the grasshopper-like craft, discussing fuel projections, the airflow models they’d run, and the properties of the alloys they’d debated for the hollow, curved wings. Cooper’s head bobbed up and down, and he offered a succession of mmm’s and I see’s at appropriate times. As she heard herself talk, she fidgeted with the bottom edge of the desk and only allowed herself quick glances up at his face. It was hard to tell if he was following the run-down at all, which gave her a heavy feeling in her stomach.
Burn me. Maybe Mister Upforth had a good reason for wanting that woman Skye to be the one to talk to me…
“So,” he said at last, shifting his weight. She looked up at him. “What exactly do you need us for?”
“Just wanted to, uh, forge a partnership with Upforth’s for a consultation on our ranine apparatus. That’s all.”
Cooper nodded. His forehead was wrinkled with vigorous thought. Ensie folded her hands together and tried not to let her disappointment show. He had the look of someone at an absolute loss for the right thing to say. Please, please, don’t be stupid.
“Honestly?” Cooper said.
“Mmm-hmm?” she said, tucking one of her bangs back into her hairnet.
For a long moment, he just looked at the plans. Then he shook his head and gave a heavy sigh. His hands reappeared from behind his back and he leaned down so quickly their foreheads almost brushed.
“Mister Upforth’s going to kill me,” he said, “but I don’t think you need us at all. The ranine designs you already deploy don’t have any trouble getting a Bulwark Petronaut off the ground, do they? And a Bulwark ‘naut in full armor’s gotta be eighty percent of the weight of this Flicker; maybe even the same, if their suits are steel and this alloy of yours is as light as all that. And I can’t imagine your test pilots are bulked-up the way Bulwark grunts are. I mean, who flies your things?”
“Knighted ‘nauts and expert techs, mostly,” Ensie said, her eyes widening. There was a whole new energy to him.
“So, right! When I think of a burly man or woman in armor jumping through the air no problem, and then I envision someone on the svelte side—like you—piloting a Flicker that, all things being equal, is the same weight but with, you know, better airflow?”
“Hang on,” she said.
“Sure. Sorry. I know I don’t have the right terminology—”
“Did you say, uh.”
She pressed her lips together. Business! But there was no hope.
“Did you say I’m ‘on the svelte side?’”
Cooper’s looked down at her. His face went gray with horror.
“I hope that word means what I think it means,” he whispered.
She looked to the far wall. Cute? Petite? Is that what you meant? She longed to ask him that like a Parade squad nymph would say it, drifting towards him with an archly raised eyebrow and a lazy, kissable half-smile. But just playacting through the line in her head set a swarm of nervous giggles buzzing around in her throat, perilously close to her voice box, and it was all she could do to keep a lid on them.
“You’re.” Was that my voice? The word was a mortifying squeak.
Ensie swallowed and tried again. “You’re right that the aerodynamic profile of the Flicker sure beats an armored ‘naut,” she said, folding the corner of the blueprints back for the fourteenth time. “And weights are comparable. But the jumping action we’re thinking of is on a different scale.”
“Ah, okay. Higher elevations.”
“Yes, but more importantly, jumping’s the primary locomotion for the Flicker. A ‘naut can leap around from time to time, sure, but most of what they do is run. A totally different use of the coils and their, uh, built-in suspensions. Their legs.”
“Whereas the Flicker does nothing but jump,” Cooper said, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Jump, and glide, and jump, and glide. You see? That’s why we need to make sure the coil box we build can handle tons of impacts, and launch with tons of force; but not so much force that the pilot loses control. See? It’s tricky.”
“It’s tricky,” he agreed. Cooper raised his hands. “To be honest, though, I’d trust you Aerials more to make it work right than I’d trust us.”
“But, uh.” Was he really going to walk out of her life because he was too honest to land his company a contract? Keep him. Keep him here! a hungry voice blared out somewhere inside her.
“You must have done something this size before,” she said, hurriedly.
“Oh, sure. We’ve worked big carriage suspensions. A motorized dais that raised and lowered, too, and had a bunch of dancers leaping around on it for, uh, a play or something.”
“See? So Upforth’s could lend experience with scale, while we figure out the whole ‘aloft’ part.”
“Ensie. I just want to be sure we wouldn’t waste your time.”
Ensie took a deep breath through her nose. “It would take a lot of time,” she said slowly. She curled her hands into little fists, rubbing her thumbs against her fingers as she looked up at him. No giggling. No giggling!
“We’d have to meet, uh… quite a few times, probably.”
Cooper looked down at her. His hands unlocked from behind his back and floated to his sides. “Quite a few times?” he said, quietly.
“Oh, yeah. A big project like this could take hours and hours of collaboration.”
He nodded. One of his large fingers pointed to the desk. “Here?”
As he tapped the surface of the desk, Ensie thought of purposes for the wide flat surface that had never even crossed her mind before. She’d never wanted to get started on a collaboration so badly.
“Or your workshop,” she said. “You know. Whichever sounds more productive.”
“Either sounds good to me.”
“Great.”
“Great. Can I say—”
“I just want to—”
They both spoke up simultaneously, and leaned a little closer at the same time. It brought them many centimeters closer than either had meant independently. Ensie froze there. He was so close that her hairnet was almost brushing the center of his chest. She turned her face up to him and saw something very interesting in his eyes.
“You first,” she whispered.
Cooper took a long moment before speaking. “Can I just tell you that I’m looking forward to working with you?”
“Likewise…” Ensie shifted her hand so their fingertips on the desk were touching. “Cooper.”
He shifted his hand on top of hers. Warm pressure, skin-to-skin, flooded up her arm and into her chest. The contours of his rough palm were fascinating as she explored them through the fine hairs and delicate nerves of the back of her hand. Her vision went a little blurry as she dedicated all her brainpower to experiencing his touch against her skin.
A massive noise clattered through the hallway just outside. Ensie recoiled before she recognized the sound of the tool cart for what it was. Cooper started too, raising his hand up and away. He flushed the color of an overripe apple and he refused to meet her eyes as the tech outside pushed the noisy cart from one workroom to the next.
“I.” Ensie brushed the nonexistent dust off the blueprints again, trying to get her voice under control again. Cooper slowly put his hands behind his back.
“That, uh.” He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. That was unprofessional of me, and I’m sorry.”
She looked up at him.
“I shouldn’t have… I mean, I didn’t mean anything by, by touching you.”
“You didn’t?”
“Well, I… it’s not… There’s a time and a place, that’s all. Unprofessional,” he rambled, shaking his head.
Ensie felt the grain of the desk beneath her hand. “I made you think unprofessional thoughts,” she murmured.
Their eyes met.
“It’ll never happen again,” he said, something low coloring his voice.
Ensie raised one eyebrow in an unspoken ‘really?’ she would have been very proud of if she had been able to see herself.
Sunlight flooded the room as their lips pressed together.
-
The Grower’s Gift Progeny of Time 1 by Vanna Smythe
In 2102 the Earth is plagued by draughts, floods, and blizzards that come in the middle of summer. The rich and powerful of North America have pulled back into the six remaining megacities, erasing all trace of a central government and leaving the millions displaced by the environmental crisis to fend for themselves in the dying world. But sixteen-year-old Maya is certain she was born with the power to heal the Earth and make it habitable again. The only place she can learn to use her gift is a school, which is run by the ruthless head of the city of Neo York. But the school is only a front for a facility where they will extract Maya’s magic and then discard her. Only Ty, the heir to the city, can keep Maya from being destroyed at the facility. And Ty’s loyalty to his family has never wavered. Will his growing love for Maya be strong enough to save her?
-
Now You See It . . . by Teresa Roblin
The harder she resists him, the faster her clothes will vanish.
Outspoken Sarah Santorelli hides her sensitive side behind a gruff personality. Fear of abandonment causes her to manipulate romantic relationships to avoid involving her heart. But when her prying aunt casts a spell on her, Sarah ends up on a voyage of discovery on the open seas.
The problem? Every time Sarah lets her guard down, instead of casting off her emotional barriers —the spell makes an item of clothing disappear.
Anthony Mancini has clawed his way to the top. Along the way he’s become a workaholic, putting the demands of his company above those he loves. That’s how he lost Sarah, and he wants a second chance to prove he’s changed.
Thanks to Aunt Lilly’s spell, and a week-long European cruise, stripping Sarah of her defenses just got easier.
-
The Queen of Carleon (The Legends of Avalyne Book 1) by Linda Thackeray
Avalyne is at peace. The Shadow War has come and gone and the kingdom of Carleon is now restored. King Dare, a mortal man has finally wedded his elven love Arianne. As they prepare to usher in a new era of prosperity across the land, the Queen happily announces the impending arrival of an heir.
Arianne’s joy is short-lived when she discovers that an ancient evil has emerged from the wreckage of war with a monstrous plan for her baby. Determined to protect her very mortal husband, Arianne embarks on a quest with her two companions, the warrior maid Celene of Angarad and Keira of the Green, to journey to the far corners of Avalyne before the enemy can plant a seed of evil in the heart of her unborn son.
-
Welcome to Miami by Robert McCullough, C. M. Bratton, Taymika G. Byrd
This brand new feature from Write On Press is sure to stimulate and excite! Experience three tales of adult fantasy from three of the best new authors of the literary scene today. Robert McCullough brings you a tale of seduction in the temple with Church Music. Ms. Taymika G. Byrd is back with lust in the Big Easy. In the Vieux Carre’ you’ll experience the spiritual plane in a whole new way (bring a wet-nap!). C. M. Bratton brings it all together with a tale of passion and lust in the desert sands. You won’t need three wishes after this one (but you might need a cigarette!).
-
Cursed Awakening by Nikki Noffsinger
Ivy Morgan has re-invented herself and is looking forward to the future for the first time, in a very long time. Since fleeing for her life from an overzealous religious cult, she is able to be a modern woman that is gaining her independence; so taking up with a sexy stranger named Nyx is the last thing she needs. Or, is it?
Nyx Wahpeton can’t stop thinking about the young woman he’s met. It couldn’t have come at the worse possible time with the clans meeting and his family wrapped up in a centuries old war that’s nothing short of what horror movies are made from. He’s been a protector of his people and those that reside at the Reservation. There’s betrayal and evil at his front door; but, in his heart he knows Ivy is the one for him. She’s surrounded by secrets that he’s vowed to unlock, as well as her heart. However, can he keep her safe from his own secrets?
-
The Chronicles of Koa: Netherworld by K.N. Lee
What would you do if a demon threatened your mother’s life? If you’re like Koa, you’d sharpen your enchanted sword and go after him… Our world is threatened by the creatures of an alternate land called the Netherworld. Good thing Koa and the Netherworld division are there to keep the vampire population in check. Koa is a powerful half-blood with a mysterious past. Her best friend is her boss, she has a cursed mother, an enchanted sword, and an attractive human pet. Koa also has a problem. A Netherworld serial killer, with a taste for little girls, threatens everything Koa has worked hard to protect. Not even Koa’s boss, Halston can stop him. But he knows one prisoner that can. Too bad that prison is in the Netherworld. Is Koa ready to journey to the Netherworld to release the one creature that can break her mother’s curse and protect all that she holds dear?
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.