Again for my own amusement, I’ve written a fantasy story. This time, it is a novelette in a setting I entertained for decades as a tabletop RPG game master. Given my heavily storytelling refereeing style, the setting might work better in fiction.

The narrator is a middling basset player, Erik of Koyle, who gets himself caught up in the adventure of Yankro, a rough swordsman, fleeing from a horrifying demigod who is hunting him from kingdom to kingdom.

Feel free to share!

DEATH, WAR, & SONG – A Fantasy Novelette

Again for my own amusement, I’ve written a fantasy short story. This time, more in a trash comedy style. So, this one might not be for everyone. Like, if you don’t appreciate juvenile humor. If not, read on and enjoy. Also, feel free to share.

TOGETHER – A Short Fantasy Story

Some of this is derived from a fantasy story I wrote years ago, but never finished. Specifically, the character of Edifice.

I was inspired to write a fantasy short story for my own amusement, but I thought maybe other folks my like to read it. I sell stuff on Amazon, but this little tale I decided to release free into the wild. Feel free to share.

KARMHOLZ – A Short Fantasy Story

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While I’m waiting for support to continue the dystopian, neuropunk novel Nodular, I’ve been working on a scifi novel that I don’t have a genre for. Like McCaffrey’s The Dragonriders of Pern, it’s a science fiction tale couched in fantasy tropes, but the term “science fantasy” implies the opposite: a fantasy story couched in scifi tropes. Like Pern, the world of The Heir of Annihilation, Kampania, is a false fantasy, a scifi setting in which the characters experience the world in a typical fantasy setting way.

In Heir, the people of Laramidia live a simple life fishing off the coast of the Thalassic Ocean, insulated from the politics of the Inner Seas to the east. Bram Swanjamin is the son of a fishing captain and a feather worker, but he’s apprenticed to a wandering sage who teaches him the knowledge brought to Kampania from the First World. After a catastrophic fishing trip with on his father’s boat, Bram is adrift and awaiting his mentor to return from his traveling in the east.

Check out The Heir of Annihilation.

Oh, the ordeals of proofing. The learning curve was quite steep. But, I slugged through it and here we are.

The Ends of the World is now on sale at Amazon. If you like pirates, puzzling supernatural worlds, intelligent animals (we’ve got a raven, a monkey, and an octopus), and lots of plot twists, you might hate this novel. But, you’ll never know until you try it!

Okay, here’s the story. Engineer John Randolph has a new job that has nothing to do with his degree, a new girlfriend who moved in but won’t have sex with him, and new shoes that are eating into his feet. Then John gets smeared in a crosswalk and finds himself in a purgatorial afterlife that’s stuck in the age of sail. He shows up naked, gets pressed into service by wily plantation owners and brutal pirate lords, and is struggling to win freedom for his newly dead friends.

Newcomer cosplayers revere recently deceased rock stars, old souls fight to maintain their archaic control over newcomers, the mysterious Company Men move behind the scenes, and John discovers one weird fact: the World Facing remakes itself to the expectations of its not-quite-dead inhabitants.

Will John escape his pursuers or get killed again and be sent to his final reward?

I am serializing a couple of novel projects at Patreon: Xenes, a science fiction adventure novel, and Goodly Creatures, a gunpowder, age of sail fantasy about colonial ambition, with a large cast of characters. Humans from several civilizations to the west of the Apsamian Ocean have settled on the coasts of the vast and unexplored continent to the east, home to non-human races: the primordial giants and Peyri, and their mongrel  creations, hybrid peoples who dwell in the wilderness of the eastern continent.

A newly elevated lord, Julius Blake, seeks to enhance his station by securing his governor’s trade routes through a wilderness plagued by mongrel monsters. He is confronted by a bear-man, Grigarius, raised from a cub among humans by the governor of Johannia colony.

The rogue Raf Arland, condemned to indenture for his crimes in the Old World, navigates colonial society to find a way to better his low station. He is joined by an unlikely ally, a seasoned  sailor named Jefford Schank who is abandoned in the colonies by a brutal captain.

Lady Snow Bernes struggles to protect the ambitions of her father, the governor of the Royal Colony of Johannia, with the help of manservant Raymond Gamba.  She is torn between her loyalty to her father, her admiration for Lord  Blake, and her inexplicable attraction to Raf Arland. And, she has a magical secret that could determine the course of her schemes.

If you’re a patron, you can continue on to chapter four, ″Admirable Footsteps.” Chapter one, “Kings Cove,” is available for free. If you like the story, consider becoming a patron so I can continue writing full-time.

I am serializing several novel projects at Patreon, starting with a few free chapters to let readers and potential patrons know what I’m about. My latest offering, patrons only, is from Xenes, a science fiction adventure set centuries after the humans’ first attempt to colonize nearby space had failed. In the aftermath, humans and their genetically engineered “types” have broken into multiple antagonistic factions that have been kept in an uneasy peace by androgyne somatypes.

But now, recluse Sandalfon Kaffel, androgyne diplomatic officer Vani Matoyan, and the mysterious girl Meyna Jeyen find themselves in an unexpected battle that destroys Sandalfon’s new home planet and corners them between the politically zealous Threaders, strictly religious Bahrí, and philosophical Smoke Hatters.

Xenes was originally serialized at Fresh Pulp scifi magazine, but now has new content as I firm it up for publication as a novel.

This offering is for patrons. If you’re a patron, you can continue to “Gears and Gunnery.” Chapter one, “Break From Juggler,” is available for free! If you like the story, consider becoming a patron so I can continue writing full-time.

I am serializing a couple of novel projects at Patreon: Xenes, a science fiction adventure novel, and Goodly Creatures, a gunpowder, age of sail fantasy about colonial ambition, with a large cast of characters. Humans from several civilizations to the west of the Apsamian Ocean have settled on the coasts of the vast and unexplored continent to the east, home to non-human races: the primordial giants and Peyri, and their mongrel  creations, hybrid peoples who dwell in the wilderness of the eastern continent.

A newly elevated lord, Julius Blake, seeks to enhance his station by securing his governor’s trade routes through a wilderness plagued by mongrel monsters. He is confronted by a bear-man, Grigarius, raised from a cub among humans by the governor of Johannia colony.

The rogue Raf Arland, condemned to indenture for his crimes in the Old World, navigates colonial society to find a way to better his low station. He is joined by an unlikely ally, a seasoned  sailor named Jefford Schank who is abandoned in the colonies by a brutal captain.

Lady Snow Bernes struggles to protect the ambitions of her father, the governor of the Royal Colony of Johannia, with the help of manservant Raymond Gamba.  She is torn between her loyalty to her father, her admiration for Lord  Blake, and her inexplicable attraction to Raf Arland. And, she has a magical secret that could determine the course of her schemes.

If you’re a patron, you can continue on to chapter three, ″Humble Beginnings.” Chapter one, “Kings Cove,” is available for free. If you like the story, consider becoming a patron so I can continue writing full-time.