Fantasy - Contemporary Genre

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Summary: INK (NOUN) Five definitions to inspire writers around the world and an unlimited number of possible stories to tell: 1) A colored fluid used for writing 2) The action of signing a deal 3) A black liquid ejected by squid 4) Publicity in the written media 5) A slang word for tattoos Ink features 300-word speculative flash fiction stories from across the rainbow spectrum, from the minds of the writers of Queer Sci Fi.

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Summary: The staff at AURA has had a busy summer. Between chronic understaffing, dealing with warring goblin factions and an unusual number of hazardous Events, everyone is overworked. Sinistrus the incubus, newly hired as an AURA medic, actually enjoys his busy new life of responsible employee and faithful lover to his gorgeous police sergeant, Ness the centaur. Life would be perfect, except for a niggling suspicion about a colleague. Everyone else seems to disagree, but Sin’s certain something’s not right with that pixie. Kellen, a pixie crossover, loves his job working in AURA medical, even if he is something of an outsider. His job and the friends he manages to make are happy spots in an otherwise dark and secretive life. As the rest of AURA tries to discover the root of the inexplicable rise in violence and large-scale Events, Kellen fights to preserve his own life and what dignity he has left. These two unlikely heroes must put their differences aside and navigate tragedy and ever-escalating disaster together in order to stop the sinister forces that hold Kellen in thrall.

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Summary: To escape an arranged marriage, the king needs a fake fiancé. Stat. King Bastien’s father locked him into an ironclad betrothal contract with Lady Helena Rey when the two of them were only seven years old. Bas and Helena have never been friends—and not only because she marked their first meeting by dropping a frog down his shirt. He’s been unsuccessfully petitioning Parliament to annul the damn contract ever since he took the throne nine years ago. But with the deadline for officially confirming the engagement rapidly approaching, Bas is getting desperate. Enter commoner Nico Pereira, manager of the Royal Crest Vineyards, who nurses a secret crush on the king. He’s at the New Palace to unveil a  wine that’s the first joint venture between North and South Abarra. No problem, right? Except Nico has a secret: He has a superpower. Not a very strong superpower, but because powers are a privilege reserved for Royals, it still puts him at risk for arrest and prosecution. Nico can usually mask his limited foresight gift under the guise of being an incredibly efficient administrator. But when King Bastien asks him to be his fake fiancé? Well. Nico never saw that coming. Nothing if not loyal, Nico accepts the faux-posal, although close proximity to Bastien makes him more than a little… uncomfortable, and the increased scrutiny of government officials threatens to expose his illegal ability. Good thing this engagement is temporary, because being the king’s ex will be a lot less onerous than prison or exile. Or, if the attacks from a shadowy conspiracy continue, with being dead. King’s Ex is a 52,000-word M/M superhero rom-com featuring a fake engagement, class differences, improbably pristine clothing, dueling secrets, a guaranteed HEA, and a kitten.

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Summary: Trapped outside the world, unlikely hero Thaddeus Wright must partner with sexy Secret Agent Peter Pan to save a new generation of Lost Boys. THADDEUS WRIGHT would love to forget his childhood. A bi-racial bastard orphaned at four, he was the very definition of sin, according to the strict and disapproving grandparents who raised him. Twenty years later, Thad works with at-risk youth as both coach and counselor. Even after his grandparent’s spare-the-rod, spoil-the-child parenting, Thad just wants to help people. But when three young boys he coaches go missing, he’s the prime suspect. Especially when he goes missing himself! That’s when paranormal policing agency Borderless Observers Org. (B.O.O.) sends in recent recruit Peter Batique on his first solo mission. Peter had another name once, but he’s all grown up now and looking to prove himself an adult and a capable agent. However, after a hundred years as an unruly boy in Neverland, growing up holds some pretty unique challenges for Peter. Despite their differences, Thad and Peter must learn to work together to rescue a whole new generation of Lost Boys and take down the black market shadow dealer responsible. Can Thad learn he’s worthy of love? Can Peter finally grow up? Can the Lost Boys be found?

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Summary: Belonging can sometimes be Hell Jin is 17, pansexual, blue-haired, half-Korean and a lifelong outsider. His modus operandi, after years of neglect and chaos, is never belong, never attach, because both just bring pain. What he doesn't know, and mustn't, is if he does ever belong, his lust demon father will take him to Hell forever the day he turns 18. But when he moves to the remote Scottish town of Hammer Falls, where he shouldn't fit in at all, he finds being supernatural and queer aren't quite the barriers to belonging he'd hoped. As his lust demon blood begins to show and he grows ever closer to gorgeous part-angel demonstalker Nate, how long can Jin continue to convince himself he doesn't belong and isn't getting attached? Lust & Other Demons is the first in a trilogy containing a snarky, prickly half lust demon, hot demon hunters, werebears, angst, messy love and explicit MM sex. Books 2 & 3 also contain steamy MMM+ polyamory scenes as part of a key relationship. NOTE - These books are NOT suitable for younger readers or people likely to be offended by speculative views about religion.

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Summary: "Once upon a time, there was a girl who spoke with birds" She’d used her mage powers to build a successful detective agency, but Dhana’s impressive skills might not be enough to save her family. MIDNIGHT CROW is a standalone sequel to the WOODSPELL SERIES and one of the TALES OF ARDONNA. Content Advisory: Contains adult themes and situations, including violence and assault, plus spoilers for previous Modern Era books  

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Summary: What if you staged the best haunted house in the history of the holiday, but nobody came? Brady is prepared with mounds of treats, stellar special effects, and an extraordinary welcome for the throngs of trick-or-treaters he expects in his first year at his new place—a gloriously gothic house with the reputation for really being haunted! But the trick’s on Brady: Halloween is almost over and not one person has knocked on his door. Once a top Interdimensional Law Enforcement agent, Rej was busted down to Creature Control after a run-in with his arch-nemesis. When he tracks a non-sentient construct across the dimensional barrier, he’s sure he’s about to confront Gorvenath again. But the person who bursts onto the porch in a swirl of tuxedo coattails is a monster of a very different sort—but is he Gorvenath’s accomplice or his victim? Monster Till Midnight is an 11,000-word gay romance featuring a hopeful samhainophile, a suspicious LEO, gratuitous candy corn, and a relationship that threatens to be really, really, really long distance.

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Summary: A magical bookshop holds the keys. When Mason Chynoweth inherits an old house in small-town New Zealand, he hopes to discover what happened to his great-great uncle Lewis after he returned from the war in 1945. Mason’s first encounter with the property is thankfully reassuring—his sensitive psychic powers aren’t triggered and he has a calm sense of coming home. Elijah Whitaker arrives in Kedgetown for an extended visit with his aunts. He’s quickly drawn to Mason and offers to help him try to find some answers in the dusty old house. It soon becomes clear that Mason is keeping secrets, but Elijah has a few secrets of his own. Like his closely guarded knowledge of the hidden supernatural world, and the fact that many of the townspeople are psi and supernaturals. What is the connection between the house and Postscript, the town’s enigmatic bookshop? Mason’s glimpses of the past give some clues, but not enough to make sense of the puzzle. When a hidden journal comes to light, the true story of Lewis’s journey is revealed, and his path and Mason and Elijah’s begin to intertwine.

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Summary: First of the Vyrdigaan Prophecies, telling the back-story of Parsivaal Probyt. Parsivaal had always known his mother hated him. Everyone at the Beryk enclave believed him to be the product of rape. A chance meeting with a woman claiming to be his grandmother helps him to learn the truth of his origins. Through her, he discovers another branch of his family. His new-found relatives show him love and introduce him to a radically different culture and lifestyle. As he grows up, his life choices lead him away from his homeworld of Malvania and into the unknown. Having come from a remote enclave, he finds it difficult to adapt to life in a busy city. An unlikely travelling companion becomes his guide and helps him adjust to life outside the enclave. Dreams and visions compel him to solve a mystery and set him on a path taking him away from his new life and onwards to further adventures. Travel with him as he is propelled towards his destiny by a series of perplexing and frustrating events.

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Summary: The Education Continues at Providence Paranormal College! Five more books, no waiting. Read. Laugh. Catch a case of the feels. Book 6: Roundtable Redcap: Can Fred rescue his brother from the Fae Queen with just reluctant Psychic Irina to help? Book 7: Better Off Undead: Lane and his vampire punk band Night Creatures are broke and broken. Can they pick up their pieces and shine in a Battle of the Bands? Book 8: Ghost of a Chance: Ghostly Horace and his Medium, Bianca, must solve a mystery to save Professor Watkins. Book 9: Nine Lives: It's time for Olivia Adler to trust her instincts or Tony Gitano just might die for good. Book 10: Fae of Fae Knot: The family that's Fae together can't stay together. The series concludes as they bend the tantamount Faerie Law to its breaking point.

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Summary: At Providence Paranormal College, class is about to start. Who’s enrolled? Students who are a bit different: vampires, werewolves, changelings, shifters, psychics, and magi. For one-hundred years, the college has taught and trained only psychics or magi, and for the first time, it’s opening the doors to those not different: regular humans. At this Ivy-League school, the students are expected to learn their powers and keep high grades. Unfortunately, grades are slipping, but that’s what happens when a mysterious villain is hunting you down… Because someone is angry about this new admissions policy and they'll kill to stop integration. To defeat this rising evil, the students must band together and master their strange powers – because if they don’t.. Well, it’s pretty hard to graduate when you’re dead.

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Summary: Staging a musical in Purgatory can be absolute hell. Lonnie Coleridge last saw the sun in 1968. Since then, he’s been consigned to Limbo, still wearing the same tie-dyed T-shirt and bell-bottomed jeans he had on when he left his life behind. He and others like him have one chance each year at redemption: produce a show for the Greek pantheon. Whoever pleases this very specific—and temperamental—fan group could earn the right to move on. But after a literal act of god (*cough* Hermes *cough*) destroys their sets, lights, and costumes, the company needs emergency help to rebuild. Without it, all of them could poof out of existence forever. Out-of-work theater technician TD Baylor has precisely three things on his cosmic wish list: a job, a place to stay, and a boyfriend who isn’t a total tool. He thinks he’s got the first two nailed when he gets a line on a two-week gig that includes room and board. So what if the job tip came from a guy who was leaning way too hard into the LOTR cosplay at a sketchy Halloween pop-up? At this point, TD doesn’t have anything more to lose, so he figures…what the hell. He didn’t realize hell was the operative word. When Lonnie greets him at the theater door, though...whoa. TD fantasizes that item number three could be within his reach. But then Lonnie gives him the bad news: This is Purgatory Playhouse, aka Theater of the Darned. In two weeks—if they’re lucky and can successfully mount a musical version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream—the company will return to Limbo after the curtain falls. If they’re not lucky? Remember that part about hell? Purgatory Playhouse is part of the multi-author Magic Emporium Series. Each book stands alone, but each one features an appearance by Marden’s Magic Emporium, a shop that can appear anywhere, but only once and only when someone’s in dire need. This book contains a theater techie who’s one couch surf away from homeless, a production assistant who’s sort of, um, not alive, Greek gods behaving very badly indeed, and a guaranteed HEA.

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Summary: “Now is the time to release the burdens you have been carrying.” The holiday season is traditionally one of reunions, homecomings, and family gatherings, but for the LGBTQIA+ community, it can be a time of anxiety and dread—a time we must hide our true selves in order to feel welcome. Too often, the holidays bring about loneliness and pain—a longing to be unequivocally accepted, seen, and loved for who we are. This season, we invite you to be Queer for the New Year! Enter nine fantastical worlds and witness rebirth and release as individuals let go of the past and welcome the new year with open arms and fearless hearts. In the final minutes to midnight, journey with us as we discover that acceptance can be found in the most unlikely of places, pain is not forever, and if nothing feels okay, then it is not the end. Move from the heartaches of old, make a fresh start with hope and renewal in your heart, and join us in being— queer for the new year.

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Summary: After a terrible magical accident at Berkeley created unpredictable holes between realities, all manner of non-human creatures started popping into our world. These displacements, called Random Anomalous Reality Events or RARE, have taken magic out of fiction and relocated it firmly in reality, resulting in a great deal of chaos and confusion. Displaced elf Valerian works with AURA, the Agency of Unnatural Resettlement and Assimilation, to intercept these beings as they appear in the human world, helping the peaceful ones and subduing the violent, malevolent ones. It’s good, satisfying work, and Val would be happy if he wasn’t so lonely. Quinten is a young mage just trying to get by, but New York isn’t the easiest city to make a living in. If his methods are sometimes morally dubious, his heart is still in the right place. Of course, for Quinn, the right place means firmly locked away, protected at all costs. Living by his wits and sometimes magically induced luck, he works as a ‘freelance magic user’, or unregistered mage and small-time con, according to the authorities. The last thing Quinn wants is to draw the cops’ attention, but when an Event happens right on top of him, he’s forced to turn to AURA for help. Valerian isn’t at all what he’d expected in an AURA cop, and he certainly wasn’t expecting to join forces with the sexy elf, a snarky drow and a bitter incubus, when certain individuals in power try to stop the RARE by any means necessary. Things are not all what they seem at AURA headquarters, and a greater evil lurks at the top than anyone could have imagined.

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Summary: Qwyrk is having a bad day; several, in fact. One of the Shadow folk tasked with keeping an eye on humanity, she’s ready for a well-earned break in Yorkshire, but now she’s (literally) run into a girl, Jilly, who just saw something quite supernatural and truly awful happen in her town. As Qwyrk tries to unravel the mystery, layers of villainy are exposed, and she’s stuck with an assortment of unlikely folk that she’d rather not have “helping” her. Together, they confront ancient magic, medieval conspiracies, and the possible end of the world (that again?). It’s not the holiday Qwyrk was hoping for! Qwyrk is the first in a series of four novels about the adventures of a group of misfits at the edge of reality in modern northern England, a world of shadows, Nighttime Nasties, sorcery, intergalactic councils, tacky nightclub attire, an abundance of sarcasm, and even elves… though they are a bit silly.

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Summary: In a world where death magic is sometimes the lesser of the evils, a dark mage risks everything for redemption. To win a pardon, Raven must play a dangerous game of double agent. His mission: help the Guardians bring down his master William, the most powerful dark mage alive. His only Guardian contact is Cassandra, his former lover and the apprentice he once betrayed. His best weapon is the Ravensblood, a fearsome magical artifact his master thought destroyed. As Raven struggles to regain Cassandra's trust, the two of them devise a desperate plan to defeat William. If their plan fails, Raven could lose everything: his freedom, his love, his life, and his soul. And if William acquires the Ravensblood, he will gain the power to bring the world to its knees. First in the award-winning Ravensblood series, set in an alternate Pacific Northwest.

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Summary: RISE (noun / verb) Eight definitions to inspire writers around the world, and an unlimited number of possible stories to tell: 1) An upward slope or movement 2) A beginning or origin 3) An increase in amount or number 4) An angry reaction 5) To take up arms 6) To return from death 7) To become heartened or elated 8) To exert oneself to meet a challenge Rise features 300-word speculative flash fiction stories from across the rainbow spectrum, from the minds of the writers of Queer Sci Fi.

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Summary: By day, Ruby Killingsworth is a billionaire media mogul. By night, she's a magic wielding supervillain. Her worst day ever came last year when a ritual gone wrong robbed her of the ability to use her powers, and now she will stop at nothing to get them back. With the help of her old pal, Loki (yes, that Loki), and the band of supernatural minions he sends to her aid, Ruby sets out to unlock the secrets of an ancient African gem-- which proves easier said than done. And she's going about this while simultaneously working to seduce her neighbor: fellow billionaire Jaccob Stevens-- also known as Stardust, the city's preeminent superhero, also known as the city's least eligible man. Did I mention he hates magic? As though that isn't enough, Ruby must also deal with the unwanted attentions of a certain Lyle Prather: notorious former reality TV star and recently inaugurated President of the United States (sound familiar?). The going is tough, but Ruby just might be tougher. And a trickster god is never on anybody's side but his own....

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Summary: Dr. Eavan Delaney is frustrated. It is her destiny to reunite her people and work hard to protect the rivers and waters of the world, but she has no help whatsoever. So she has lived among humans for decades, undiscovered and in peace, but she knows this is wrong: she should be taking action. Then comes the fateful day she calls for support one last, desperate time -- and is heard. With the support of ‘The Council of Twelve’, Eavan continues to work for the safety of Nature. But no one has foreseen that the ‘Other Side’ has been sabotaging her efforts. The challenge before her is suddenly much greater, and the consequences of failure even more dire than she ever imagined. Will Eavan be strong enough to save the waters from the fire?

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Summary: AURA’s offices have been quiet since the mage tower incident—as quiet as they can be for an agency dedicated to policing holes in reality—and the department heads have been free to turn their attention back to mundane matters. The return to quiet bureaucracy gives AURA’s Director of Research, Kai Hiltas, the time to turn his energy to a new issue—a young drow with unusual and dangerous powers named Ryld. Though his shadows always lurk at the edges of his vision, Ryld does his best to live peacefully and not let them hurt anyone. He has his work, his apartment and a succession of minders assigned by AURA who are, ostensibly, there to keep him safe in his new world and to prevent him from causing any scenes with his shadows. Most of the time, the arrangement works. But one disastrous incident causes Ryld’s minder to leave him unattended and lost—the precise thing he was hired to prevent. To replace the faithless minder, Kai suggests Hank, a half-goblin accountant recently in the middle of a string of terrible luck, while Kai works out how best to get Ryld the magical training he so desperately needs. For his part, Hank truly likes Ryld and insists he would be happier working as Ryld’s companion rather than as a controlling minder. As Hank and Ryld slowly come to terms with sharing space—and eventually more—Kai’s search for a teacher for Ryld takes them out west on the invitation of the Elvenhome’s aelfe queen and right into the lap of inter-elven feuds, ancient prejudice, conspiracies and trafficking rings. What should have been a pleasant visit soon turns into more than even forever-scheming Kai can handle.