Mom, Dad, Help! - I'm Mated to the Alien Alpha! Ziggi Moondust Collins is a manic pixie dream girl that went on a bender and never recovered. At least, that's what her bandmates think. Pink-haired with a moonbow on her butt, Ziggi is your average punk barista searching for meaning in suburbia. Too bad her artistic roommate Cyrus. He's experimenting on her, manipulating Ziggi's genome in order to accelerate humanity's evolutionary conga line. Oh yeah, and he's been at it for centuries, meddling with human biology so long the Sumerians started a religion after him. At least he makes a mean fettucine alfredo? After a concert goes sour, Ziggi and Cyrus blast off into space in Cyrus' VW Beetle when Ziggi tries to turn off the radio. Stranded on a spaceship suited for amphibians, not punks, Ziggi learns that her new tenant Cyrus, real name Lahmu, isn't remotely human! Gone are Lahmu's good looks, replaced by beautiful tentacles - he looks like a sexy sewer mutant! Lahmu is the heir to the Milky Way's dysfunctional overlords, the Anunnaki: shapeshifters who feed off information. In order to sexually mature, Lahmu has to shepherd humanity into his parent's galactic dictatorship via good old genetic manipulation - and taking Ziggi to bed! Galactic pirates, space rock bands, and tons of hot and heavy tension between an Alien Alpha and his Chosen Mate abound!
"You're full of shit, Ziggi. My new tatt doesn't look like text from a crappy printer. It's based on Otzi the Iceman's ink. This stuff has history."
I looked at the black bars on the back of Carlos Rivera's neck. All I could think was lame. "This is like a step above tribal tatts, is all I'm saying, my dude."
Carlos adjusted the volume on his bass. "Whatever. You have pink hair and a rainbow on your ass."
"Hey," I said. "My rainbow isn't a rainbow, it's a moonbow. That's why it's in black and white. Moondust is my middle name. Ziggi Moondust Collins. It has meaning, it's not a badly inked bar code!"
"Would you two shut it? I'm trying to get in the zone," Spike said. He twirled his drumsticks in the air.
I plugged my guitar into its amp. "Right." I turned to Carlos "Hotsauce" Rivera. "Forget what I said. Your new tatt is cool." (It wasn't.) "We good?"
Carlos nodded, wary. "Whatever. I guess."
On that discordant note, the Iguana Knees jammed.
Cyrus wandered in halfway through our set, smoking pungent weed in his mushroom shaped bong. This one smelled like a dank skunk. He scoured the floor of Carlos and Spike's garage. Cyrus found a rusty nail and a dented bottle cap.
"Would you guys mind if I kept these?" Cyrus yelled over the blare of my riff, pocketing his newfound treasures.
Carlos eyed Cyrus' toned arms. I wasn't exactly immune to them either.
"Sure thing, man," Spike shouted over my solo, making a V with his drumsticks. "Mi casa is your casa."
"Stop speaking Spanglish Spike, you're rage-murdering my ears," Carlos muttered, plucking at his bass.
"Shut up, Hotsauce," Spike laughed.
"Whatever, dude," Carlos sighed.
Cyrus fiddled with the bottle cap. "Thanks, most gracious of hosts. I'm just here to enjoy the ambience." Cyrus smiled his lazy smile and settled into the threadbare couch near the entrance. He closed his eyes and took a drag from his joint. Exhaling, he picked at a thread in the couch. "Music is like a flower, y'know? Petals of it unfold to engulf us, and soon, we are drowning in its liquidus, seeping nectar. The Rosarium Philosophorum of old, nigredo burnt into rubedo gold!"
Spike and I shared a look. Enamored, Carlos nodded. "Yeah, that's something like Otzi the Iceman would say. You can't tell me a bog body frozen for thousands of years wouldn't be a wise man, like a bona fide Dalai Lama or something."
"Or freezer burned," I muttered.
Carlos gave me the evil eye. I gave him the middle finger. As usual, we were fighting.
Set over, we packed up and parted ways. I ferried my stoned roommate back to our apartment, wondering the whole time if the tattoo on my ass really was just a rainbow.
At home, I floated through a sea of Cyrus' junk to my room, determined to pen the final lyrics to our new set. I was just reaching the bridge, where the suburban dad from our concept album commits suicide with a George Foreman grill in Loudoun County, one of those starched collar and chino clad multimillionaire Washingtonians in ugly outdated 90's era McMansions, when Cyrus' drilling from his makeshift studio broke my concentration yet again.
"Ugh." I crumpled up the eleventh version of my lyrics and tossed them into the wastebasket.
The drilling continued. I banged my head against the desk, wondering how I would ever sleep tonight with Cyrus working in a stoned haze on his newest art project.
I looked into the mirror hanging from my inspiration board and spoke to my baggy-eyed reflection, my bright pink bangs askew: "Get it together. You're days away from performing your new set. You're a broke musician. Do the thing broke musicians do and write a killer song."
Despite my best efforts, no inspiration came.
The drilling grew louder. The girl in the mirror was on the verge of breaking, ready to kick her roommate out, wondering why she had ever let him move in in the first place.
It began innocently enough. I was short on rent for my small two-bedroom in Bent Tree Apartments, and my old roommate had just shaved his head and joined one of those totally not legit completely white Hindu monasteries in Annandale without any ethnic people, just a bunch of kombucha drinking Hare Krishna weirdos, so I put up an ad on Craigslist for another occupant.
Cyrus was the first to respond: a tall, quiet nineteen year old prodigy with long, loose ringlets of cornsilk hair like something from a romance novel and skin like ice in shadow. I had initially liked him because he said he was an artist. It also helped that Cyrus, as I said, looked like something from a romance novel, one with like a millionaire playboy on the cover or like maybe a hot Viking warlord. Maybe that was kinda dumb, but that's what I instinctively thought when I first saw him in all his glorious hotness. Harlequin had, after all, stolen my high school years, besides the Beatniks and Edgar Allen Poe.
Cyrus had proven soft-spoken and charming when we met up in the local library. His fingers had been stained with paint and he was dressed in all white, down to his Doc Marten's. I thought his paint-spattered clothes an endearing quirk.
Things were roses for the first weeks - he kept to himself and his studio - but then I made the mistake of taking him to one of the Iguana Knees' after-parties, where Carlos, ever the Hotsauce, introduced Cyrus to weed.
From the moment Cyrus toked his first joint, he was hooked. The weed had a weird-ass manic effect: he scavenged for trash and channeled bursts of creativity into his found art. Me, it mellowed me out, but it turned Cyrus into a shinies-hoarding magpie. He would collect cast-off shoes from the gutter and cardboard from recycling bins, then go dumpster-diving for more materials. Come morning, the haphazard objects would be forged and soldered and sewn together into new creations and displayed in his studio at the Torpedo Factory in Old Town Alexandria where they would be sold for hundreds of dollars, even thousands sometimes. Somehow, even now at 19, he could afford rent at the collective art gallery. I could barely afford a hoagie at Wawa.
Katya is in love with Azovka, the Mistress of Copper Mountain. Katya's fiancee Danilo dares carve Azovka an impossible flower of stone. They witness the ruthlessness of the Romanovs and clutches of corrupt Bailiffs in the Ural Mountains, where Azovka's Copper Men have ruled since they were first mined out of Mount Azov. But when Azovka begins to turns to stone, Katya fears the worst - and that Danilo will follow Azovka to a Hell of malachite shadow. With Baba Yaga's guidance, and the magick in her veins, Katya must save them all! retelling of pavel bazhov's "the stone flower"
Three fated lovers: a shieldmaiden, a Troll Queen, and a Valkyrie. One price: the fate of all Midgard. Turiel is crown princess, but from the outlawed Northern Holds, bloodbound to Troll Queen Jarngrimr, and best friends with the stablelass Yolanda, her first love - until her poison kiss turned Yola into a Valkyrie, and whisks Yolanda from Turiel's grasp. Now, Turiel has been stolen into wily Queen Jarngrimr's realm, with only the goddess Skadhi and Yola - back from the dead! - to guide her. Lussi, the Snow King, craves a bride - and it is Dia's troth alone. Dia, the last blood mage from the line of the Isa, is all that is left of Turiel's legacy. Dia has been raised as Lussi's Magdalene - his ritual Bride - and ritual Slayer - for the past three years. Every Winter Solstice, Lussi can die, and Dia must kill him. But as Dia falls deeper into Lussi's sexy web - and in love - her heart is on the line! Other works and Ko-Fi: linktr.ee/avnelson
Death has a mate - a teenage girl, the Grim Reaper's Bride. All Callie has known is that someone watches her in the woods - Samael, the Grim Reaper. Drawn into his intoxicating web of desires, secrets, and shadows, and hating him with a burning passion - can these two unlikely heroes stop the Apocalypse? Or will Samael start it for love?
The Frost Demon Morozko, Prince of Russia's immortal land of Buyan, has waited ages for a mate. And she is Stravinksy's fabled Firebird - incarnated as an orphaned witch! Cast out by the King of the Ice Kingdom, Morozko wanders Buyan, a Miyazaki haven for cherti, nechist, and witches - but a dark curse plagues the land - Koschei the Deathless. Can this bastard prince and the young human girl Anya that conniving Baba Yaga gave Morozko to raise with his found family of cutthroat spirits stand a chance against the immortal sorcerer King Kaschei, who has trapped Anya's soul in the Deathless realms, in gardens of dead wives? Anya is burgeoning with power, living a double life between Cold War Russia and D.C., and coming into her own as a witch to rival Baba Yaga. When her newfound love for Morozko is at stake, she will risk it all to follow the darkly tempting Kaschei to the Deathless lands, face the travails that put all Russia in peril - and save Morozko, as much as he saves her. With epic love, sorcery, adventure, treachery, a Slavic inn for spirits, and plenty of blini warm by the fire, come read this daring journey, and find out if an immortal love can withstand death Himself!
He tipped his baseball cap. The stranger's grin revealed bits of crumbs. "And you are...?" I noticed the checkered scarf around his neck. "Hermes." "The brand?" "The man." He sent dancing fingers through the air in a snazzy salute. "G'morning, sweetheart. Loved the sandwich." "Apparently," I mumbled. "So, how did you get in? The doors are locked, and I didn't hear any breaking glass." I looked him up and down. "Get lost on the way to a toga party?" Maybe he was a crazy frat bro. "My life's a party - I bring it with me, or steal Dionysus' thunder." He sipped from a chipped coffee mug, then ah'ed appreciatively. "By Jove's hairy derriere, what a drink. Wine pales in comparison. To the gods of old, and young days long since gone." He wandered into my dining room. "We don't love them til they're gone." My eyes convulsed. "Sorry, but who did you say you were?" I looked at his hands. They were tapered like the fingers of an artist who smuggled on the side. His eyes bespoke whimsy. Looking at this stranger was, in fact, like taking the first, dangerous bite of a melty grilled cheese. "Hermes: the man, not the scarf," ___ My George Foreman grilled cheese was so unholily good, it summoned the Greek God Hermes! Now, I'm on an epic quest to save my father Prometheus from the clutches of Zeus, and restore Hestia's temple flame to Olympus with the fabled Prometheion flower my beloved father Prometheus spent his life hiding. But with the Titans plotting, Cronus rising, and Zeus as dastardly and cunning as ever, all enemies to Hermes and I, can the sexy Messenger God and I make it through, or will I become the ultimate Human Sacrifice?
On the day of their wedding anniversary, Joshua's mistress drugged Alicia, and she ended up in a stranger's bed. In one night, Alicia lost her innocence, while Joshua's mistress carried his child in her womb. Heartbroken and humiliated, Alicia demanded a divorce, but Joshua saw it as yet another tantrum. When they finally parted ways, she went on to become a renowned artist, sought out and admired by everyone. Consumed by regret, Joshua darkened her doorstep in hopes of reconciliation, only to find her in the arms of a powerful tycoon. "Say hello to your sister-in-law."
Eliza Greer was abandoned by her mother, raised in an orphanage, and sold to the Burns family at 19. Even though she marries Mason Burns, the other people in the Burns family look down on her for her poor identity and want to try every way to bully her. Unexpectedly, they all failed. Eliza's hidden identities are gradually revealed in one incident after another, which astonishes everyone.
Joanna was sabotaged by her sister and ended up in a stranger’s bed. Despised by her boyfriend and pressured by her family, she was forced to marry a wealthy scoundrel, Rhys. Rhys’ young adoptive father was the richest man in town, but was also said to be violent. Everyone thought Joanna was doomed, but Owen favored her and condemned her bullies. Joanna secretly loved Owen, but after a night of passion, he began to withdraw from her. Heartbroken, she entertained other men. She was on a date when Owen suddenly barged in. "You said you loved me!" Joanna smirked. "Too late. You’ll have to get in line."
"Miss Brown, I am the butler here at your service," the butler replied. "My master wants to buy the baby in your belly." "What?!" Does that mean the abortion didn't take place? Did they kidnap her from the operating table just to buy the baby? But why her? "You..." Alice was about to ask a question, but the man in front of her calmly continued, as if he had expected her question, "You're pregnant with his child, and he needs a child. That's all I can tell you." Alice was forced to sign a surrogacy contract and eight months later gave birth to two healthy babies. Fortunately, the man was unaware of her daughter's existence. It wasn't until five years later that fate brought them together again...
Everyone was shocked to the bones when the news of Rupert Benton's engagement broke out. It was surprising because the lucky girl was said to be a plain Jane, who grew up in the countryside and had nothing to her name. One evening, she showed up at a banquet, stunning everyone present. "Wow, she's so beautiful!" All the men drooled, and the women got so jealous. What they didn't know was that this so-called country girl was actually an heiress to a billion-dollar empire. It wasn't long before her secrets came to light one after the other. The elites couldn't stop talking about her. "Holy smokes! So, her father is the richest man in the world?" "She's also that excellent, but mysterious designer who many people adore! Who would have guessed?" Nonetheless, people thought that Rupert didn't love her. But they were in for another surprise. Rupert released a statement, silencing all the naysayers. "I'm very much in love with my beautiful fiancee. We will be getting married soon." Two questions were on everyone's minds: "Why did she hide her identity? And why was Rupert in love with her all of a sudden?"
It took only a second for a person's world to come crashing down. This was what happened in Hannah's case. For four years, she gave her husband her all, but one day, he said emotionlessly, "Let's get divorced." Hannah's heart broke into a million pieces as she signed the divorce papers, marking the end of her role as a devoted wife. Within Hannah, a strong woman awakened, vowing never to be beholden to any man again. Embracing her new life, she embarked on a journey to find herself and command her own destiny. By the time she returned, she had experienced so much growth and was now completely different from the docile wife everyone once knew. "Is this your latest trick to get my attention?" Hannah's ever-so-arrogant husband asked. Before she could retort, a handsome and domineering CEO pulled her into his embrace. He smiled down at her and said boldly to her ex, "Just a little heads-up, mister. This is my beloved wife. Keep off!"