The only thing you need to know is that Wild Cards is set in our world, and an alien virus has been infecting people in rare outbreaks. It kills 90% of victims, makes ugly monsters of 9% (Jokers) and gives 1% random superpowers (Aces).A very personal short story that I'm proud of and want to find a wider audience for.There is a sequel story free on the Tor website, The Visitor: Kill or Cure.

    Forced to transfer schools mid-year, she wasn't trying to make new friends. In that same month, sophomore Nate Wilson's girlfriend broke up with him. Searching for someone to fill the void left by his first love, he meets Emi in his art class. Nate knows he wants Emi from the moment he sees her. Emi knows she needs Nate after one night together. A life-long friendship is born, and a pact is made to ensure that nothing will come between them. This novella is the prequel to the Emi Lost & Found series. After the 3-volume series was published, readers wanted more. This is for them – the story of how Nate and Emi met – and although it’s a prequel, it can be enjoyed before or after the series.

    But then, in a Cinderella reversal, he was gone! And I was left musing over the boy who had set my heart on fire. Can I find him again, and will I get my happy ending with the boy from the Christmas Dance?

    Saadiq Haider, a renowned gene therapist and professor at Stanford University, receives a phone call that changes his life. Abandoning his duties and responsibilities, Saadiq hurriedly boards a flight bound for India, embarking on a journey that spans thousands of miles and pulls him back into a past Saadiq thought long-buried. Seated next to him on the flight, Anne Miller—an intrepid journalist with a nose for headline news—senses the reclusive genius has a story to tell.During the flight, Anne manages to break through Saadiq’s hard exterior and listens, rapt, as he unfurls a tale fraught with love and heartbreak.His story transports Anne back in time to a small, sleepy town nestled in the mountains of northern India, where Saadiq spent his childhood. Through Saadiq’s narrative, Anne meets Maryam and witnesses the friendship between Maryam and Saadiq mature into an intense love; a love that is tested when tragedy strikes and the lovers are separated. Try as they might, their devotion is no match against the workings of fate, and the tighter Saadiq and Maryam cling to one another, the faster they slip apart.Now, after two decades of trying to forget his past with alcohol and drug abuse, Saadiq tells Anne that fate has acted again; Maryam is the hospital, her condition critical. When their plane lands in India, the newfound friends part ways and while Saadiq rushes to Maryam’s side, Anne returns to her life, grateful to have met the enigmatic man.Months later, Anne learns that after wrenching Maryam from the indomitable grip of death, Saadiq took her back to America, where they finally married. But, her assumption that the greatest love story she had ever known would end happily is shattered when Anne receives devastating news.

    Luna, her father, and her little brother, Tile, are still struggling with grief.   When Luna goes to clean out her mother's old studio, she's stunned to find her mom's cell phone there—charged and holding seven unheard messages. As Luna begins to listen to them, she learns more about her mother's life than she ever wanted to know . . . and she comes to realize that the tidy tale she's been told about her mother's death may not be the whole truth.

    It's nothing like the suburb you might live in . . . Unless, that is, an insane, Listerine-guzzling Realtor sold you your house? Or perhaps your postman happens to have a disturbing relationship with his claw hammer? A grieving Dan LaBarbara knows something is different in Helltown as soon as he comes back home. Yeah, sure, the town always been a little off. You can feel that about the place, like if you stepped into a house whose only occupants were freshly murdered corpses in an upstairs bedroom. But this is something else entirely. Standing in his little brother Barbie's basement workshop, holding one of those dioramas Barbie's been building since the accident, the ones that seem to move when you hold them, Dan can feel Barbie's terror. Barbie must know something is coming, something big, something evil. He's trying to warn Dan in the only way he knows. Why else would Barbie build a diorama depicting a man-sized version of a cartoon rabbit with bloody teeth about to devour a trembling teenager? Why else would he spend so much time crafting an intricate model of Death standing over a pimply teenager in the school library? And let's not even talk about that little model of the mob of undead surrounding the massive tower of vicious black spines behind the high school. Hilltown has a story to tell, and the lonely brain-damaged man who builds magical dioramas in his basement workshop has been telling it all along. As the evil closes in around them, Dan and his new love interest Jessica must do the impossible: save everyone one in Hilltown before it's too late.

    Why, specifically?”“I like to build things.”As of the time of writing, more than ten million copies of E L James’ “Fifty Shades of Grey” have been sold worldwide. Whether you find this notion inspiring or terrifying, there’s no escaping the fact that, as literary events go, “Fifty Shades of Grey” is at least...significant. And books that are...significant...deserve to be subjected to thorough critical and textual analysis. By taking it apart into teeny tiny small pieces and put those pieces under a spiteful and mean-spirited microscope, we may all just learn something about the elusive nature of the bestseller,“Lighter Shades of Grey” is a chapter-by-chapter dissection of “Fifty Shades of Grey”, cataloguing unusual leaps of logic, surprising deductions, exciting exchanges of dialogue, recurrent motifs and stand-out moments, that will allow you to better appreciate / enjoyably ruin for others the “Fifty Shades” experience. It also provides definitive answers to questions such as “How often does Ana say ’oh my’?”, “How often do people’s mouths fall open in surprise?” and “Is Christian Grey a diagnosable psychopath?”Building on the viral hit blog-entry, “Fifty Things That Annoy Me About Fifty Shades Of Grey”, “Lighter Shades of Grey” is the perfect snarky companion to this year’s most inexplicable blockbuster. (Approximately 31,000 words; 30 pictures)

    Despite the exceptional qualities and his obvious interest in her, things are moving too slow between them. Unlike most men who can’t wait to get in her pants, this particular man refuses to take things to the next level.DARYL JACKSON has grown tired of the nightclub scene and wants to settle down, but he has a secret that always seems to interrupt any potential love connection once he reveals it. He believes Michelle is the ideal woman, but can she handle the truth?After six weeks of dating, and still no attempt from him to get her “horizontal,” Michelle grows sex-starved. She is driving herself crazy trying to figure out Daryl’s problem! During a weekend getaway in Palm Springs, Michelle finally puts an end to the what’s-wrong-with-Daryl guessing game and demands to know what’s up. Not only does Daryl answer all her questions, Michelle learns first hand that you really need to be careful with what you wish for!

    There she would receive the gift of foretelling. But when that call never comes, Ryber finds herself the only Sister without the Sight.Years pass and Ryber’s misfit pain becomes a dull ache, until one day, Sisters who already possess the Sight are summoned into the mountain, never to return. Soon enough, Ryber is the only Sister left. Now, it is up to her to save her Sisters, though she does not have the Sight—and though she does not know what might await her inside the mountain.On her journey underground, she encounters a young captain named Kullen Ikray, who has no memory of who he is or how he got there. Together, the two journey ever deeper in search of answers, their road filled with horrors, and what they find at the end of that road will alter the fate of the Witchlands forever.Set a year before Truthwitch, Sightwitch is a companion novella that also serves as a set up to Bloodwitch, as well as an expansion of the Witchlands world.

    To prove she is the Sun Queen, Rielle must endure seven elemental magic trials. If she fails, she will be executed...unless the trials kill her first.One thousand years later, the legend of Queen Rielle is a fairy tale to Eliana Ferracora. A bounty hunter for the Undying Empire, Eliana believes herself untouchable--until her mother vanishes. To find her, Eliana joins a rebel captain and discovers that the evil at the empire's heart is more terrible than she ever imagined.As Rielle and Eliana fight in a cosmic war that spans millennia, their stories intersect, and the shocking connections between them ultimately determine the fate of their world--and of each other.

    Tired, weak, and nearly broken under the weight of his guilt, he wanders the streets waiting for death to catch up to him. But when he is beset by bandits, he gains a new perspective. Maybe he doesn't have to feel guilty about feeding, after all.Theron - Theron travels by ship to his long ago home of Athens, Greece. He soon discovers the Council of Thirteen has put a price on his head so large every Bachiyr in the city will try to collect it, which leads to a very tense reunion with an old lover.The Ugliest Thing, by Daniel Arenson - Just what is it about the image in the telescope that makes people lose their sanity? Is it worth the risk to see for yourself?Also included is a preview of 61 A.D., the thrilling sequel to David's 2010 horror bestseller, 33 A.D.

    A trip to the Mandarra Horticultural Show had him itching to work on an authentic Australian farm. What he didn’t expect to find in the bush was a field of sunflowers and a man who made him tremble with need.Lochlan McBride has resigned himself to living alone in the Australian bush. Since returning from Sydney to run the family property, he’s put his sexual desires on hold knowing his mates would never understand. When he takes a chance and hires a young good-looking tourist to help him on the homestead, Lochie begins to wonder just how heated this year’s harvest will be. Will he be able to put worries aside and take a chance on love?

    Pursued for a secret he does not possess and with the fleet at his heels, he has but one thought: to stay alive. His pursuers aren’t inclined to sit down and talk, although that’s not the end of Elei’s troubles. The two powerful parasites inhabiting his body, at a balance until now, choose this moment to bring him down, leaving Elei with no choice but to trust in people he hardly knows. It won’t be long before he realizes he must find out this deadly secret — a secret that might change the fate of his world and everything he has ever known — or die trying.

    else.But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced... they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.But Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of the matter.No matter the cost.

    But the pressure of being an out trans man in the workplace quickly sucks the joy out of things, as does Seth, the humorless campaign strategist who watches his every move.Soon, the only upside to the job is that Seth has a painful crush on their painfully straight boss, and Kieran has a front row seat to the drama. But when Seth proves to be as respectful and supportive as he is prickly, Kieran develops an awkward crush of his own—one which Seth is far too prim and proper to ever reciprocate.