Word Count: 91550
Summary: “IMMORTALITY BYTES: Digital Minds Don’t Get Hungry” — Genre: Science Fiction/Humor/Heist-Thriller Tagline: “Living forever... it's almost worth dying for.” One-line Story Pitch: “When an idealistic hacker’s ex-girlfriend nears inventing digital immortality, an indicted tycoon compels him to steal it.” Accolades: • Winner “Best Sci-Fi: Cyberpunk” — 7th Annual American Fiction Awards (2024) • Winner “Best Science Fiction” & "Best Political Fiction" — American Writing Awards (2024) • Winner “Best Humor/Satire” — Storytrade Awards (2024) • Semifinalist — Chanticleer's Cygnus Award for Best Science Fiction • Triple Finalist: Best Sci-Fi, Best Humor/Satire, & Best First Novel — IAN Book of the Year Awards (2024) Back Cover Blurb: In a not-so-distant future dominated by AI, universal basic income, and “subtirees” living pod-bound lives of leisure, idealistic, semi-slacker hacker Stu Reigns dreams of more. When Stu’s brilliant ex, Roxy Zhang, develops digital immortality, the world’s powerful elite scramble to secure their eternal existence. Enter Chuck Rosti, a merciless, terminally ill tycoon made more dangerous since he’s on the brink of conviction for massive fraud. His plan? Coerce Stu into helping get Roxy’s groundbreaking invention so “Feds can incarcerate my corpse.” Caught between a sick billionaire, a Russian mob, digital mind clones, and a shrewd, devout Southern matriarch, Stu gets tangled in a twisted, high-stakes, ‘inverted heist.’ But as betrayals mount and revenge includes murder, Stu and new allies must race to save lives and seek justice in humanity’s digital immortality. Fans of smart cyberpunk, like Neal Stephenson’s Snowcrash, or sci-fi with humor, as in Andy Weir’s The Martian or John Scalzi’s Redshirts, will love Immortality Bytes. Book Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul3KA2zT0aw Reviews: 1) “Feels like an American Douglas Adams” — San Francisco Book Review 2) “A supercharged, high-stakes cyberpunk thriller.” — VERDICT:✓GET IT — Kirkus Reviews 3) “Perfect for anyone looking for a fun, easy read that combines sci-fi elements with a bit of social satire. Abrams’ sharp, witty prose and inventive world make it well worth the ride, especially for fans of snappy, humorous sci-fi." — 5-Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ — Manhattan Book Review 4) “Dark humor and crisp dialogue drive the twisty storytelling” — ✓EDITOR'S PICK — Publishers Weekly's Booklife Reviews https://linktr.ee/immortalitybytes
Word Count: 89000
Summary: A remote resource planet. A mysterious illness. And a rescue team frighteningly out of their depth. It was supposed to have been an easy job: go in, kidnap or kill his mark, get out. Shine's done plenty of jobs like this before, no problem. But when it all goes suddenly wrong, he has only one option left to save his skin. He finds himself an unwilling volunteer on a medical mission to a remote resource planet. It sent in a distress call a week earlier, and then promptly went silent. No one knows why, and no one can contact them to find out. And, Shine is increasingly beginning to realize, every person on this mission is politically unimportant--a perfect crew of disposables. Their mission is to go in and figure out what happened, and save whoever they can. But he's smart enough to realize that anything that could cause an entire mining colony to go silent is probably not something accustomed to leaving its victims alive. And after meeting the rest of the crew, he's not sure that they're any safer than what's waiting for him out on the planet ... Set in the world of The Devil and the Dark, Inhuman is the first book in R.M. Olson's gripping new space-horror series, The Dark Between Stars.
Word Count: 55000
Summary: Stranded in space: no fuel, no way home… and no one coming to help. From the pen of Hugo Finalist Gideon Marcus comes the found-family, YA Space Adventure you’ve been waiting for: Nineteen-year-old Kitra Yilmaz dreams of traveling the galaxy like her Ambassador mother. But soaring in her glider is the closest she can get to touching the stars — until she stakes her inheritance on a salvage Navy spaceship. On its shakedown cruise, Kitra’s ship plunges into hyperspace, stranding Kitra and her crew light years away. Tensions rise between Kitra and her shipmates: the handsome programmer, Fareedh; Marta, biologist and Kitra’s ex-girlfriend; Peter, the panicking engineer; and the oddball alien navigator, Pinky. Now, running low on air and food, it’ll take all of them working together to get back home. With illustrations by Hugo Finalist Lorelei Esther.
Word Count: 112566
Summary: David Knight has been plagued by dreams his entire life, only to have all memory of them vanish when he awakens. Now the dreams are coming with more frequency, and they seem to be drawing him to the Amazon. A scientist with a PhD in ichthyology and a dedication to learning all he can about lungfish, whose existence dates back to the Devonian era, David is determined to see what the Amazon holds. His hopes seem about to be answered when Dr. Carlos Avila contacts him. It seems the Brazilian archeologist discovered the remains of a previously undiscovered species on a tributary of the Amazon, and he’d like nothing better than for David to join the expedition to see if more of the creature can be found. Of course David leaps at the opportunity and flies to Pesadelo Bay to join the mismatched team. Once there, he discovers not only does Dr. Avila have his own agenda, but a former conquest as well as a friend who’d saved his life years before are part of the team and are engaged to be married. Meanwhile, the need to sail up the Amazon to find what… or who… is calling him there has become more and more pressing, and David must decide which is the most important—learning what Dr. Avila really is searching for or finding the answer to his dreams?
Word Count: 90000
Summary: Biology professor Roman Janz was walking across campus and planning his next plant-collecting trip to Brazil, when something stung him on the neck. And now… now he’s wandering in the dark, in the blue, floating, disembodied, and confused. There has to be a good explanation, if he can just find someone, anyone, he can actually talk to about it. Xavier Faulkner is intelligent, creative, and made millions when he sold his tech-security company. But all his wealth and skills couldn’t keep his sister Tam from being poisoned by food contamination. She lived, but her health was damaged, and her job as a cop is gone. In the antebellum house he moved them to, Xavier hopes to find both a distraction and maybe a purpose for their lives. But the old house seems to come with strange noises, and odd blue lights, and maybe― if Xavier isn’t just going crazy― a naked guy, walking away into the blue… This story was written as a part of the M/M Romance Group's "Love’s Landscapes" event. Group members were asked to write a story prompt inspired by a photo of their choice. Authors of the group selected a photo and prompt that spoke to them and wrote a short story. Dear Author, I just moved into this old antebellum home I bought with the intentions of restoring. I often find myself awoken in the night by strange noises I cannot identify or hear during the day. At first, I think it’s just a dream… this seemingly phantom always walking away. Who is he and how can I get him to finally turn around and see me? 79,000 words
Word Count: 86000
Summary: The year is 1877. Russians have invaded the Pacific Northwest and are advancing into California. New weapons have proven ineffective or dangerously unstable and the one man who can help has disappeared into Apache Country, hunting ghosts. A healer and a former sheriff lead a band into the heart of the invasion to determine what makes the Russian forces so unstoppable while a young inventor attempts to unleash the power of the lightning wolves.
Word Count: 18023
Summary: Anonymous post to the Galactic AITA I'm the captain of a small trading ship, and I have a problem. I have a ridiculously high sex drive thanks to that damn parasite from Verda, and I can't afford surgery to remove it. I tried to control it, but I nearly destroyed my crew a dozen times before I found something that worked: A sex slave. I buy a slave from people who are going to work her to death, give her good quarters, good food, and a percentage of each trading run. All I expect is that she be available for sex, mostly with me, sometimes with the crew. A lot. I've had three so far. Two saved enough to buy themselves free and got a nice set up on the world of their choice. The third kept trying to escape so I ditched her at our next planetfall with the clothes on her back. We're on our way to a so-called 'Personnel Processing Platform' to buy the next one. Am I the Asshole? Content warning: This is essentially a heavy non-consent/dubious consent story set in space. If you are uncomfortable with noncon, explicit sex and/or rape, or fictional slavery, this story isn't for you. No AI
Word Count: 85900
Summary: Welcome to the Industrial Revolution. Magic has been banished back to the edges of the continent, and Sorin the Master Chemist has one remaining task: restore the guilds of Gasta Fletcha to save the continent's economy, and its soul. Except the continent has never been more prosperous. Queen Magda is ready to leave the guilds behind and embrace the incoming factories. Sorin’s task of releasing trapped skills from magic amulets is no longer a priority of the crown. Sorin would rather die than give up on the guilds, but Sorin is not the queen and does not get to make these decisions. To make matters worse, the magic of Gasta Fletcha will not be so easily ignored. Sorin would like nothing more than to sort both their personal and professional differences with Magda, but, spurred by a disembodied magic voice from an amulet, they set out on a quest across the continent, hoping to discover a new purpose. What they find instead is a trail of destruction in the wake of a rapidly growing industry: factories with horrible working conditions, children maimed in the pursuit of economic growth, and the devastating loss of guild tradition. It will take a blend of magic, chemistry, tradition, and progress to save the guilds and Gasta Fletcha, and Sorin must decide what is truly in the people's best interest—cultural history or economic prosperity. One choice will cost Sorin their queen. The other will cost them their heritage.
Word Count: 100,000
Summary: Lida was their last chance for an uncolonized planet. But a world-spanning fungus had colonized it first. Agetha and her husband have spent their whole lives in the fleet’s zero-G. Now all is turmoil as the fleet lands, discovering they are surrounded by a single fungal biomass spanning the entire planet. To build a new home, the fleet must confront a dangerous organism, and Agetha must decide if she can raise a family in this inhospitable landscape. Jane Brighton holds tenuous command over the colony and its administrators. She and the other gene-modded leaders emerged from their four-hundred-year suspended animation to find a crew much different from the one that departed Old Earth. Jane must direct the colony’s fragile growth and defend it against being overrun by the fast-growing biomass. But there is something none of the colonists know. The massive organism that spans the planet is not simply a fungal mass, nor even a chimerical combination of species that once roamed the planet. The biomass has desires and goals, and one is to know these strange beings carving out a home in its midst. Download today to read of the colony’s fate in Of Mycelium and Men! Genres: Space Opera / Science Fiction / Colonization / Alien Contact / LGBT / Non Binary / Trans Market: Adult
- Sci Fi
- Sci Fi - Alien Races
- Sci Fi - Aliens
- Sci Fi - Colonization
- Sci Fi - Distant Planet
- Sci Fi - Dying Earth
- Sci Fi - Dystopian & Post-Apocalyptic
- Sci Fi - First Contact
- Sci Fi - Generation Ship
- Sci Fi - Genetic Manipulation
- Sci Fi - Hard Sci Fi
- Sci Fi - Human Evolution
- Sci Fi - LGBTQ+
- Sci Fi - Space Exploration
- Sci Fi - Space Opera
- Sci Fi - Terraforming
Word Count: 104000
Summary: The Scarlet Order vampires are on the run. Rudolfo de Cordoba has led most of the Scarlet Order vampires to a new home in Colorado where they can regroup and unlock new vampire powers. Alexandra and Drake have gone to New Orleans to continue their quest for lost Biblical writings when they learn the government's project to create super soldiers from vampires continues. Marcella and Roquelaure have traveled to the South of France to avoid trouble only to stumble upon a terrorist plot and an even more frightening means of quashing extremism. Meanwhile, Special Agent John Lassiter is on the trail of the Scarlet Order vampires. Will the vampires unlock their new gifts and save humanity from itself before Agent Lassiter catches up and ends the vampires' immortal existence? The only thing certain is that they'll learn truths about themselves and the universe we live in—and those truths will not leave them unscathed.
Word Count: 92000
Summary: The year is 1876, Sheriff Ramon Morales of Socorro, New Mexico meets a beguiling woman named Fatemeh Karimi of Persia, escaping oppression in her homeland. When an ancient lifeform called Legion comes to Earth, they are pulled into a series of events that will change the history of the world as we know it. In their journeys, Ramon and Fatemeh encounter mad inventors, dangerous outlaws and pirates. Their resources are Ramon's fast draw and Fatemeh's uncanny ability to communicate with owls. The question is, will that be enough to save them when a fleet of dirigibles from Czarist Russia invades the United States?
Word Count: Information not available
Summary: When a reckless young computer programmer resurrects the damaged AI on a long dormant freighter, she and her accidental crew expose explosive secrets from a war they were taught ended decades ago. Welcome to the universe of Halcyone Space. In the aftermath of the Ferryman's death and Lieutenant Commander Gutierrez's injuries, Ithaka has lost its most loyal protectors. The Commonwealth is coming dangerously close to discovering the lost planet's location and crushing its lingering rebellion. As Ro and her crew fall under suspicion of harboring Ithaka's secrets, they race to unlock her father's trove of encrypted data in order to find leverage against the rebellion's enemies. But knowledge brings new threats and Halcyone's crew is drawn more deeply into a conspiracy that threatens to destroy Ithaka and reignite a galactic war when they uncover the hidden power brokers who have been quietly manipulating the Commonwealth for decades.
Word Count: 82516
Summary: An inhabited planet is not what an interplanetary mining company hopes to find while in search of rare mineral deposits, but the low-tech natives should be won over by a few ‘miracles’, right? Emily Nandi, the mining company’s legally mandated xenologist, isn’t so sure. The planet’s social structures are complex, fascinating and frustrating – she advocates research and caution rather than the seat-of-the-pants first contact the company president wants. Investigator Shadow is convinced ghosts are watching him until a fellow investigator disappears, plucked from his harduk’s back without a trace. When he reappears at the city gates, naked, half-frozen and ill, he brings back a harrowing tale of strangers on a ship high above the planet. From this shaky beginning, suspicion and misunderstanding fuel one culture-clash driven disaster after another, punctuated by apocalyptic prophesies from the oracle, Telluris. This is no way to get to know one’s long-lost cousins from Earth.
Word Count: 109000
Summary: It appears out of nowhere—one moment the sky is empty, the next, there’s a rent in the fabric of space itself. And nothing in the system will ever be the same. In the far reaches of the Rim Mountains, itinerant field-scientist Aran Romeu is searching desperately for the cure to an incurable disease—one that’s slowly killing his best friend. He’s sworn to do whatever it takes to find it. But when the portal opens, and something comes through, he realizes that ‘whatever it takes’ will involve travelling into the uncharted space beyond the portal. And he’s not the only one after the cure, and willing to do whatever it takes to get to it first … In the weighty halls of government, Chief Justice Alba Espina is preparing a political gamble that could change the shape of the system itself. The appearance of the portal shatters her carefully-laid plans and hands her political rival a weapon he could use destroy her—unless she can delay him with the promise of a diplomatic mission through the portal. But the stakes of the mission are higher than just her personal ambition. If her diplomatic mission doesn’t succeed, it might just spell the end of humanity itself. In a remote spaceport, Savina Moya, the system's most talented assassin-for-hire, is on the run again after her latest murder. But when a deadly government agent is sent after her, with instructions to bring her back dead or alive, the diplomatic mission heading into the portal may hold the key to Savina’s survival—if she’s brave enough, or desperate enough, to take it. No one knows what’s beyond the portal. And as the three of them are drawn inexorably together in uncharted space, with no idea who is an ally and who is an enemy—it’s an open question if any of them will live long enough to find out.
Word Count: 71,179
Summary: Within the unseen laboratories of cutting-edge scientific research two incredible discoveries are made, half a world apart. One is in the field of human genetics, the other in astrophysics. Together, this shocking new knowledge may answer age-old questions about human consciousness and mankind’s place in the universe. What makes us human? Why are we here? Are we alone? But will the answers to these questions enlighten us or lead us into fear, hate and self-destruction? This bold science fiction thriller set in the present day reveals mind-bending breakthroughs grounded in hard science, and unfolds amid political intrigue, government secrecy, and a race to understand the truth before it’s too late.
Word Count: 14000
Summary: As a security officer on an interspecies ship, Growlan Raskli's experienced in heading off species-specific aberrant behaviors in order to keep the peace. But when her captain asks her to find out what's bothering their sole human crew member, Raskli's out of her depths. She hardly knows anything about humans and she's not a psych doctor. Something's definitely upset Human Jen, something to do with human holidays. The more time Raskli spends studying humans and interacting with the intriguing Human Jen, the more personal the assignment becomes. Determined to lift the dark cloud from Human Jen, Raskli will do whatever it takes—within safe parameters, of course.
Word Count: Information not available
Summary: Every patient zero has a doctor. Edward Taylor just killed a man. It wasn’t the first time but it could be the last. For the last twenty years, he’s been careful, hiding his true self behind a mask of humanity. But now someone out there knows what Edward is, and he has no idea what they’re planning to do with that knowledge. When he’s approached by a journalist working to bring down controversial research lab, Hunter Neurologics, Edward’s personal and work life collide. Cornered, and with his paranoia growing, he’s forced to take action and triggers a sequence of events that might just unleash a plague of the dead on the world. Dexter meets The Walking Dead in this gripping prequel to the brand new horror series, Serial Killer Z.
Word Count: 139579
Summary: When things begin to go wrong, they have a habit of going spectacularly wrong, Lord Telluris Marat discovers. Robbed of his visions and his ability to prophesy, he still has his will to fight and his ability to command an army. But the enemy he faces now commands weapons that rival his worst nightmares. Emily struggles with her own visions, and finds herself caught between worlds. Jake Montagna, the president of the interplanetary mining company, has gone off the deep end and will stop at nothing to get what he wants. If only they were in broadcast range of the authorities, Emily could do something. But Arhanna is far out of normal shipping lanes. To stop Jake, she’ll have to do it herself.
Word Count: 81,198
Summary: Tyler Vaughan is a wildlife biologist who spends his days ear-tagging elk and monitoring bear populations in the Oregon Cascades. . . until the day one of his remote cameras captures an image of a strange, thin, eyeless humanoid—right around the time that children start disappearing from the nearby town of Crooked Creek. Tyler, his would-be girlfriend Rainey Carrington, and the skeptical, blustering Chief of Police Dale Blodgett, are reluctantly drawn into investigating a terrifying possibility—that their town is being visited by the specter of Slender Man, an evil entity long associated with kidnapping of children. The stakes only get higher when their inquiries turn them into targets. Will they be able to stop whoever is abducting the children of Crooked Creek, or will they be the next ones to disappear?
Word Count: 60000
Summary: One starship, six friends, 10,000 lives in the balance. Hugo Award Finalist Gideon Marcus has done it again with this second installment in The Kitra Saga. Sirena is a thrilling YA space adventure, unusually hopeful and optimistic in a sea of grimdark, dystopian releases. Enhanced with beautiful illustrations, fans of Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers and Emily Skrutskie’s Bonds of Brass will adore Sirena. Young captain-for-hire Kitra Yilmaz has gotten her first contract: escort the mysterious Princess of Atlántida beyond the Frontier and find her a new world. It’s a risky job, fraught with the threat of pirates, dangerous squatters, and rising romantic tensions. Still, Kitra and her crew are up for anything – until they find a lush world, perfect for settlement…with an enormous ghost ship already in orbit. What secret does the crippled vessel hide? And is Kitra ready to take responsibility for its precious cargo? With illustrations by Hugo Finalist Lorelei Esther.
