Showing results by narrator "J. Arquin" in All Categories

Betrayal. Ambition. Violence. Magic. Stranded in a winter wilderness, a young girl fights to survive after the massacre of her family. Her motto is simple: Always create opportunity. It's not long before she runs into an old friend, but can she trust him? This majestic fantasy short story defies cliché and stirs the soul.

Some few survivors that had resisted the zombies were rounded up too, and were put in the fridges to freeze them until needed, so that one day, when they all awoke sometime in the future, there would be slaves to work for them. As they slept, the steam powered breeding machine bred workers and stored them for using when the time came. Among the frozen survivors was Blue-Jane, See-through Mary, Captain Crust, and some others that in their frozen sleep dreamed about a story that ate itself to become a paradox monkey that was hard to figure out.

Helping a holy order find a missing sister should be a simple enough job—and Ruby owes the Aymaya Apostles everything after they took her and her brother in as children. Simple enough, until the missing holy sister's trail takes an unexpected turn, landing Ruby and the rest of the crew in the middle of a high-society soirée—and into the crosshairs of Ruby's ex, Kitty. Something sinister is lurking beneath the surface of whatever Kitty and the holy sister are caught up in, and the skills of the entire crew are put to the test when they go head-to-head with the ultimate con artist.

Now, Jason, Alicia, and the others face their biggest challenge: the corrupt state leader who enabled Mackey and his human trafficking. Jason's enemies are powerful, with resources far beyond those of the rebel community. But the Marauders are joined by new allies, some from unexpected sources. Can they prevail against enormous odds, or will the forces of evil and human suffering triumph, driving the shattered world into unending darkness?

Both sisters are trapped. Kate fights to escape a city with closing borders as the leaders desperately try to contain the outbreak. Betrayed by family and embroiled in the chaos of an organized crime syndicate, Alisa struggles to get out before she breaks under the unbearable strain. Even if she escapes, Kate still faces miles of lawless country with dangers even worse than the virus. Back home, Alisa can’t turn her back on the other trapped victims and is determined to find a way to save them all.

Jason is grief-stricken after his loss and considers giving up, but his community of tenacious survivors needs his leadership. The threats to the group are growing, and they must abandon their compound to return to a setting from their past. In the darkened, chaotic world, the weak and the suffering look to Jason's fighters for hope, but are they up to the challenge?

Stewart "Hoagy" Hoag hasn't written any fiction since his debut novel rocked the literary world of the 1980s and then left him with a paralyzing case of writer's block. Since then, he's been reduced to ghostwriting celebrity memoirs. But his newest project could have him diving back into the world of fiction in a way he never imagined.