|
 |
|
|
|
Mark Seaton is having a bad day. His mentor, one of the most powerful men on the mainland, tells him that before
he'll be of any worth he has to destroy a man's life. The ship Mark's family has attempted to purchase through generations
of indenture burns and sinks. On the way back home from the fire he witnesses a deadly duel. He's spattered with blood when
he tries to help one of the dying men. There are no survivors to vouch for his innocent involvement, and there's an old enemy
in the household eagerly waiting to implicate him in any wrongdoing he can find.
Mark goes to his mentor, who formulates a plan to get him out of the city. Just outside the city gates he has second
thoughts about following a man who's happy that Mark has finally gotten blood on his hands. Exhausted and overwhelmed, he
races to find freedom in the tropics, where a recent revolution has birthed a strange form of government on the islands--democracy.
The jesters on the island are Old World. Any and all of them may be involved in a mainland plot to retake the islands.
Mark might be the islanders’ best chance to remain free, but he's young, he's raw, and bound jesters like his mentor
are the stuff of legend. They're going to eat him alive, and he knows it. Mark paints a jester's mask on his face, puts
on clothes stolen from dead men, and crafts a smile. He may be young and inexperienced, but that may play to his advantage.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Life isn't easy for a single mom, especially one who's a bounty hunter. It gets even worse when a rescue turns out
to be a jail break, and that jail break embroils with the inhuman, magical creatures men call Fae, things that look like talking
foxes, toads with crowns, misshapen giants that look like pieces of the earth, or heartless beings like Inarielle, an ancient
queen who intends to use an unborn infant to lay claim to territory now held by the humans.
No matter what happens, at the end of the day Beggar has to provide a meal for her voracious teenaged son and a roof
over their heads. She doesn't wonder why she ever left her husband, though. She's never going back to him and she's never
giving the child to the fae, even if it means double crossing everyone in her path--her ex, the fae, her contract, the king,
and even her own son.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
KJ planned on getting home to her husband after martial arts class.
Instead, she's a victim in a fatal car accident. An ex-Catholic become pagan, KJ has to face her spirituality on an epic journey from which none return. Accompanied
by the fair-weather Christian woman who caused the accident and her spiritual guardian, a young cancer victim who seems to
be turning into something horrible, and pursued by strange predators and weird spirit beings, the only way to go seems to
be forward on a ship her friends bestowed on her by ritual at her funeral. As the territory unfolds, KJ can't always tell
what is true and what might just be her brain rotting away into layers of escapist delusion. But wherever she ends up, she
intends to come to grips with who she is and who she should be, and to find the core of what she's always felt in her heart--the
source of spirituality.
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Mark Seaton returns to the mainland to find the source of the
threat against the islands. His plans immediately fall apart, and continue to disassemble on him as he tries to maneuver
in a complex political world where his mentor reigns as the greatest of all jesters. His only choices appear to be to play
his mentors game or retreat. At last he decides to trust the most untrustworthy of men. What he discovers unravels what
he thought he understood, and gives him knowledge he doesn't want. The known world is about to shatter, and he's standing
beside the target for the hammer blow.
Sequel to Masks; a work in progress
|
|
|
|
|
Elanora and Martin accept each other’s hands in her second
and his first marriage. The
Goddess approves, but the God is neutral. Elanora's hope that she might have a
family fades with the priest’s words. Maybe her third and final husband might
be the right match. It doesn’t
matter. For years
she’ll endure pressure to produce a child, which might only lead to another miscarriage, while her best childbearing
years slip away.
|
She slips away to
visit her friend, an exiled prince, for advice and to ease his desolate solitude. The advice he gives shocks
her, but it will give him a chance at freedom and she might have a chance to escape years of emotional torture. Instead of finding hope, Elanora unfurls a plot many years in the making. Her present and
future betrothed princes unite to get her back. Her lover endangers himself trying to keep her alive. Mother
Queen sends her army forward to meet the exiled prince’s threat. Allies and enemies of both sides rouse
and rally. No matter which way Elanora turns, betrayal and the threat of civil war threaten. She
has no choice but to charge in a direction no one could have anticipated, perhaps to destroy the very things that define her
demi-divinity, and the core of her nation.
80,000 words
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Billi Mayhem returns from an arduous journey across the
desert with bad news. The Helefrit
have infiltrated human government.
When she reaches the base for the war effort against the Helefrit, her
report provides a note of hope compared to deeper problems in the human war
effort. Humanity will
lose it’s
best and only realistic weapon against the enemy, and the enemy has developed a
powerful weapon of their own that will topple cities around the globe.
Billi, accompanied by trusted companions in
arms, set off on a mission to find a way to help offset the imminent
disaster. What they
discover might
save humanity from annihilation, but it may cost Billi her friendships, the man
she loves, who she is, and after all that, even her life. It’s a terrifying prospect, but one she
comes to grips with until she realizes there’s even more to lose, and that the
threat the Helefrit pose goes deeper than death itself.
|
|
|
|
