Young adult stories

Smoke colored the sky grey, and the smell of burning wood and burning flesh made Queen Amazonia’s nostrils flare. She surveyed the ruins of her village from the mouth of the Cave of Gaia and vowed it would be the last time.

The women and young girls began to emerge from the rubble. Bruised,  bloodied, hair wild, eyes hunted, they gathered before her, sinking onto the stones that ringed the entrance to the cave. Some moaned, some cried, but most were silent – the silence of suffering, and it was into this silence that she spoke.

‘We will tend to our wounded and dead. But, before we restore our buildings, before we replant our crops or replace our livestock, before we rest again upon clean mattresses and take our leisure beside the fast-flowing waters of Thermodon, before anything else, we learn to fight.  We learn to defend ourselves, and we learn to attack. With the Goddess’s blessings, the next party of men who enter our village to take what is not theirs will not take. They will give. 

They will give their lives."

Long after Queen Amazonia was dust, and the sapling that she had planted outside the cave of Gaia to mark her oath had grown into a majestic bay laurel, her hunted village had become a thriving and wealthy polis of warriors, known throughout the lands as 

The Amazons... 

This is their beginning.

If Jessica Jones and Lara Croft had a daughter, it would be fifteen-year-old Alex, the latest recruit for the 20th-century Amazons. Alex can defeat bullies most of the time, fell predators with a single kick (three if they’re stubborn), is handy with the knife strapped to her calf, and wears the ancestral stone  - so why are the Amazons plotting to eliminate her? 

When Dad leaves, Mum takes up with a sleazy boyfriend, and Alex is suspended from school for trying to suffocate a bully, she knows she doesn’t belong anywhere. But when she steals a stone necklace, her life changes forever. The stone is a conduit to the Amazons, who track her down and promise her everything she doesn’t have – family, friends, purpose. 

But they don’t tell her about Training Camp Thermodon, where failure means death. Or that their graveyards are full of Amazons who didn’t survive their missions. And most crucially, that the stone around her neck once belonged to the Amazon Queen, which makes her a target for Circle, their eons-old enemy. 

With Alex’s skills, Thermodon should be survivable, but her small team includes a girl without a stone, - a Metic -  and they become a target for the rest of the girls, recruited from around the world.  

As Alex battles the recruits and the challenges become deadly, Circle locks on, hellbent on eliminating the potential queen. Now, Alex must make a choice. Keep protecting her team, her sisters-of-heart, who she initially didn’t want, but now can’t live without; or abandon them, ditch her stone necklace and run for her life.

A ghost story

Fifteen-year-old Jack’s twin is murdered, and he is forced to move to a new state. 

Isolated and alone, Jack finds it increasingly difficult to hold it all together until he meets William in the old shed in the backyard. 

Jack knows he should tell his parents, but they won’t believe him. They didn’t last time, and they might even start shoving those little brown pills down his throat again. 

Besides, being with somebody or something is better than being alone.

Spending every spare second in the shed, Jack couldn’t be happier. It’s almost like having his twin back. 

Then Jack meets Sydney, a girl at school, but William is furious and reveals his all-consuming jealousy. 

Frightened, Jack tries to separate William from the rest of his life, but William isn't going to give Jack up - ever. 

The Comptroller disregards intergalactic statutes that forbid experimentation on inferior life-forms.

He wants to study humans, and he's selected the last carriage on a train filled with school kids. 

He only needs four subjects, but he doesn't realize he's picked the wrong kids until they fight back and the experiment spirals out of control.