Morana’s Blades
Adult Dark Fantasy
Mara’s a scout on the run, lost from her group on an island infested with pirates. She joined the war effort after her brother’s death but she’s hated the pirates for decades of pillaging and raiding.
Working her way back to the main army, she happens upon an escaped slave who refers to himself as Rabbit.
Barely an adult, Rabbit is exhausted and beaten down by years of torment and captivity. He talks about a group of mercenaries who freed him and were paid to retrun him home, but they’re nowhere to be found. All Rabbit can remember is that they call themselves Morana’s Blades.
Mara puts Rabbit under her protection and together they sneak back toward the main army’s encampment. During the trek, she learns about awful things Rabbit’s endured and managed to survive, reaffirming why she joined the war effort.
Then a roving patrol ambushes them and Mara discovers Rabbit has a secret that helps them escape.
Several, in fact.
What Mara witnesses both bewilders her but also frightens her. She’s of the mind to hand Rabbit off to someone else if they reach camp, but she learns Rabbit has detailed information on the pirate clans which could change the strategies for invasion. Rabbit knows how to lead a team back to the central city where their power structure lies.
Nothing’s ever simple or straightforward, however, and especially when it comes to Rabbit. It will require another mission inland using all of Mara and her team’s stealth to find it. However, on their return, Mara discovers Rabbit’s keeper and tormentor is still alive and he gets the upperhand on her, Rabbit and her team.
To escape, Rabbit’s going to have to stand up to the scariest person in his world. If Mara can’t help him find his own courage, they’ll all end up dead.
Morana’s Blades is complete, beta read, and edited. It’s ready for submission and has series potential.
The Black Lion Trilogy
Adult Epic Dark Fantasy
Book 1: The Long Coat of Dagon Masch
For some actions, there’s no forgiveness.
It’s how Collin sees the outcome of having accidentally killed his brother as a boy. Ashamed and being punished by the Gods, he runs away, abandoning his parents and home. He throws himself into the life of being a mercenary on a feudal world, hiding his past, moving to from kingdom to kingdom to earn a living.
A knack for fighting and surviving, years later “The Black Lion” is known all across the continent. Seen as a hero, Collin wants nothing to do with the title. No matter how many people he helps, he doesn’t feel worthy, and in fact, he always hires himself and his group for the most dangerous jobs.
Then Erin of Kellerin comes looking for this great hero to see if he’s a blowhard like all the others. A young archer looking to prove herself, she wants to test this “hero” but discovers he’s nothing like the Black Lion she’s heard stories and songs about.
Collin ends up on the wrong side of the battlefield against a general who cannot die in battle. Erin starts to think she made a bad choice following him, and Collin may get his chance to meet the Gods if they can’t figure out a way around the general’s magic.
Unpublished. The entire trilogy is complete, beta read and edited.
The trilogy is ready for submission.
Incidentally, the picture below was hand drawn by Tom Conry who read these books and was inspired enough to draw this back when I only had the first book written.
Book II: The Legacy of Anarwad the Dragon
Collin, Erin and his companions may have survived the unkillable general, but Collin is no closer to finding his peace. One of their own needs to head into a dangerous place past the Fay Line, and Erin learns more secrets, but this one has nothing to do with the Black Lion.
Meanwhile, an adversary Erin thought was defeated shows up bent on revenge. Collin and his crew step up to help, but there are multiple enemies and it’s going to take their combined savvy and steel to win.
Book III: Kylie’s Bane
Book III forces Collin back to his boyhood home as something awful surges northward leaving a wake of destruction in its path.
Despite his shame, he can’t let innocent people get ground under and against his own wishes, heads home to throw in alongside the people trapped inside the walls of his family fortress.
Erin faces a different peril when her idea of a real hero is not only shattered but has to watch one of her childhood heroes fall.
Surrounded with no escape route, Collin has to find a way to save these people. Before he can do that, however, he has to come full circle with his past.
And if he can’t finally forgive himself, how can he save anyone else?
Heroes For Hire
Adult Humorous Fantasy
Two penniless wizards casting a sarcastic eye toward everyone and everything, a self-proclaimed hero who’s almost as good with his blades as his mouth, and a “priest” of the goddess of fortune and luck who carries a blade as big as he is, come looking for work.
They all end up aboard the same ship bound for glory and wealth. At least that’s what the captain tells everyone who hires on.
These four troublemakers sail through adventures, creating havoc, swindling the captain and their other shipmates, surviving monsters and a curse on a fabled island. Motivated by their own greed, they occasionally, accidentally, do the right thing.
Heroes for Hire is the first book in a comic fantasy series following the exploits of four anti-heroes who couldn’t agree more, but keep finding themselves in situations where someone has to step up to save the day.
It going to be followed up by Heroes Be Damseled. Eventually.
Unpublished. Complete, beta read and edited.