Raven1 Stories to read - Stories

Andre the Omega and Rafe Gold are in luck. That, or they’re rather unfortunate, for they have been selected to be enrolled into the most prominent yet enigmatic educational institution for all species, humans and magi. Little do they know, they are stepping onto a battlefield, rife with internal war and unchecked by figures of authority. The two friends are caught in the middle of it and in need of help if they want to survive Ironward Academy.

Website designer Scottie Ness is taking a well-deserved vacation from the grindstone, and he plans to spend it in the solitude of Washington’s Gifford Pinchot National Forest around Mt. Adams. He’s prepared for everything—except the lightning storm that traps him in a wildfire. Or meeting Jax Quintero, an abrasive firefighter whose bulky uniform couldn't hide a jawline chiseled from stone and intense eyes that burned him with scorn. Or was that the flames surrounding them?

Maybe Scottie should have gone to Hawaii on vacation instead.

Parker Frazier attends Somerset High School, a suburban white school. Over the weekend, a fight breaks out during a basketball game against an inner-city school. Tempers flared, and racial epithets were shouted. On Monday, protesters appeared outside the school. One young man caught Parker's attention. While driving home after school, he witnessed a police officer brutally arrest the young man he saw earlier that morning. Parker videotaped it with his phone and posted it on Facebook. He was not prepared for what happened next.

Jonathan Hamilton transfers to Sunny Hill starting junior year to run away from his past and keep promises on which to build an uneventful, safe future. The biggest promise he makes to himself is to stay clear forever, by all means necessary, of straight bad boys and their unhealthy appeal.

But promises are only made to be broken, Jonathan discovers the truth of the old adage, as junior year barely starts, and he has a run-in with the ridiculously attractive Maddox Kingsley, the resident BMOC, and carrier of the frightful nickname of ‘Mad Dawg’. (Full description inside.)

After King Norius is freed from his dungeon, his main goal is to regain his sight and get revenge on Esthor and Queen Loreena. However, the man who helped him escape has his own plans and will stop at nothing to execute them.

Meanwhile, Esthor and Rulf do their best to track down Norius, as well as to assist the queen with securing the upcoming Royal Ball, where nobles from across the continent are set to compete for the hand of Princess Amelia.

A young man enters the confessional. He tells Father Peter Ruxton that he is gay, in love, and filled with self-loathing because the Church teaches that what he is doing is a sin. The priest, who struggles with his own sexuality, tries to offer counsel that shows compassion and empathy, while remaining within the strictures of his Church’s position on homosexual behavior. It does not end well. The young man leaves filled with bitterness, and Peter faces the reality that he must leave the Church if he is to be true to himself. He begins his search to find himself and his authentic life.

Aleksander has finished university and come home to his father's estate accompanied by his new friend and companion, Daniil Vinogradov. Daniil is a modern man who has been studying art and has ideas and passions that both influence and overwhelm Aleksander. There is a clash of old and new, a furore that threatens the peace and calm. Revolutionary ideas and sensuality form a heady mix that one might not survive.

“But whom to love?
To trust and treasure?
Who won’t betray us in the end?
And who’ll be kind enough to measure
Our words and deeds as we intend?”
― Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin.

Born in the small town of Maydena in Tasmania, Australia, from the age of just two years, my home is over 6,000 kilometres away where I have grown up, in the Buddhist Kingdom of Bhutan. My full name, is Dechen Christopher Yeshe Hamilton. We have our main home in the capital of Thimbu, where we live for seven months from in the late autumn, winter and early spring, and for the rest of the time, for five months, we live in the northern Himalayan mountains, where my parents work to provide medical care and assist with education of the children in the remote of villages of Bhutan.

A midlife single university teacher in ornithology feels deeply unhappy with his life so far and starts pondering what made it that way. But although he is able to find part of the answers, he doesn’t have the courage to change it. When he is sent on a field research job in Alaska, the total change in environment brings him this courage and he enjoys the new-found freedom with the help of an extraordinary guide.