Elliah ~ 1

My mother told me many times that all adolescents feel like
they don’t belong, but… I really didn’t. So I spent my free time away from
other elves, on my own but for the animals… they didn’t understand how broken I
was. And I was quite pleased with my current find, so I snarled when a noise
behind me scared away the drakeling that had settled in my hands. Black with a
pattern of red scales along its spine, its body the thickness of my finger, it
took flight with a flurry of thin leathery wings and disappeared behind a
massive brown trunk.

“The real ones are much more intimidating,” said
an unfamiliar voice.

Time slowed as I tensed to run, shocked that I’d let my
guard down so much that anyone had gotten that close. How many lurked behind
me? On the outskirts of town, in the thick of the woods near the river, I had
expected solitude.

“Stay, Bereft. I am not afraid,” said the voice.
His words provoked me.

“No one’s afraid of me,” I
blurted. Bitterness stained my words as surely as the pollen of the bloodcups
had stained my ragged clothes.

I turned away from the vanished drakeling to focus on the
intruder who’d scared it away. A man. No, I corrected myself, someone
my age. Someone not quite old enough for adults to consider one of their
own, but too old to call a child.

But not Bereft. No other elf shared that with me.

The newcomer was slightly taller than me with a thin frame,
his light hair hanging long, wild, and tangled. He was new to the village—I
would have noticed an elf with skin so light. I’d heard whispers of him at
school. Kethryllia had called him Salt-kissed, and I’d wondered what that
meant, but his light skin answered that question. He’d undoubtedly caught
whispers about me, heard of my… condition. Bereft. Yet at that moment, I
thought only of the hours of coaxing I’d spent to draw the little drakeling
into my grasp, and that the stupid elf had scared it away. I wanted to punch
him.

“Maybe they should be,” he said, taking a step
back, though it would have taken me two leaps to get to him, and he’d have me
pinned in one, if he had any skill with magic at all. But I’d prepared a leap
already, only not in his direction. As I sprung away, he continued, raising his
voice, “And you’re right, they’re not afraid of you.”

I landed with a tree between us. His magic wouldn’t be able
to snag me there. Unless he was very good at it.

“They’re afraid of what you represent.”

Continue the Thaumatropic
Roots Series

Magic is as
natural as breathing in Elliah’s world — except to her. Born without a single
spark in a war that runs on it, she has nothing but her will and her refusal to
accept the limits everyone else has already decided for her. This is what
happens when the world writes you out of the story, and you refuse to leave.

 

Get them:

Mother
of Trees

Bones
of Cenaedth

Secrets
of Deara

Shepherds
of Truth

The Guardian of the
Palace

The Guardian League Book 1

Part of the Fractured Arcana Universe

by Steven J. Morris

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Magic isn’t real.
Red Hernandez is very sure of that.

She wants a quiet life after Special Forces—just a steady
security job at a half-finished Manhattan skyscraper.

But then a sister tower implodes in a way physics can’t
explain.
Witnesses report creatures in the smoke.
And something hunts her in the tunnels beneath.

Red wants answers. What she gets instead is an elf with a
sword, a troll with a wry sense of humor, and a dwarf who believes every battle
requires an audience. They insist an ancient enemy has crossed into our
world—and Red becomes an accidental gatekeeper simply because she’s standing on
the fault line when it cracks open.

As a hidden war erupts in the shadows of New York City, Red
must decide: run from the past that nearly destroyed her… or fight for a world
she’s only just beginning to believe in.

A veteran with
nothing left to lose.
A threat born of magic and shadow.
A team she never saw coming.

The Guardian of the Palace launches the
action-packed Guardian League series—perfect for fans of urban
fantasy, modern-world magic, found family, and heroines who refuse to back
down.

 

**Get it FREE!**

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Prologue

Corpses patterned the ground as far as my eye could see, a
patchwork quilt of death.

I stood atop a skeletal tower, overlooking the broken ruins
of an ancient civilization, so very far from home. I envisioned the beauty that
the soaring arches once held, the bridges between the constructs reaching out
with broken arms, buildings leaning against one another like ancient lovers in
a final embrace. Crumbled remains powdered the bases of former statues, and,
everywhere, all of it was littered with the dead.

Like a phoenix, I stood, bathed in fire. An Angel of Death.
Not the Angel of Death—he was an ass.

A part of me wanted to go down and see for myself. Maybe
just to make sure… to make sure I had done my job… and killed everyone that
used to inhabit that world. The magic I was wielding should have destroyed them
all—something inside of me could feel that it had—but I wanted
to see it.

Yet I knew that was unrealistic. I didn’t have the time.
There were other worlds that needed my infection, and Earth was on my
shortlist.

  

Chapter 1

Red – Day 20, Sunday, the day after the attack

“Ms. Hernandez?” a muffled voice called from a
distance, accompanied by a gentle rapping on a door. My consciousness
registered the interruption as a nuisance and pulled me back under.

What seemed like seconds later, the rapping came again, more
insistent. “Ms. Hernandez.”

Ms. Hernandez was my mom… why were they bothering me?

Then a scraping sound, and an alarmed voice. “Ms.
Hernandez! Are you okay?”

Some scrambling, some grunts, more scraping… shit, I was
going to have to wake up. Why couldn’t they just let me sleep?

I tried to answer, but my throat was dry and nothing came
out. Coughing, I attempted to sit up, not wholly returned from my trip to
dreamland. “I’m here. I’m okay.” Was I though? I wasn’t sure.

I was in my flat. Not the desert. My door was partway open,
and a slightly overweight man had paused in the act of pushing his way in. I
recognized him, but his name escaped me. Swinging my legs off my cot, I did a
quick modesty check. I was fully dressed, though rather tragically, in some
semblance of civilian fatigues—muddied, disheveled, and a little bloody.

The reason came screaming back to me. There had been
creatures, unearthly monsters, in The Palace. They’d done things I
could not explain by any of the rules I knew. And they’d beaten the hell out of
me and then patched me back up in a matter of seconds. I’d blown the head clean
off of one of them and fled the scene.

Not my smartest move.

<

Hayil had the advantage of
excellent night vision—super vision compared to other humans. Plus, she
possessed an almost uncanny ability to connect with most wild and domestic
animals. Hayil mentally grimaced. She could also thank her grandmother
for her long overdue ability to shift. What would it take to trigger her body
into the lupine version of herself? Was it like a growth spurt that hadn’t hit
her body yet? Or was Hayil destined to remain the one person in her pack who
wasn’t able to wolf out?

Once again, her mother’s
constant refrain came back to her: “You’re a late bloomer, like your
grandmother. She was older than you when she shifted. All in good time.
You’ll see.”

Sure, Mom.

Hayil knew her mother
wanted the best for her, but found her cheerfulness a bit forced. Beneath her
mother’s optimism, Hayil sensed an undercurrent of concern about her
thirty-year-old daughter’s ability to integrate into the red wolf clan. This
missing piece of Hayil’s identity called to her like a siren’s song, demanding
she complete herself. Would she ever be a true part of the pack? Or
would she forever be the unmated one? What then? She was an anomaly, something
the pack didn’t tolerate well. Tradition dictated that if a pack member didn’t
shift by the end of their third decade, they were banished.

A chilling thought struck
Hayil mid-stride.

If I don’t
shift this year, will they force me out of the pack?

They were the only family
she’d ever known. Her mother would fight for her to stay and would probably
win. But at what cost?

Hayil would be an outcast.
She’d never be invited to pack meetings, deliberations or celebrations. Those
were reserved for shifters. If she married a non-shifter, the pack would drive
her out, of that she was sure. What if her offspring were able to shift? Would
that make things better? Would the pack let her stay then? It wasn’t as if she
could go to a genetic counselor and ask for a DNA test for werewolves.

The thought of losing her
extended family through no fault of her own made her gulp back tears. Angry at
herself for allowing her thoughts to go down that dark rabbit hole, Hayil
reminded herself she was a scientist. Review the facts, not the fears.

Fact one: Grandma had been
in labor with Hayil’s mother when she’d shifted for the first time.

Fact two: The majority of
the pack members had shifted when they’d hit puberty.

Fact three: Hormones! It
had to be related to hormones! The rush of hormones at puberty and the flood of
pregnancy hormones had to be related somehow.

Hayil was long past puberty
and the associated mood swings and acne, thank you very much. She was not ready
to be pregnant. For starters, she would need a romantic partner in her life.
She’d had zero luck on that score so far.

“I still have time. It’s
not too late. I won’t give up hope.”

Shaking her head to clear
her mind, Hayil double-checked her wild animal deterrents. All in place.
Then she tugged her knit cap down over her ears and pulled her hands-free
headlamp into place. She zipped her fleece jacket against the breeze and
adjusted her twenty-five-pound backpack. With an altitude gain of almost
nineteen hundred feet, she planned to take her time, pacing herself for the
strenuous four-hour hike. She grasped her lightweight hiking poles and took a
last look up at the stars. Time to see that spectacular view at the top.

As promised by the trail
blog, the dirt path was well maintained. The morning air was cold and crisp,
layered with the woodsy scent of damp earth and pine needles. An owl hooted,
and Hayil spotted movement in the brush between the thick pines beside the trail.
Her headlamp reflected in the eyes of small critters, all of whom skittered
deeper into the woods.

For three hours, all she
heard was the crunch of her hiking boots on dirt and gravel, the rasp of her
own breaths, the glug of water when she drank and the jingle of her bear bells.
She looked at yet another incline on the trail and decided she needed a hiking
song for inspiration.

“Country roads, take me
home,” she sang, belting out “Mountain Mama”—and something crashed through the
bushes ahead on the trail. Something large.

She froze.

An enormous black bear
stood on its hind legs at the top of the hill.

Shit,
shit, shit. If only I could shift, shift, shift!

The animal had its back to
her, but if it got her scent, it could turn and charge at her in a flash.

Heart pounding like a
jackhammer, she placed her hand on the bear spray.

A breeze sprang up, making
her eyes water with its intensity. The good news was that it meant she was
downwind of the bear. The bad news was that the air smelled like a wet dog had
rolled in a dead animal. The worst news was that the bear turned and looked
right at her.

Omigod.
It’s not a bear. What the heck is it?

Sharon Buchbinder is an award-winning author who has been
writing stories since she could hold a pen. The paranormal romance genre is her
writing home, a place where the impossible is simply the beginning, where women
find their power in the most extraordinary circumstances, and where love is
always worth the danger of seeking it.

A Maryland-based author with a background in healthcare and
higher education that has informed her vivid, grounded storytelling, Sharon is
drawn to heroines who have been underestimated — women who carry something
extraordinary inside them and spend the whole book learning to trust it. Sharon
believes passionately that readers deserve stories where the heroine doesn’t
just survive — she transforms. When she’s not writing, Sharon can
usually be found unplugging in her garden, obsessing over cryptid mythology,
and convincing her pets they are not, in fact, supernatural.

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* Goodreads

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A Damned Dirty Thing

The Jake Bishop
Files Book 1

The explosion should have killed him . . .

Jake Bishop is back on the streets of Solomon City, ten
months after a mob bombing destroyed his office and murdered his partner and
secretary. But Bishop isn’t just any private detective—he’s a “ditch wizard”
able to step through shadow and bend reality to his will.

When the beautiful and mysterious Portia Vance answers his
ad for a new secretary, Bishop thinks his luck might finally be changing.
Together, they begin hunting Vito Morelli, the mob boss who ordered the hit
that nearly ended Bishop’s life.

Their investigation leads them through the city’s darkest
corners—from strip clubs to shadow banking operations, from corrupt cops to
magical wards. But in a world where bullets and spells are equally deadly, and
where everyone has secrets worth killing for, Bishop discovers that the line
between hunter and hunted is thinner than he thought.

Some cases require a gun. Others need magic. This one
demands both.

In the shadows of Solomon City, justice comes with a
price—and revenge wears a beautiful face.

A gritty noir fantasy that proves sometimes the most
dangerous magic is the human heart.

 

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Christopher “Doc” Blalock is a US Navy veteran Corpsman and retired
counselor. He is a prolific fine artist, illustrator, musician, sculptor and
writer, cursed with the itch to create. He draws inspiration from sources
ranging from JRR Tolkien to Tom Clancy. He additionally draws from his love of
classic black-and-white noir films, infusing their moody aesthetic and
storytelling into his writing. A helpless coffee addict, he lives in the
Atlanta suburbs with his childhood sweetheart and a dog of dubious moral
character.

 

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Enter the Justice, Or Something Like It Giveaway