soldier - Stories

In a dieselpunk city-state shattered by war, a scrawny mechanic with a forbidden power becomes the last hope for a runaway prince, fleeing an unstoppable enemy and the ashes of a fallen world.

Kent Nakamura enlists in the United States Marine Corps, believing distance is the only way to protect the person he loves. Over the next thirteen years, war, brotherhood, sacrifice, and forbidden love shape him into a respected Marine leader, while the battlefield leaves behind wounds no one can see. As he struggles to find his place beyond the uniform, Kent must confront the invisible scars of war and discover what it truly means to keep living. Safe Distance is a prequel to Still Alive, Dumbass, but can be enjoyed as a standalone novel.

February 2011. Tripoli is burning.

Special Envoy Will Carter is trapped in a collapsing palace, hunted by militias and running out of time. His husband Andrew is the only thing standing between him and execution—but the city is a warzone, and the hunters are closing in.

From the corridors of power in Ottawa to the burning streets of the Libyan capital, the Carters are about to discover that some wars are fought with bullets, and some are fought with everything you have.

Marcus Valerius Pulcher, a Roman noble raised on music rather than war, is sent to Germania’s raw frontier under the ambitious governor Varus. There he meets Ingomar, a Cherusci warrior, and finds something neither of them has words for, something a cithara, a hidden grove, and two empires’ worth of duty were never meant to allow.

But peace on this frontier is a fragile, borrowed thing. Warnings go unheeded. Confidence curdles into catastrophe. And as history’s most infamous ambush gathers in the forest ahead, Marcus and Ingomar must decide what love is actually worth paying for.

Under Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Benjamin and Alexander built a life behind the word roommate. Afghanistan cost them the rest of it. Now, every evening at dusk, Benjamin sits by a river with the only photograph of the day he let himself be seen.

He kept the photograph. The river keeps the rest.

In a world where humans and orcs are forced to live in symbiosis, not everyone can choose for themselves how to live their life. And often enough it's forced to take an unexpected turn, same for Susanna and Dremakk. Some turns are negotiable, though...

Behind the Iron Curtain, Poland, 1983. The country is under martial law. This is not a war of armies and battlefields, but a conflict between the state and its own society. In a remote military unit, twenty-one-year-old Janusz is trying to survive the army, the system, and himself. Then Rafał arrives. What begins as fascination soon becomes something far more dangerous: desire, fear, tenderness, and a relationship neither of them fully understands.

In the rain-lashed borderlands of the Vexin, Darien Haskal has carved a fragile peace with blood and steel. But when King Radoslav's royal progress arrives, it brings not celebration but a nest of vipers: a scheming duke, a fanatical nun wielding forbidden magic, and the golden knight whose smile hides a blade. As ancient curses awaken and political machinations tighten like a noose, the Vanguard's found family must protect their own—a feral heir, a dying prince, and a love that defies the Church itself. In a fortress perched between kingdoms, war is coming. But the Vanguard has survived the end of the world. They'll survive a dinner party.

Two enemies wake in the ashes of Jerusalem—one a deserter drowning in guilt, the other an amnesiac who remembers only how to kill. Hunted across the desert by a vengeful lord, they must disguise themselves as a Crusader knight and his squire to survive. But in the war-torn port of Jaffa, masks slip. Secrets surface. And a feral German street rat with a talent for trouble forces them to confront an impossible question: in a holy war that devours everything, can two broken boys build a family from the ruins?

The siege is over. The city is theirs. But for Darien Haskal and his feral Vanguard, the real war has just begun. Raymond of Toulouse has seized the Holy Lance and declared himself God's chosen commander. Baldwin of Edessa plots from the north, hungry for revenge. And somewhere in the Sultan's tent, a prince's back is being carved open to pay for Antioch's fall. The Vanguard marches south alone—extorting coastal cities, hunting spies in the hills, and building a sanctuary for outcasts. Jerusalem waits. But the road is paved with fanatics, betrayal, and the corpses of kings.