Most children hope to grow out of their imaginary friends. 17-year-old Rin Waters’ only hope is that hers doesn’t kill someone, especially when said imaginary friend puts a boy in a coma. Finding herself shipped half-way around the world—to Japan, of all places—she is forced to live with grandparents she hasn’t seen for ten years and a cousin she can’t even remember. Rin would rather just forget about the one night that ruined her life and pretend her imaginary friend doesn’t exist—if it was only that easy. When manga-obsessed otaku, Matt, won’t stop pestering her about a manga that sees the future and the tragic accident she’ll be involved in if she doesn’t listen to him, pretending becomes quite a challenge. Suddenly mysterious accidents begin to happen to students in her school, and Rin has to wonder what length Matt is willing to go to prove his manga is real. Is it all a sham or is there really something that wants to see Rin and her new friends dead?

Dimensia explores spirituality, spiritual warfare, physics, meta-physics, and scientific theories. A new spin on an old way of thinking.Fisher is a young man who, faced with unspeakable loss and soul-crushing guilt, has just undergone his final year in high school alone with his thoughts beyond the reach and console of others. It isn’t until he comes solitarily face-to-face with himself that an interest in dimensions is ignited. Finished with the establishment’s methodical presentation of course and curriculum, he moves to a new city, freshly emboldened to find truth in the edges of all that surrounds him. He quickly finds Comfort, the personification of empathy and beauty his soul has tirelessly sought to find and love. Then a harrowing encounter with an aged book shop-keeper forever opens Fisher’s eyes and a doorway into Dimensions. Soon he meets Truth and Order, two ethereal women that allow him to drink from The Tree of Life and gain further access into yet another dimension. It is here that Fisher's basic understanding and principles of the known and unknown are challenged and ultimately altered forever. Each further dimension promises unspeakable knowledge and graver responsibilities. He must choose to believe or not to believe, to accept or deny that which lies deeper than life and death. How long can he remain on the precipice between the Old and New Worlds without going mad, and must he forsake love for his Calling? Now a member in the great metaphysical battle between those known as Dark Siders and Light Workers, he must withstand the escalating onslaught of the mind and spirit. As still further dimensions unfold, he is allowed access to wormholes and the ability to travel in time. Worlds crumble and the stage is set for the New World Order as the final apocalyptic battle unfolds.

A collection of gothic, romantic, dark, horror, and some other poems.It’s 1987. Dane Morrison, a middle-aged ad agency sales rep, meets an enigmatic street rose salesman during a hot summer in Houston, Texas. As Dane learns more about the Rose Man, Dane’s dreams and reality become a hellish playground for the unearthly vagabond. And as Dane soon discovers, where love and hope are found, the Rose Man walks…The Rose Man is an early, award-winning story from critically-acclaimed horror author, Terry M. West. Thought lost until it was found on a recovered computer drive, The Rose Man presents one of Terry M. West's most unique horror characters. This story is presented with an introduction from the author as well as story notes.

A comic hippie soap opera chronicling 366 days in the life of Ole Miss graduate student Daniel Medway and friends from August 1971 to August 1972.Meet Daniel Medway, rumored to be the most dangerous student on the Ole Miss campus because of his reputation for creating hippie mayhem in every corner of Oxford, Mississippi. But appearances can be deceiving. Over the course of this big-hearted comedy of bad manners, Daniel discovers that he actually has the soul of a gentleman and the moral compass of a saint, to offset his god-given knack for stumbling into trouble. It’s August 1971, and Daniel is about to embark on the most riotous year of his life, in the company of his friends Garrett, Clamor, Dr. Goodleigh and a cast of unforgettable characters that includes a mad Chinese cook, a sometimes invisible dog, an ex-KGB agent, and a kindly stranger who might just be Elvis in disguise.

In the third decade of the twenty first century stagnation is driving the world to the brink. Into this world a pair of idealistic inventors introduce a technology that will give mankind the solar system, but will the forces of good or the powers of repression take hold of the technology and shape the future to their desires.The world has been treading water for the first two decades of the twenty second century, technology continues to evolve but in a zero sum world violence is creating the new barbarians that could bring civilization down. In this world Paul Richards and his genius friend Cooper Paaly are working on a source of clean and nearly free power, but unknown to them they have stumbled across much more than a source of energy. When Coop vanishes with his invention Paul is left to clean up the pieces, but when Coop calls to ask for help from a mysterious lab in a desolate desert town Paul cannot resist and is rapidly drawn into a plan to build an outlaw colony on the moon, driven by an industrialist with grandiose dreams. But just when the dream takes flight global realpolitik takes hold and it is left to Paul and his small group of friends and followers to try and save the world from a new Genghis Khan.

An adventure set in a world at a slight angle from ours. Modern day Cowboy Elgin Chalmer’s finds that man eating lizard girls, spider monsters, Were’s and Vamp’s are far harder to deal with than steers.This isn’t SteamPunk or UrbanFantasy it’s QuantPunk SciFi and first of many stories mixing ‘quantum’ scifi and fantasy.This is a ‘cleaned up’ edition of my NaNoWriMo Submission Nov ‘12Elgin’s old life was nothing much, Beauty Wyoming was as beautiful and remote as one could get, a town of cowboys and Indians, in a setting of rangeland, mountains and lakes. Elgin Chalmer’s was a cowboy and a part breed black-sheep slacker living with his huge Siamese cat Humph in a forty year old trailer. Life was OK for Elgin, he didn’t want much and didn’t get any more. Then one raw snowy day he made the mistake of heading into the mountains with a gut full of whisky and a head muddled by rotten drugs...death came easily considering.And that was when things started to get really messy. A world of alien dangers and powers were waking up after two thousand years in hibernation and humanity’s protector needed a new helper. Now Elgin found himself dealing with flesh eating lizard girls, ancient spider monsters, along with werewolves and vampires who didn’t always play by the rules. And on top of it all he had to get used to eating sharks, raw and still fighting. But now of course he had a chance to meet up with the cool girls; The Wiccan proprietor of the local New-Age gift shop, with an ancient Indian totem in her basement, the pistol packing deputy with a secret, and the beautiful Russian spy with a heart of gold and the killer instincts of a she wolf.Elgin’s new life was....complicated.Some words of explanation. First, the National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo, (www.nanowrimo.org) is run by a tiny nonprofit called he Office of Letters and Light, an organization that promotes writing in all its glorious permutations among the young, young at heart, and not so young (among whom I fall in the right hand distribution tail these days.) I wrote the first 60,000 words or so of Elgin in November 2011 and finished the remaining half by February 2012, since then, among many other things, my father and I have been editing so I can submit it for publication at Smashwords.Second, this book isn’t SteamPunk, UrbanFantasy, Fantasy, I like to think of it as a type of SciFi, what I call Quantum Punk. Using the possibilities our quantum universe opens up to the imagination as a basis for something that tries to be Science Fiction with a very strong tint of UrbanFantasy and SteamPunk, I hope you enjoy.

A man is arrested for kissing a cop. If he had known breaking the law was soenjoyable he would have done it long ago.This short story is a winner of the CoffeeHouse Fiction Award and is included in their 2009 Anthology available from Amazon.com.Amirilla Asteras's only constant friends had been the stars she's lived among, until she started a long-distant relationship with Ganth Doranth, who operates a Gaian freighter with his father. Both had agreed early on to audio-only communications so she's never seen Ganth, but he's wormed his way into her heart anyway. Unfortunately Ganth is a Gaian man and must attach to a suitable woman, someone whole and healthy, and Ammi has been confined to a motorized box-like wheelchair all of her life.She knows her misshaped legs should keep her and Ganth apart and she dreads having to tell him the truth about her, but the tricky Gaian man has something else on his mind and seems determined to meet her in person, whether she wishes it or not. He has his own plans for the girl in the box.

A beautiful coming-of-age story for fans of Front Desk and Merci Suárez Changes Gears, this book celebrates identity, language, heritage, family, and the determination to follow one's own inner light.Have you ever been the best at something . . . only to lose it all?Luz Véliz is a soccer star—or rather, she was a soccer star. With her serious knee injury, it's unlikely she'll be back on the field anytime soon. But without soccer, who is she? Even her dad treats her differently now—like he doesn't know her or, worse, like he doesn't even like her. When Luz discovers she has a knack for coding, it feels like a lifeline to a better self. If she can just ace the May Showcase, she'll not only skip a level in her coding courses and impress Ms. Freeman and intriguing, brilliant Trevor—she'll have her parents cheering her on from the sidelines, just the way she likes it.But something—someone—is about to enter the...

This unreasonably clean and sometimes edgy book of limericks takes a not quite nonsense view of the people, situations, institutions and attitudes which populate our world.For a drunk named Holiday the End of the World might just be the worst hangover he's ever had. Or, the beginning of one last post-apocalyptic binge. The end of the civilization is only the beginning as an odd band of survivors pull together to construct a modern-day castle amid the burning ruins of suburbia lost. As undead hordes and strange otherworldly monsters ravage what’s left of civilization, things begin to go from worse to weird as each survivor’s dark past unfolds, revealing that reality might be more than anyone ever thought, and that an ancient force from the outer dark has finally arrived to conquer. Stephen King’s The Stand meets Lost in an epic confrontation between good and evil that spans history, time, and space.

"Adam Smith continues to dazzle and sparkle! With the passage of time, Supermoney has, if anything, added to its power to inspire, arouse, provoke, motivate, inform, illuminate, entertain, and guide a whole new generation of readers, while marvelously reprising the global money show for earlier fans." -David M. Darst, author of The Art of Asset Allocation Managing Director and Chief Investment Strategist, Morgan Stanley Individual Investor Group "Nobody has written about the craft of money management with more insight, humor, and understanding than Adam Smith. Over the years, he has consistently separated wisdom from whimsy, brilliance from bluster, and character from chicanery."-Byron R. Wien, coauthor of Soros on Soros Chief Investment Strategist, Pequot Capital Management Supermoney may be even more relevant today than when it was first published nearly twenty-five years ago. Written in the bright and funny style that became Adam Smith's...

Fathers: A collection of Three Flash Fiction stories consist of three short stories, "Teddy", "He never Came", "His Truth". All shining a lot of the lack in-home issues many families face regarding an empty father presence.3 Fathers: A collection of Three Flash Fiction stories consist of three short stories, "Teddy", "He never Came", "His Truth". Teddy; it's been three years since young Brittney saw her daddy. He died on a very long journey but according to Brittney, He's been on a very strong journey. She misses him dearly, but is constantly reminded whenever she has a tea party with her teddy bear. The teddy was assigned by Brittney's daddy as a guardian angel to Brittney so she can continue to grow and never forget. He Never Came; fifteen-year-old Ahmad finally gets to se his father again. He lives with his mother who knows his father all too well and constantly has to remind Ahmad but he loves his father. He stands anxiously at the door, reacting to every headlight as he waits, and waits, and waits... His Truth; Bob and Paula have been married for nearly 20 years, filled with golden memories of raising their son. But there's a grey between them now as if marriage is a job they share. Bob has held on for as long as he could but he can no longer bear the secret inside him.

This is a study of the paradigm shift of books into a digital world. It looks at the strengths and weaknesses of both digital and printed literature as well as the publishing systems around them.This is a dissertation. A 2nd version of this text will be released, without a maximum word count that will be able to into deeper research and analysis.AUTHORS NOTE: About six months ago I finished my first novel (Chronicles of the Vampire Hunters: The Coalition). The finished product was well over six hundred pages long, was unedited, and had NUMEROUS grammatical and punctuation errors. Also due to its length several elements of the story had to be left out. So instead of moving on to my next project, I decided to improve upon The Coalition. So I broke the novel up into three parts, had it edited, and added previously left out scenes(including a new prologue) making it a more complete story. If you've read The Coalition before I hope that you will be happy with the new material and if not I'm confident you will enjoy this first novel following Jake and his family's adventures. So here it is, the first part of The Coalition Trilogy: Creation. They are known by many names, from Gods and Immortals to Demons and Vampires. They are whispers in the shadows, myths, and legends. They have existed alongside mankind for thousands of years, always in hiding, always feeding. They are are the top of the food chain and humanity is their only prey. Alone and outnumbered a small group of men and women stand their ground, fighting to drive back the darkness anyway they can. They are our first, last, and only line of defense against monsters that know no fear. They are the Vampire Hunters. Jake Bishop is a normal, easy going kid that spends his summer days playing with his action figures and watching cartoons. The biggest, Earth shattering problem is his life are his parent's nonstop arguments over money. That all changes one hot summer night, when a demon from his father's past comes crashing back into his life. Jake is plunged into a surreal, terrifying world beyond his worst nightmares. Jake is nearly killed, his mother kidnapped, sending his father into a mad quest for revenge. Jake learns two truths, vampires exist and the Bishops have been hunting them for hundreds of years. And they are VERY good at what they do.