#fantasyfiction — Public Fediverse posts

BRECK: Dead Delivery: Chapter Eight

BRECK: Dead Delivery

Chapter Eight — The Forgotten Ones

Prompt: Who are some underrated people in history? Tags: dailyprompt | Breck | Crestfall | Dead Delivery | Lumenvale

He found the collection happening behind the granary.

Not in the square, where someone might witness and remember. Not at the gate, where merchants came and went with their paperwork and their careful faces. Behind the granary, in the narrow service alley where the grain dust gathered in pale drifts along the base of the stone wall and the only light came from a single torch jammed into an iron bracket above the rear door. Private work. The kind of work that needed walls on three sides and only one way out.

Pelk was running it.

Breck had heard him before he’d seen him — a voice carrying the particular easy confidence of a man who had never once been made to answer for the volume of it. He stood with his back to the granary wall and his thumbs hooked in his belt and two men flanking him with the studied casualness of people trying to look incidental, and in front of him stood a grain merchant Breck had seen setting up his stall that morning — a compact, gray-haired man in his fifties who held his receipt ledger against his chest the way a person held something they expected to have taken from them.

The merchant’s name, Breck had learned from Pell’s careful accounting, was Holt. He had worked the Crestfall grain market for twenty-three years. His father had worked it before him. His son helped him on Thursdays.

He was one of perhaps thirty men and women in this town whose daily labor had built the prosperity that Voss had spent three years quietly dismantling — the actual architecture of the place, the people whose hands and knowledge and stubborn daily presence were the reason Crestfall had sound buildings and a full granary and roads worth maintaining. None of them had statues. None of them had their names on the magistrate’s seal. They had calluses and ledgers and the specific dignity of people who showed up regardless of what the day cost them.

Breck stepped into the alley.

Pelk saw him immediately — hard not to, at Breck’s scale in a confined space — and the easy confidence didn’t waver. If anything it broadened. He was a big man himself, Pelk, running to heaviness through the middle in the way of men who had been strong once and had since found easier ways to apply it. He had the face of someone who had learned early that size was a conversation-ender and had never needed to learn anything beyond that lesson.

“Courier,” he said. It wasn’t a greeting. It was a categorization.

“Evening,” Breck said. He looked at Holt. The merchant’s eyes moved to him once — a brief, careful flicker — and moved away. Saying nothing. Asking nothing. Having learned, over three years of Thursday evening collections, that asking things made them worse.

“Private business,” Pelk said. “Road’s back the way you came.”

“I know where the road is.” Breck didn’t move. He stood with his hands loose at his sides and his weight settled and his eyes moving across the alley with the unhurried thoroughness of a man taking inventory. Pelk. Two others — one on the left against the wall, one near the door. Holt between them and Breck. One exit. Torch height casting the near wall in amber and leaving the far corners in useful shadow.

He filed it all away. Took perhaps three seconds.

“You deaf?” Pelk said. The easy confidence had acquired an edge. He straightened off the wall, and the two men on either side of him shifted their weight in the instinctive, practiced way of people who had done this particular choreography before. “I said move on.”

“Holt,” Breck said, without looking at the merchant. “You can go.”

The alley went very still.

Holt didn’t move. He was frozen between the instruction and twenty-three years of learned behavior that said staying small was how you survived Thursday evenings in Crestfall, and the two pieces of knowledge were not resolving quickly.

“He’s not going anywhere,” Pelk said. “He owes a collection fee.”

“He paid his tariff at the gate. I’ve seen the receipts.” Breck looked at Pelk directly for the first time. “There is no collection fee.”

Something moved across Pelk’s face — not fear, not yet, something closer to the recalibration a man did when a situation turned out to weigh more than he’d estimated. He looked at Breck the way people looked at things they were trying to find the correct category for and failing.

Then he made the decision that men like Pelk always made, because it was the only decision their entire history had ever equipped them for.

He came off the wall and closed the distance fast, his right hand coming up in a wide swing built for spectacle rather than precision — the kind of blow designed to end conversations with people who didn’t know how to respond to it.

Breck was not one of those people.

He moved inside the arc of the swing before it had fully committed, a single step forward and left that made the fist pass close enough to disturb the air beside his ear. His right hand caught Pelk’s extended arm at the wrist, redirecting its momentum rather than stopping it — using the man’s own considerable mass as the instrument — and his left palm drove hard into Pelk’s elbow from underneath.

The sound was brief and conclusive.

Pelk’s forward motion carried him past Breck and into the granary wall face-first, his useless arm trailing, and the sound he made when he hit the stone was the sound of a large object being suddenly and completely convinced of something.

The man on the left had been moving since the swing had started — Breck had tracked him in his peripheral vision the whole time, the way you tracked the secondary threat when the primary one was still resolving. He was younger than Pelk, quicker, and he had a short cudgel that he’d produced from somewhere and was bringing around in a low horizontal sweep aimed at Breck’s legs.

Breck stepped over it.

Not dramatically — just a single economical elevation of his right foot, the cudgel passing beneath it, and then his right boot came back down on the man’s leading knee with the full and deliberate application of two hundred and eighty-five pounds of moving weight. The man went down and stayed down, making the quiet, concentrated sounds of someone devoting all available resources to a single overwhelming problem.

The third man — the one near the door — had not moved. He was standing exactly where he’d been standing when Breck had entered the alley, his hands slightly away from his body in the universal posture of a person communicating that they had made a decision and the decision was this.

Breck looked at him for a moment.

“Smart,” he said.

The man said nothing. His hands stayed where they were.

Pelk was on his knees against the granary wall, cradling his arm, his face having undergone a comprehensive revision of the worldview it had held four seconds ago. He was breathing in the loud, ragged way of someone whose body was working very hard at several things simultaneously.

Breck crouched in front of him.

“The collection fee,” he said. His voice was the same as it had been at the start of the conversation. Level. Not unkind. “Where does it go.”

Pelk looked at him with the wide, recalibrated eyes of a man holding a new and unwelcome understanding.

“Voss,” he said. It came out smaller than anything else he’d said in the alley.

“All of it.”

“All of it.”

Breck nodded once. Stood. Looked at Holt, who had not moved throughout any of this — who was standing precisely where he’d been standing when Breck had entered, holding his ledger against his chest with both hands, his face carrying the careful blankness of a man waiting to determine whether this was better or worse than what had come before.

“Go home,” Breck said. “Tell your son supper will be late.”

Holt looked at him for a long moment. Then he looked at Pelk on the ground, and at the man holding his knee, and at the third man standing very still by the door.

He nodded once — a small motion, more breath than movement — and walked out of the alley without looking back.

Breck watched him go. Then he looked at the torch burning in its bracket above the door, casting its amber light across the grain-dust drifts and the walls that held no names and would hold none.

Twenty-three years, he thought. Holt had shown up for twenty-three years.

He picked up the satchel from where he’d set it against the wall before any of this had started — he always set it down before anything physical, because it was the job and the job didn’t get damaged — settled the strap across his chest, and touched the bracelet once.

Then he walked out of the alley and back into Crestfall’s quiet evening streets, and behind him Pelk was still making the sounds of a man with a new and permanent education.

☕ Enjoyed this story? Writing Lumenvale is how I pay my bills. If these stories are worth something to you, a $1 Ko-fi keeps the forge burning — and tells me this world is worth continuing. 👉 Buy Chadwick a coffee

BRECK Dead Delivery: Chapter Seven

BRECK: Dead Delivery

Chapter Seven — The Weight of Less

Prompt: What are the biggest benefits of minimalist living? Tags: dailyprompt | Breck | Crestfall | Dead Delivery | Lumenvale

He inventoried his possessions the way he did every few weeks — not from anxiety, but from discipline, the same discipline that had kept him breathing through four years of war and a decade of roads that didn’t care whether he made it to the next town or didn’t.

He did it on the floor of the inn room, the satchel open between his knees, each item removed and placed on the rough plank boards with the deliberate care of a man who understood that what you carried was a decision, not an accident.

The sealed reply document, his legitimate reason for being in Crestfall one day longer than planned. The oilskin packet against his chest — he’d moved that to the floor beside his knee, keeping it in his peripheral vision the way he kept everything important. A compass, worn smooth on the brass casing where his thumb had rested against it for ten years. A folding straight-edge. The stub of mapping chalk, slightly shorter now after Pell’s work on the riverside boulder. A money pouch, lighter than he preferred. A short-bladed knife, more tool than weapon, its edge maintained to a standard that would have satisfied his old commanding officer and would have baffled everyone else in the inn.

Flint. A length of waxed cord. A small tin of salve for the blister on his right heel that had been threatening to become a real problem since the hill road north of Millfield.

That was everything.

He looked at it arranged on the floor around him — the totality of what he owned and carried, spread across perhaps four square feet of plank boarding in a room that smelled of tallow and old timber. Another man might have found that inventory depressing. Breck had long since arrived at a different conclusion.

Everything on that floor was there because it had earned its place. Every item had been evaluated, found useful, kept — or found wanting and left behind in some previous inn room or roadside camp or post station along one of the hundred routes he’d run in the years since the war ended. The compass had replaced two inferior compasses. The knife had replaced a longer blade he’d carried for three years before acknowledging, with some difficulty, that its weight wasn’t justified by its use. The salve was new, added three weeks ago after the blister incident, because ignoring a blister until it became an infection was the kind of decision that got couriers killed in wet weather on long roads.

Nothing decorative. Nothing sentimental.

Except the bracelet, which wasn’t either of those things — or was both, in a way that didn’t fit any category he’d found for it.

He picked it up from the satchel strap where it rested and turned it in his fingers. Pale cord, woven tight by small hands from whatever had been available — grain stalks, roof grass, the kind of material a child in an occupied valley used because it was there and because the making of it was the point, not the material. It weighed almost nothing. It occupied almost no space.

It was the heaviest thing he owned.

He set it back on the strap. Began repacking.

The benefit of carrying little, he had learned, was not what most people assumed. They thought it was about freedom — the lightness of movement, the ease of departure, the romantic simplicity of a man with nothing to lose. There was some truth in that, but it was the surface truth, the part that looked clean from a distance.

The deeper benefit was clarity.

When everything you owned fit in a single satchel, you knew exactly what you had. You knew exactly what you could lose. You knew exactly what decisions were available to you at any given moment, because your resources were fully visible and fully accounted for — no hidden reserves, no forgotten assets, no comfortable surplus that let you avoid doing the difficult arithmetic.

It was the same quality he’d valued in Aldric Moss, without ever having met the man. A miller who kept careful records in a hand so neat it looked like architecture — who had known exactly what he had, exactly what was owed, exactly where the difference lived between the official number and the true one. That was not the habit of a man who avoided difficult arithmetic. That was the habit of a man who understood that clarity, however uncomfortable, was better than comfortable confusion.

Voss lived in comfortable confusion. Or rather — he created it deliberately, in everyone around him, because confusion was profitable and clarity was dangerous. The gap between what merchants paid at the gate and what the official ledger recorded existed in the space of that confusion, fed by it, protected by it. Men like Voss understood instinctively that a town which couldn’t see its own numbers couldn’t resist what was being done with them.

Breck cinched the satchel closed. Stood.

The room was as he’d found it — bed, chair, table, the cold hearth that he hadn’t bothered to light because a man who was leaving in the morning had no use for a fire laid the night before. He’d slept in his cloak, which was efficient, and eaten the bread and cold meat the innkeeper had left on his table without asking, which had been kind of her.

He owed her for that. He’d added it to the accounting.

Dawn came gray and thin through the single window, barely distinguishable from the night it was replacing, the sky the color of old pewter above Crestfall’s wet rooftops. The town was already moving — the sounds of it filtering up through the floorboards, the low voices of the innkeeper and her morning staff, the distant iron ring of a cart on cobblestone, the particular quality of silence from the direction of the magistrate’s office that meant nothing was happening there yet.

The third bell had rung twice since midnight. Regular as a heartbeat. Efficient as a threat.

He went to the window and looked out at the square below. Eleven stalls setting up in the gray morning light, the same eleven, the vendors working with their heads down and their hands quick, operating with the spare economy of people who had stripped their days down to the essential and left everything else — complaint, conversation, the small indulgences of ordinary life — somewhere behind the threshold of survival. They hadn’t chosen that economy. It had been imposed on them from outside, methodically, over three years of climbing tariffs and disappearing neighbors and bells that rang on schedule to remind everyone what was at stake.

The benefit of carrying little, he had said to himself once, is that you know exactly what you have.

The benefit of taking everything from people, he understood now, was the same thing seen from the other side of the ledger. Strip a town down far enough and it lost track of what it had been before the stripping — lost the muscle memory of prosperity, the instinct for resistance, the simple knowledge that things had once been different and could be different again.

Voss hadn’t just taken money. He’d taken inventory.

Breck picked up his satchel. Settled the strap across his chest. Touched the bracelet once, the old reflex, the checking without naming.

He needed three things this morning. His reply document from the magistrate’s office. A conversation with the innkeeper about what she was willing to risk. And another look at Pell’s map, which he’d memorized but wanted to walk in daylight before he committed to anything that couldn’t be undone.

He went downstairs.

The innkeeper was at the hearth, the fire built up properly now, the common room filling slowly with the smell of bread and the sound of the morning’s first customers settling into their chairs with the careful movements of people who had learned not to make themselves conspicuous. She looked up when he came down. Read his face the way she’d been reading faces across that bar for twenty years.

She poured him a cup without being asked and set it on the end of the bar where he preferred to stand.

“You’re still here,” she said.

“Thought I’d stay another day.” He picked up the cup. “If the room’s available.”

She held his gaze for a moment. Something moved through her expression — not surprise, not quite relief, but the particular stillness of a person absorbing news they had told themselves not to hope for.

“It’s available,” she said.

Breck drank his tea and watched the gray morning deepen toward day, and thought about what it cost to carry nothing you didn’t need — and what it meant to stay anyway.

☕ Enjoyed this story? Writing Lumenvale is how I pay my bills. If these stories are worth something to you, a $1 Ko-fi keeps the forge burning — and tells me this world is worth continuing. 👉 Buy Chadwick a coffee

#BookChatWeekly #GothicSpring #BookSky #Literature #LiteratureSky #ChildrensLiterature #FantasyLiterature #Fiction #FictionSky #ChildrensFiction #FantasyFiction #Fantasy #FantasySky #PeterPan #PeterPanSky #CaptainHook #JMBarrie #TrinaSchartHyman #Pirate #PirateSky

So you like SFF, eh? Bet you’ll like Story Hour this week! S.B. Divya and Premee Mohamed will read their own work. Join us Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. PDT! #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #SBDivya #PremeeMohamed #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #SBDivya #PremeeMohamed @sbdivya @premeesaurus https://www.storyhour2020.com/

So you like SFF, eh? Bet you’ll like Story Hour this week! S.B. Divya and Premee Mohamed will read their own work. Join us Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. PDT! #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #SBDivya #PremeeMohamed #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #SBDivya #PremeeMohamed @sbdivya @premeesaurus https://www.storyhour2020.com/

So you like SFF, eh? Bet you’ll like Story Hour this week! S.B. Divya and Premee Mohamed will read their own work. Join us Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. PDT! #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #SBDivya #PremeeMohamed #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #SBDivya #PremeeMohamed @sbdivya @premeesaurus https://www.storyhour2020.com/

So you like SFF, eh? Bet you’ll like Story Hour this week! S.B. Divya and Premee Mohamed will read their own work. Join us Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. PDT! #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #SBDivya #PremeeMohamed #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #SBDivya #PremeeMohamed @sbdivya @premeesaurus https://www.storyhour2020.com/

So you like SFF, eh? Bet you’ll like Story Hour this week! S.B. Divya and Premee Mohamed will read their own work. Join us Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. PDT! #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #SBDivya #PremeeMohamed #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #SBDivya #PremeeMohamed @sbdivya @premeesaurus https://www.storyhour2020.com/

Masterful stories from A.T. Greenblatt and Tobias S. Buckell drew us into this week's Story Hour! A tale of encountering a creepy creep made a night bus about as harrowing as the toxic atmosphere of Io in an Asimov-inspired tale. You can still watch! #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #TobiasSBuckell #ATGreenblatt @atgreenblatt https://youtu.be/vIT6-od7rbw

Masterful stories from A.T. Greenblatt and Tobias S. Buckell drew us into this week's Story Hour! A tale of encountering a creepy creep made a night bus about as harrowing as the toxic atmosphere of Io in an Asimov-inspired tale. You can still watch! #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #TobiasSBuckell #ATGreenblatt @atgreenblatt https://youtu.be/vIT6-od7rbw

Masterful stories from A.T. Greenblatt and Tobias S. Buckell drew us into this week's Story Hour! A tale of encountering a creepy creep made a night bus about as harrowing as the toxic atmosphere of Io in an Asimov-inspired tale. You can still watch! #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #TobiasSBuckell #ATGreenblatt @atgreenblatt https://youtu.be/vIT6-od7rbw

Masterful stories from A.T. Greenblatt and Tobias S. Buckell drew us into this week's Story Hour! A tale of encountering a creepy creep made a night bus about as harrowing as the toxic atmosphere of Io in an Asimov-inspired tale. You can still watch! #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #TobiasSBuckell #ATGreenblatt @atgreenblatt https://youtu.be/vIT6-od7rbw

Masterful stories from A.T. Greenblatt and Tobias S. Buckell drew us into this week's Story Hour! A tale of encountering a creepy creep made a night bus about as harrowing as the toxic atmosphere of Io in an Asimov-inspired tale. You can still watch! #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #TobiasSBuckell #ATGreenblatt @atgreenblatt https://youtu.be/vIT6-od7rbw

This Story Hour is positively star-studded! And the positive stars are none other than award winners A.T. Greenblatt and Tobias S. Buckell! Join us Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. PDT! #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #TobiasSBuckell #ATGreenblatt https://www.storyhour2020.com/

This Story Hour is positively star-studded! And the positive stars are none other than award winners A.T. Greenblatt and Tobias S. Buckell! Join us Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. PDT! #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #TobiasSBuckell #ATGreenblatt https://www.storyhour2020.com/

This Story Hour is positively star-studded! And the positive stars are none other than award winners A.T. Greenblatt and Tobias S. Buckell! Join us Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. PDT! #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #TobiasSBuckell #ATGreenblatt https://www.storyhour2020.com/

This Story Hour is positively star-studded! And the positive stars are none other than award winners A.T. Greenblatt and Tobias S. Buckell! Join us Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. PDT! #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #TobiasSBuckell #ATGreenblatt https://www.storyhour2020.com/

This Story Hour is positively star-studded! And the positive stars are none other than award winners A.T. Greenblatt and Tobias S. Buckell! Join us Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. PDT! #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #TobiasSBuckell #ATGreenblatt https://www.storyhour2020.com/

Weird pictures of the day are a couple of vintage Spanish Edgar Rice Burroughs' paperbacks with cover illustrations by Prieto. (Not books I own, btw). #weird #weirdart #artsky #fantasyfiction #BookChatWeekly #booksky #VintagePaperbacks #EdgarRiceBurroughs

This Story Hour, Effie Seiberg and J.R. Dawson read us their Nebula-nominated stories! Watch for great stories, great writing, and maybe a restored faith in humanity. Seriously, watch! @effies #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #EffieSeiberg #JRDawson https://youtu.be/5T5WrJV2v40

This Story Hour, Effie Seiberg and J.R. Dawson read us their Nebula-nominated stories! Watch for great stories, great writing, and maybe a restored faith in humanity. Seriously, watch! @effies #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #EffieSeiberg #JRDawson https://youtu.be/5T5WrJV2v40

This Story Hour, Effie Seiberg and J.R. Dawson read us their Nebula-nominated stories! Watch for great stories, great writing, and maybe a restored faith in humanity. Seriously, watch! @effies #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #EffieSeiberg #JRDawson https://youtu.be/5T5WrJV2v40

This Story Hour, Effie Seiberg and J.R. Dawson read us their Nebula-nominated stories! Watch for great stories, great writing, and maybe a restored faith in humanity. Seriously, watch! @effies #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #EffieSeiberg #JRDawson https://youtu.be/5T5WrJV2v40

This Story Hour, Effie Seiberg and J.R. Dawson read us their Nebula-nominated stories! Watch for great stories, great writing, and maybe a restored faith in humanity. Seriously, watch! @effies #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #EffieSeiberg #JRDawson https://youtu.be/5T5WrJV2v40

Would you like to hear award contenders read as their authors intended? Current Nebula nominees J.R. Dawson and Effie Seiberg will read their nominated stories on Story Hour! Join us Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. PDT! @effies #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #EffieSeiberg #JRDawson
https://www.storyhour2020.com/

Would you like to hear award contenders read as their authors intended? Current Nebula nominees J.R. Dawson and Effie Seiberg will read their nominated stories on Story Hour! Join us Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. PDT! @effies #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #EffieSeiberg #JRDawson
https://www.storyhour2020.com/

Would you like to hear award contenders read as their authors intended? Current Nebula nominees J.R. Dawson and Effie Seiberg will read their nominated stories on Story Hour! Join us Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. PDT! @effies #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #EffieSeiberg #JRDawson
https://www.storyhour2020.com/

Would you like to hear award contenders read as their authors intended? Current Nebula nominees J.R. Dawson and Effie Seiberg will read their nominated stories on Story Hour! Join us Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. PDT! @effies #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #EffieSeiberg #JRDawson
https://www.storyhour2020.com/

Would you like to hear award contenders read as their authors intended? Current Nebula nominees J.R. Dawson and Effie Seiberg will read their nominated stories on Story Hour! Join us Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. PDT! @effies #Bookstodon #StoryHour2020 #ShortStories #ShortFiction #AuthorReading #FantasyFiction #ScienceFiction #SFF #EffieSeiberg #JRDawson
https://www.storyhour2020.com/

A flash fiction story written by me. The image is by Warwick Goble. #BookChatWeekly #Mythology #MythologySky #IrishMythology #CelticMythology #Folklore #FolkloreSky #IrishFolklore #CelticFolklore #Celtic #Leprechaun #Fairy #Faerie #Fiction #FictionSky #FlashFiction #FlashFictionSky #FantasyFiction

#DailySpookLore #BookChatWeekly #BookSky #LiteratureSky #FictionSky #WeirdFictionSky #HorrorSky #FantasySky #FairySky #FaerieSky #Book #Literature #HorrorLiterature #FantasyLiterature #Fiction #WeirdFiction #HorrorFiction #FantasyFiction #Horror #Fantasy #Fairy #Faerie #AlgernonBlackwood

ICYMI: Both Stelliform books that were in the running for a Small Spec Book Award have come out ahead! R.A. Busby's YOU WILL SPEAK FOR THE DEAD is the winner for the horror category and Michael J. DeLuca's THE JAGUAR MASK is a fantasy finalist! We're thrilled to be recognized by small press readers!

#smallspecbookawards #speculativefiction #sciencefiction #fantasyfiction #horrorfiction #fantasybooks #horrorbooks #sfbooks #sffh #smallpress #indiepress #bookstodon #books

“It’s not like I’m breaking the law or anything—except it totally feels like I’m breaking the law. It’d be really cool to be able to do this without shame”

https://library.hrmtc.com/2025/10/14/its-not-like-im-breaking-the-law-or-anything-except-it-totally-feels-like-im-breaking-the-law-itd-be-really-cool-to-be-able-to-do-this-without-shame/

#able #ActionAndAdventureFiction #AprilDaniels #book #breakingTheLaw #ComingOutSexualOrientation_ #ComingOutSexualOrientationFiction #ComingOutSexualOrientationJuvenileFiction #FantasyFiction #feelsLike #fiction #JeunesTransgenresRomansNouvellesEtcPourLaJeunesse #juvenileWorks #LGBTQBooks #nemesis #notLike #quote #reallyCool #SortirDuPlacardHomosexualitéRomansNouvellesEtcPourLaJeunesse #Superheroes #SuperheroesFiction #SuperheroesJuvenileFiction #SuperhéroïnesRomansNouvellesEtcPourLaJeunesse #SuperhérosRomansNouvellesEtcPourLaJeunesse #TeenYoungAdultLGBTQFiction #TeenYoungAdultSuperheroFiction #TeensYAPopularFiction #toBe #toDo #totally #TransgenderPeopleFiction #TransgenderPeopleIdentity #TransgenderPeopleIdentityFiction #TransgenderPeopleIdentityJuvenileFiction #TransgenderYouth #TransgenderYouthJuvenileFiction #TransgenresIdentitéRomansNouvellesEtcPourLaJeunesse #withoutShame #WomenSuperheroes #WomenSuperheroesFiction #WomenSuperheroesJuvenileFiction #YoungAdultFiction #YOUNGADULTFICTIONLGBT #YOUNGADULTFICTIONSuperheroes #YoungAdultWorks

Anackire

https://library.hrmtc.com/2025/09/19/anackire/

#book #DeEssesRomansNouvellesEtc #fantasy #FantasyFiction #FathersAndDaughters #FathersAndDaughtersFiction #fiction #goddesses #GoddessesFiction #goodAndEvil #GoodAndEvilFiction #GuerresEtBataillesImaginairesRomansNouvellesEtc #ImaginaryWarsAndBattles #ImaginaryWarsAndBattlesFiction #LiteratureFiction #PeResEtFillesRomansNouvellesEtc #review #ScienceFiction #TPolyphilus #TanithLee #WarsOfVis

✨ Beyond the Light of the Willow Tree by Daniel E. Chambrello is a soul-spanning fantasy that weaves ancient Rome, modern North Carolina, and one extraordinary journey.

📖 Read my full review + enter the iRead Book Tour giveaway!
🌳 One soul. Two timelines. A story of light, loss, and redemption.

🔗 https://ginaraemitchell.com/beyond-the-light-of-the-willow-tree-review/
#BookReview #FantasyFiction #BookTour #iReadBookTours #KindleUnlimited #Audiobook #DualTimeline…

https://ginaraemitchell.com/beyond-the-light-of-the-willow-tree/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=jetpack_social

#Octocon2024 has some great guests such as Glyn Dillon! Glyn has had a wide-ranging career working as a #comicbook #artist to more recently as a #CostumeDesigner.

Find out more at https://2024.octocon.com/glyn-dillon-guest-of-honour/

#StarWars #Artist #SciFi #sciencefiction #fantasy #fantasyfiction #octocon

Hello everyone!
I'm thrilled to share my passion for dragons 🐉 magic 💫 and epic tales ⚔️ with you all.

As an author deeply immersed in the world of fantasy fiction, I spend my days crafting stories filled with enchanting landscapes and legendary creatures. There's something truly magical about weaving tales that transport readers to realms where anything is possible, where heroes rise, and dragons soar.

Whether you're a fellow writer, an avid reader, or just love to daydream about mystical worlds, let's connect and celebrate the limitless power of imagination together. Join me on this fantastical journey and let's create a community where our dreams take flight! 📚✨

#introduction #fantasyFiction #dragonDreams #magicTales #imaginationUnleashed #epicStories #fantasyWriter #bookLover

#FinlayFriday
Virgil Finlay illustrating "Witch of the Four Winds," a 1963 Brak the Barbarian tale by John Jakes.

#VirgilFinlay #JohnJakes #Brak #Barbarian #NotConan #SwordandSorcery #WeirdTales #Fantasy #FantasyFiction #Illustration #PenandInk @fantasy