Explore Standalones
Explore Standalones
NOCTICADIA
Mortui vivos docent. The dead teach the living.
After watching my mother succumb to a mysterious illness, I promised myself two things. I’d find the cure for what ravaged her. And leave the godforsaken city where she abandoned me.
Four years later, I receive an acceptance letter from Dracadia University, one of the oldest, most prestigious schools in the country. Nestled on a secluded island off the coast of Maine, it’s rumored to be haunted by the souls of the mental patients exiled there centuries before. Those whose bones are said to make up the island’s white sandy shores.
And restless ghosts aren’t even its most daunting peculiarity.
Devryck Bramwell, known on campus as Doctor Death, is a brilliant pathologist in charge of the midnight lab. He’s also my devastatingly handsome professor, who seems to loathe tenacious first-years, like me. Except, his dark and enigmatic gaze tells me all the ways he’d devour me if given the chance, and his stolen kisses burn my lips with forbidden jealousy.
I crave his authority.
He aches for redemption.
Together, we’re toxic. Delicious fodder for the prying eyes hellbent on exhuming the rotted skeletons of our pasts.
For the dead have much to teach, and it’s only a matter of time before Dracadia’s most depraved secret is resurrected.
TRIGGER WARNINGS - May contain spoilers
PHOBIA: A NOCTICADIA BONUS NOVELLA
Phobia is an 18,000-word novella set after the events in Nocticadia. The setting and tone of this short story are a complete departure from Nocticadia and echo my gritty contemporary books. I did not intend to write a second book, as Nocticadia was meant to remain a standalone. Please note that this will not be a complete story before diving in. It’s merely a glimpse of these two characters and nothing more.
MASTER OF SALT & BONES
Meet the Devil of Blackthorne Manor ...When I was a little girl, I dreamed a handsome knight would come and rescue me from my wretched mother. He'd ride up on his white steed and break the curse I've been fated to carry since the day I was born.
Funny how things changed over time. How the fairy tale twisted into something far more crooked, darker than I ever imagined.
In reality, my knight is scarred and broken, living alone in a castle of bones that overlooks the sea. He isn’t searching for me. He never was.
Lucian Blackthorne is as cursed as I am, and equally shunned by the locals, the fishers of men, who believe him to be the devil in the flesh.
Perhaps he is, with the way his amber eyes draw me in, ignite me like an infernal blaze. And the sins he whispers in my ear are as wickedly intoxicating as the man himself.
Yet, his touch is heaven, and his will is my weakness.
He calls us forbidden, an unsalvageable tragedy, with no happy end. Maybe we are. But in this story, he’s the one who needs saving.
TRIGGER WARNINGS - May contain spoilers
THE ISLE OF SINS & SHADOWS
This island alone boasts more ghost stories than all of Louisiana combined. And I’m one of them.
In the Louisiana swamplands, ghost stories are as much a part of childhood as chasing fireflies and crawfishing. They never much scared me, though, nor the possibility of evil out to do me harm. Until the night I watched shadows come to life and butcher everything I loved.
With a stranger's help, I managed to escape to an isolated place miles north, and, in time, became my own ghost story. A cautionary tale for the locals. Nearly a decade passed before I returned to my birthplace, in hopes of unearthing long-awaited answers. Instead, I found something I wasn't looking for. Someone. A remedy for my loneliness.
Or so I thought.
Turns out, Thierry Bergeron is no elixir. He's a deadly poison, cursed by the demons of his past, and feared by those who call him the elusive Rougarou of the bayou. A devious rogue, whose seductive whispers and rough hands haunt my dreams. The big bad wolf that defiles me without apology or remorse. I should resist him, but I can't.
And when the shadows return to stake their claim on me, his darkness is the only safe place to hide.
TRIGGER WARNINGS - May contain spoilers
ABSOLUTION
According to canon law, it is forbidden for a priest to betray the penitent for any reason. Even murder.
The consequences?
Excommunication.
For years, I’ve listened to your confessions. I know your darkest secrets and have swallowed your sins in silence. In return, I’ve offered you forgiveness in His name. But behind the partition that separates us, I’m nothing more than a man who has long questioned his own faith.
Your contrition is my invitation: to mete out the kind of justice you pray will never come. I’m neither pious nor merciful, despite what you see. I’m an imposter, an abomination to all I represent. A quiet executioner who’s kept below the radar.
Until her.
She’s seen what I’ve done. She knows the man beneath the cloth and my every mortal sin. She has witnessed the uncontrollable vices she hopes to use against me in order to get what she covets most.
Yet, I know her sins, too. Ones she doesn’t bother to confess. The kind for which there is no absolution.
