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Lost in The Wood -- Leonard and Ann Marie Wilson

Dark Goddess Chronicles

Old fairy Tales never die. They're sort of like vampires that way.

Dark Goddess Chronicles stories are fairy-tale themed—which is to say they’re inspired by old fairy tales in the same way an episode of a police procedural claims to be “ripped from the headlines”. You’ll probably recognize a lot of the elements, but they’ve been patched together into entirely new stories.

The stories contain interrelated characters and can be read in either publication or in-world chronological order.

Short Stories

Conspiracy of One

Heaped with survivor’s guilt and post-traumatic stress as the sole resident of her home town to escape the deadly intentions of the Inquisition, a shattered young woman stumbles into a cut-throat political intrigue she can only escape with the help of a magic mirror and her head full of imaginary friends.

Previously published in the Conspiracy Calls charity anthology.

Publication Order

Conspiracy of One

Lethal Red Riding Hood

Gingerdread

Ear Wyrm

In-World Chronological Order

Gingerdread

Conspiracy of One

Lethal Red Riding Hood

Ear Wyrm

Novellas

Gingerdread

Jordan hadn’t wished his stepmother, Eva, dead. A little something involving spiders would have served vengeance quite nicely. Still, he hadn’t exactly grieved when they said she’d died in the fire. A protective big brother will only forgive so many sins against his sister.

Even if Eva had been alive, though, what business would she have begging for his help now—a year later? And how insane was he to even consider offering help, much less seek out where her voice was coming from on such a miserable dark night?

As heir presumptive to the barony and a soon-to-be knight in training, Jordan refuses to let fear stop him from seeking answers to impossible questions.

But when the questions keep piling up, each darker and more dreadful than the last, only one thing becomes crystal clear: he’ll never look at an oven the same way again.

Novels

Lethal Red Riding Hood

Bloody Scarlet, the skull collector of the Crimson Forest, is just a cautionary tale to keep children from wandering in and getting lost — isn’t she? Well something’s out there.

In a world dominated by a cruel Inquisition that sees demons and witches everywhere it turns, Keely just wants to make a dishonest living convincing the obscenely wealthy to part with their excess riches through guile and trickery.

When the Inquisition shows up to destroy her life anyway, Keely goes on the offensive rather than scurry back into the shadows. To set it up for a fall she lures the Inquisition into an invented race to find a heretical book of prophecy that may never have existed.

When Keely builds her lies on existing rumors, though, and points the hunt in the direction of the Crimson forest, a new player introduces herself to the high stakes con game as a deadly wild card.

Whether or not the woman in red is the real Bloody Scarlet, the closer Keely gets to the dark, twisted heart of the forest the more quickly things spiral out of control.

Ear Wyrm

Meilani always wanted to be a monster hunter for the Inquisition. She was good at it, too, until the first time she came face-to-face with real monsters. Now she's alone with her nightmares on the road she paved with all those good intentions.

Then one tiny glimmer of redemption finally offers itself--a chance to safeguard a little girl with a very familiar ambition-only to lead her further down the rabbit hole. The journey leaves them stranded in a tangled web of time with a deadly rogue's gallery of psychopaths and other monsters.

Hanging over it all, a once comfortingly familiar song exhorts them relentlessly, inescapably to push ever deeper into a night that never ends, even as something at the center of the web stirs restlessly on its gleaming hoard of possibilities. Here, now, and alwys, there be dragons.