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Celia Jones can talk to the dead, but getting on with them is a different story.She always has at least three spirits following her around, complaining about their relatives, or the inadequacy of their funeral arrangements. The latest is a murdered actress, Maude Domby, but she's less interested in denouncing her killer than in accusing the understudy of stealing her favourite pearls.When the charming but utterly fraudulent medium Stanley Winter holds a séance to contact Maude, Maude insists she and Celia should attend, to see people mourning her 'properly'. But the séance ends up implicating an innocent woman, and now Stanley Winter is banging on Celia's door, begging her to help him find Maude's real killer.Unfortunately, helping Stanley Winter could lead Celia to confront her other power - the one that's both lighter and infinitely darker than talking to the dead.ONC Prompt: 72. A real necromancer sits in on a fake séance.…

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Do you ever feel like you're living the worst day of your life over and over again? And that, if you could somehow do things differently, get it right this time, you might finally be free? Jason Durand is a bodyguard, tasked with protecting a politician and his daughters, in one of the most inhospitable places on earth: the mountain-island of Mosken in northern Norway, which is uninhabited, choked in mist, and guarded by treacherous tidal currents. But his life on the island isn't what it seems. There are strange repetitions in the patterns of the clouds, bouts of déjà vu that leave him gasping, and - weirdest of all - a flock of black birds that mob him every morning like an avian alarm clock. And then his worst enemy - the cockney contract killer he's supposed to be guarding against - tells him they're both prisoners, and offers him a deal...…

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Supervillain Ranvi De Witt is somehow not in prison yet, but her superhero nemesis is. When he asks her to consult on a murder-case that could free him, at first, she's thinking only of the money (well, at first, she laughs in his face, but after that, she's thinking only of the money). But when her dim-witted minion (and actual best friend) is brainwashed to act like a fairytale princess, she realises this murderer is targeting her as well as her nemesis. He's got a lot of power, even if he's literally butchering the fairytales he's forcing his victims to recreate. And he's supposed to be dead. 'Surrounded by Idiots' is a comic fantasy novella about morally grey areas and the power of stories: how some of them can cage you, while others can set you free.ONC prompts: 50. A supervillain has a midlife crisis and decides to become a superhero. But redemption might be harder than they imagined. 59. I am the pages of the past and the ink of the future. I course through the veins of many, though few truly notice me. I am what they search for in others, yet I cannot be bought. I am the beginning, the middle, and the end. Tell me your story, and perhaps I'll grant you the love others have failed to find.…

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Jack Cade only needs one more thing to save his girlfriend from her past: the ring she threw into the demon realms. The one she never wanted anyone to find. It's being guarded by the incarnation of despair, and he has mixed feelings about retrieving it - not just because Ellini asked him not to. Once he does, she's going to leave him to fight the mad goddess-in-waiting, Myrrha Crake. But if she doesn't, Myrrha could kill the mother goddess of the demons and lead a crazed demon army into the human world. Can Ellini find a way to stop her? Is Robin Crake really on her side? Will Alice Darwin embrace her role as one of the two divinely-appointed guardians of Oxford? And where has the other guardian been hiding all this time? Long Live the Queen, the final book of The Powder Trail, features sea-witches, silver dragons and a resurgent Ellini Syal, in control of her past and her future. But it will take every scrap of her new-found strength to fight Myrrha and the chaos that flows in her wake.Cover by the amazing @AnnamitaMuscaria…

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Jack Cade has spent the past seven months avenging his dead ex-girlfriend - organizing riots, hunting slavers, even committing the worst of all Oxford crimes: setting fire to the Bodleian Library.Now he's discovered that the woman whose death drove him over the edge has been alive all this time, shacked up with his worst enemy.Can he forgive her? Can he persuade her to forgive him? Can he help her in her quest to take on the scariest woman he's ever met - Myrrha Crake, the ageless, deathless leader of the Wylies?All he has is the mysterious shopping list given to him by the mother goddess of the demon race, the one headed 'How to save Ellini from her past': Ring. Sister. Piano.Trying to find these items - trying to make Ellini invincible - will take him into the demon realms, into his past, and into his worst nightmares.Ring. Sister. Piano is the fourth book in the epic fantasy romance The Powder Trail, a series where the past and the present meet, part and reunite with explosive consequences. Cover design by the awesome @AnnamitaMuscaria…

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After spending the past month as a cheerful amnesiac, drinking gin and making jokes while his world disintegrated, Jack Cade finally has his memories back. That means he knows exactly who Ellini Syal is, and how he feels about her. Unfortunately, he also thinks he's killed her. All he's living for now is revenge against the people who took her from him, be they demons or former friends. Ellini has come to London to do what she does best: a disappearing act. She has a broken heart, a punctured lung, and a pressing need to avoid all personal entanglements. But even in the smoke and bustle of London, someone from her old life has found her - someone who, like her, is supposed to be dead. A Thousand and One English Nights is the third book in the epic fantasy romance The Powder Trail, a series where the past and the present meet, part and reunite with explosive consequences. Cover design by the awesome @AnnamitaMuscaria…

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Eleven years later, in the city of Oxford, he met her again for the first time...In 1870, Jack Cade is admitted to the new-breed stronghold of Pandemonium, a colony of people just like him: descendants of the vanished demon race, all of them extraordinary in little ways, and deranged in much bigger ones. There, he falls in love with Ellini Syal, a shy, insular woman who spends most of her time scampering barefoot over the Edinburgh rooftops.In 1881, he meets her again, but has no idea who she is. All he knows is that there are dark, horribly suggestive gaps in his memory, and that Ellini is running from something she refuses to talk about. Can he work out who she is and what she's done in time to save her from the creatures pursuing her? Can he save himself from the amnesia and the creeping indifference that are eating him up piece by piece? Or is amnesia preferable to the kind of memories he will have to unearth?The Great Ellini is the first book in the epic historical-fantasy-romance The Powder Trail, a series where the past and the present meet, part, and reunite with explosive consequences.AWARDS (for full list see Author Notes):1st Place - Paranormal (The Misfit Awards 2022)1st Place - Fantasy (Clouded Ink Awards 2022)1st Place - Fantasy (The Pink Cloud Awards 2023)FEATURES (for full list see Author Notes): StoriesUndiscovered - Into the Abyss (01/10/2022)StudsandVixens - On-going Beaut (27/09/2022)WattpadDarkFantasy - A Kingdom in Shadows (11/09/2022)Lowfantasy - A History Unlikely (05/12/2022)Rankings:#1 Oxford (23/09/2022)#1 victoriangothic (09/09/2022)#1 darkfantasyromance (09/09/2022)#2 wellwritten (24/10/2022)#9 historicalfantasy (15/09/2022)#14 gothic (31/10/2022)#20 mysteryromance (24/10/2022)Cover and graphics by the amazing @AnnamitaMuscaria…

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In the days after Ellini left, Jack devoted himself wholeheartedly to the pursuit of oblivion...In 1876, Jack Cade has won a revolution, but lost his girlfriend. In 1881, he has the girlfriend back, but can't remember anything about how he lost her or what she was to him. Still, he knows she is determined to die on the fourth of July - that it has been predicted in quite a reliable book of prophecies - and that, for the sake of his sanity, he has to prevent it. That means pitting himself against living gargoyles, Oxford dons, man-hating sorceresses and - not least - Ellini's own despair. Red, White and Blue is the second book of the epic fantasy romance The Powder Trail, a series where the past and the present meet, part and reunite with explosive consequences. AWARDS:2nd Place - Best Romantic Scene (Mystical Mini Awards 2023).Cover design by the awesome @AnnamitaMuscaria…

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Cat Noir offers to give Ladybug dancing lessons in the evenings--strictly superhero talk, absolutely no kissy faces. They make a connection that helps both of them survive when Marinette is akumatized and Cat Noir's boundless optimism starts to falter.…