An Oracle Walks into a Bar

Messy breakup? Want your stuff back from your ex? Shapeshifter August Shade can help. Satisfaction not guaranteed.

When a power-hungry elf hires August to get her favorite book back from her vampire ex-lover, August figures it’ll just be another job. Except that vampire is the meanest vampire this side of Canada, the book bestows its reader with the power to write their own future, and the elf isn’t the only one that wants the book. Things go from bad to worse when a horoscope-writing oracle starts having visions of the end of the world, and August pops up in all of them.

The cranky shapeshifter can change into a lot of things, but can he change the future? Haunted by a dark past, plagued by the oracle’s predictions, and grappling with his penchant for making bad decisions, the only sure thing about August’s future is that it looks short.

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Human Brain Pledge
This story was written by a human. No AI writing assist technology was used in the creation of this story.


Meet Scott Burtness

People say you should write what you know. That’s damn good advice, so Scott writes about ordinary Midwesterners making an extraordinary mess of things. Hey, if the flannel fits…

Oh- one more thing: According to Scott, ‘ordinary’ according to Scott totally includes vampires, werewolves, zombies, shapeshifters, aliens, and more. Heck, it is the Midwest, after all.

In Case We’re Made Into Coats

What if you had to live in fear? 

What if one encounter with the wrong stranger could result in your body being made into a nice, fuzzy pair of transforming moccasins? And what if you had an incurable medical condition, that caused you unbearable pain every time you tried to change forms? My name is Chase, I’m a 16-year-old shapeshifter, and that would be my life. Well, minus the inconsistent homes, abusive adults, and friends that share (some) of my same circumstances. This is the story of how we ran away, how I ended up where I am, and everyone who’s to blame.


Meet Tessa Charleigh

Tessa Charleigh currently resides in Indianapolis Indiana. She grew up in her mother’s exotic veterinary clinic, gaining her some unique life experiences and knowledge that she likes to integrate into her novels.

Her In Case We’re Made into Coats series, was inspired by the desire to humanize shapeshifters as a species. “there’s no way they would go through such drastic physical changes, without some mental and emotional repercussions.”

Between Wild and Ruin

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Truth, like love, isn’t always obvious.

Seventeen-year-old Ruby Brooks has never had a boyfriend. After moving to small-town La Luna, New Mexico following her mother’s untimely death, boys aren’t even on her radar. Ruby just wants to forget the last horrible year and blend in. But when she discovers an ancient pueblo ruin in the forest behind her house, and meets Ezra, a bitter recluse whose once-perfect face was destroyed in an accident he won’t talk about; Angel, La Luna’s handsome sheriff’s deputy, and Leo, a stranger who only appears near the ruin, Ruby finds herself teetering between love, mystery, and other worlds. What happened to Ezra’s face? And why is she so attracted to the one boy in town everyone despises? As Ruby unravels her own connections to both Ezra and the pueblo ruin, she’ll learn surfaces are deceiving. Especially in the heart of New Mexico, where spirits and legends aren’t always just campfire stories.