SmokeAndOranges

The Redding is a sinister force that captures and controls anyone it knows by name. Meg and her fellow survivors navigate a delicate balance of survival using nicknames and newfound communication methods, until they discover the rain can communicate too, threatening to unravel their fragile safety.*****[Complete. Wattys 2023 Winner] The Redding takes you if it knows your name. That's the rule that's kept Meg alive --- or awake, rather --- since the night the world went to hell. Nobody knows where the red stuff came from, but it acts like water, it's in the water, and it falls as rain every night. The people it captures drop like puppets with their strings cut. They're asleep, not dead, and you can wake them if you say their name again. But then they just try to kill you.Meg and the other survivors she's befriended think they've found a stable equilibrium, six weeks after the catastrophe began. Nicknames become real names, and Meg knows she's getting better at identifying safe houses. Her crush discovers that Morse code, like writing, is a safe way to say a Sleeper's name. It's the night after learning it that Meg wakes up just as the nightly rain is starting.Raindrops, as it turns out, can make dots and dashes, too. The Redding can talk. And it's telling her to run. ❖❖❖Complete. Wattys 2023 Winner.Featured on:@Wattpad - Embrace the Fear: Horror Stories@WattpadExplorer - Embrace the Fear: Scary Stories@Creators - Scary Stories to Read in the Dark@Wattpad Explorer - From Our Creators@dystopianapocalypse - Featured D&A Stories@Wattpad Explorer - Why Not Buy Some Flowers@Fright - Featured StoriesComments and critiques are both welcome and appreciated. I write characters from many different backgrounds, with many different experiences. If you share those traits and find that I have misrepresented anything, please let me know! I am feedback-friendly and here to learn :)…

SmokeAndOranges

Desdemona ''Des'' Winchester wants nothing to do with Melliford Academy. In fact, she's pretty sure her parents shipped her off to boarding school just to get her out of their hair. It's a move they'll come to regret if she has any say in the matter. Nothing humiliates posh folk like having a daughter sent home from the country's most esteemed educational institution. Just flunking class isn't dramatic enough, though. Des plans to get booted in the most spectacular manner possible, just to make sure her parents' social circle will never let them live it down. Her scheming, unfortunately, encounters three roadblocks within the first week of class. The first: Exie Quinnell, teacher's pet, whip-smart, and unreasonably attractive. Neither girl intended to end up on a project together, but their teacher deemed Des in need of a little... remediation. The second: There are things about Melliford Academy that none of the teachers will talk about, even when pressed. Things that should be easy answers. The third: The first student found dead with a folded paper dove perched on their chest. ❖❖❖Complete and fully edited.Comments and critiques are both welcome and appreciated. I write characters from many different backgrounds, with many different experiences. If you share those traits and find that I have misrepresented anything, please let me know! I am feedback-friendly and here to learn :)…

SmokeAndOranges

❖ Interstellar pilot and ex-adventurer Alex Gallegos must keep their team safe on an icy moon as sentient storms threaten to repeat the tragedy that ended their last career. ❖Everyone in the United Inhabited Solar Systems (for some reason, UIS for short) knows to stay away from Mahaha. The icy moon is notorious for failed probe landings and research missions that end in tragedy: the only people to ever venture to its surface needed rescuing after just two weeks. When a prestigious research group decides they want a turn, they ask Alex Gallegos to lead the team. Perfectly qualified and haunted by their past, Alex accepts, hoping to make up for old mistakes and get just a little further from the earth they've left behind. Two months into the seven-month mission, the team is struggling with discontent, damaged equipment, and blizzards acting less and less like normal weather. As Mahaha moves out of range of help and the storms take on a more malicious character, Alex must face the one foe they could never have prepared for.Mahaha may or may not be alive.❖❖❖Complete. Wattys 2021 Shortlister. Standalone sequel (Rocks Can Dance) coming in 2023.Comments and critiques are both welcome and appreciated. I write characters from many different backgrounds, with many different experiences. If you share those traits and find that I have misrepresented anything, please let me know! I am feedback-friendly and here to learn :)…

SmokeAndOranges

❖ When a sentient planet turns hostile after 150 years of quiet, two rival research groups must join forces to find out why---and to stop it before it kills the people who call it home. ❖ For five generations, Jenu has been a shining example of planetary colonization done right. Its surface boasts three cities---with a fourth on its way---and its history of amiable weather and hospitable citizens land it high scores on livability indices. The people who live there love it dearly. Lingmei Liu sees a different picture. In recent years, violent dust storms on the planet have been on the rise, threatening the cities' aging infrastructure. Just why is a mystery, but one clue looms large: Jenu is conscious, and might be able to control its surface weather. Commissioned to investigate, Lingmei and her scientific colleagues team up with a rival research group to put data and sense to Jenu's vagaries. What starts out as a simple study, though, soon veers into politics, the media, and shady business practices that may or may not be connected to the planet's new behavior. And all the while, the storms keep building. As half-answers multiply, three core questions remain in the scientists' hands:Can Jenu's cities be convinced to take action to protect themselves?Is the planet sending its own storms to strike those cities?And if so, why?❖ ❖ ❖ Patreon exclusive. Updates on Fridays. Free sample on Wattpad. Keep reading here: https://www.patreon.com/collection/349787?view=expanded…

SmokeAndOranges

❖ A hundred years after a disease burned the world down, Adriana is dragged into a war she didn't know existed. The Aztec gods are fighting for their lives, and they want her to help. ❖Adriana is a fourth-generation member of Grillo Negro, a nomadic village trudging down the continent in search of warmth and other people. It's been a hundred years since human society was incinerated by an unknown disease. The descendents of the survivors live in fear that they'll be next. When a scouting trip takes a terrifying turn, Adriana finds herself caught up in a war that reveals a darker side of the apocalypse. The gods of her ancestors are real. They're standing between her village and a powerful enemy, and she and her friends might be the last thing that can help. The burning disease isn't gone, and the one who created it is only just getting started. ❖❖❖Complete. Wattys 2021 and 2022 Shortlister.Comments and critiques are both welcome and appreciated. I write characters from many different backgrounds, with many different experiences. If you share those traits and find that I have misrepresented anything, please let me know! I am feedback-friendly and here to learn :)…

SmokeAndOranges

Niccola is a demi-queen undercover in enemy territory. Her little sister went missing seven moons ago, but one lead remains: a picture of a woman's face, drawn by a diviner shortly after the disappearance. Tracking her down has led Niccola to Calis, the realm next whose border with her own remains closed for a reason. There, the trail goes cold. Until, that is, Niccola runs into man in the marketplace who bears a family resemblance to the woman she seeks. His name is Isaiah, crown prince of Calis, and he's investigating disappearances, too. They join forces, faking courtship to sneak Niccola into the palace and get Isaiah's wedding-minded mother off his back. It doesn't take long to suspect that a common threat might underpin both their realms' problems. And as Niccola begins to develop real feelings for Isaiah, she's faced with an impossible choice: reveal her secrets and risk breaking his trust, or leave him in order to chase down the woman who stole her sister... a woman whose forbidden magic comes with a cost that could bring both realms to ruin. ❖❖❖Complete and fully edited. Cover credit goes to @CeeMTaylor. Go check out her books too if you like Dark Fantasy Romance-she writes some pretty incredible stuff!Comments and critiques are both welcome and appreciated. I write characters from many different backgrounds, with many different experiences. If you share those traits and find that I have misrepresented anything, please let me know! I am feedback-friendly and here to learn :)…

SmokeAndOranges

[FULL KELS SERIES] When Ande wakes up on the bottom of the ocean with a fish's tail, she's not sure what she did wrong. Getting sacrificed by her island is a likely bet, but why---and why her---is a mystery. Out of her depth in an unfamiliar world, she soon finds herself wrapped up in the society of the Kels, the people who live under the sea. Desperate to get back to her island, she strikes an agreement with a squid-tailed boy whose sunny smile and knowledge of her language are a welcome assistance at first. Soon, though, she begins to sense that he's hiding something. Things take a turn for the worse when her way home gets complicated by the Kels' wars and several eerie myths about her people that may not be myths at all. The history of the Kels goes back farther than her own culture, and the harder she struggles to get back to land, the more the question arises: Does she belong in the water after all? ❖❖❖Marked mature for darker themes and scenes, not spicy content.Compiled Kels Series:Book 1: Listen to the Water (COMPLETE) Wattys 2022 ShortlisterBook 2: Song of the Deep (COMPLETE)Book 3: City of Coral (COMPLETE)Book 4: Sing to the Moon (updates every Thursday)Book 5: Water Will Rise (upcoming)Comments and critiques are both welcome and appreciated. I write characters from many different backgrounds, with many different experiences. If you share those traits and find that I have misrepresented anything, please let me know! I am feedback-friendly and here to learn :)…

SmokeAndOranges

❖ ''We're at six thousand feet, Cap'n. There shouldn't be land at six thousand feet.'' ❖Rav is apprenticed by his father's wishes on an airship as unsettling as the deliveries it makes. Dreamcatcher's owner is the only captain on the continent who will sail any cargo through any part of the sky. Even parts nobody else will go. So when the ship gets caught in a storm and left rudderless in the Khaalee Navachandr, a ship-eating crescent in the middle of the ocean, nobody is coming to rescue them. Their only hope is to reach land to make repairs. The land they find, though, might only bring more trouble.❖❖❖Entry in Wattpad's 2020 Open Novella Contest. Shortlisted. Honorable Mention: Stunning Worlds. Complete.Comments and critiques are both welcome and appreciated. I write characters from many different backgrounds, with many different experiences. If you share those traits and find that I have misrepresented anything, please let me know! I am feedback-friendly and here to learn :)Proudly Featured On:@Adventure - Voyages and Sea Epics@Fantasy - Magical Realism@FreeThePOC - Short Story/Poetry@HighFantasy - Davy Jones' Locker (Pirates and the Sea)@Magic - Magically Thrilling/Unexpected@StoriesUndiscovered - Explore the Stars@YASciFantasy - Quests & Queens (Fantasy Adventure)…

SmokeAndOranges

When Bryony -- herbalist extraordinaire -- goes missing, Bella knows one suspect stands above the rest. The village's aspiring second witch, Daphne, comes from a family that's tried to take Bryony down before, and Daphne seems determined to carry on that legacy. For someone who's always been terrified of Bryony, she's a little too keen on looking into the disappearance. There's just one problem. Bella's insufferable fellow familiar thinks the kid is innocent... and he's been right about worse things before. If Daphne herself is to be believed, clues on the disappearance lead a whole lot closer to home than Bella would like. As the evidence mounts, Bella must choose to either stand by her values and the woman who raised her, or seek what might be a truth she would rather not uncover.Prompt #81: The town's witch has gone missing and no one is looking for her but her two familiars - a crow and a black cat, plus the teen who has always been scared of her.❖❖❖Written for Wattpad's 2024 Open Novella Contest. Longlister. Complete.Comments and critiques are both welcome and appreciated. I write characters from many different backgrounds, with many different experiences. If you share those traits and find that I have misrepresented anything, please let me know! I am feedback-friendly and here to learn :)…

SmokeAndOranges

❖ ''ZF 16 Ariomma to unknown vessel. Please identify yourself. Over.'' ❖Farah and Kazem are twins working aboard the Ariomma, a trading airship that sails the edges of a flat world. Out here is a frontier far from civilization: a place known as the Tideless, where water lifts from the surface of the sea, and great creatures rise with it. Only some of them are known. This is not a sailing path known for its safety, but the crew of the Ariomma have rarely feared their work. That is, until they find the carcass of another ship hanging in the Tideless, decimated by an unknown enemy. Soon, their flight to safety becomes a fight for their lives, as the monster turns its attention on the Ariomma... and them. ❖❖❖Written for #NONC2022, a community-run novella festival operating in parallel with Wattpad's 2022 Open Novella Contest. Complete.Marked mature for violence and other dark themes. Comments and critiques are both welcome and appreciated. I write characters from many different backgrounds, with many different experiences. If you share those traits and find that I have misrepresented anything, please let me know! I am feedback-friendly and here to learn :)…

SmokeAndOranges

Who are you, really, when your own memories may not serve you? When the 'you' of just a year ago is a stranger to you today? When your own psyche blurs the lines between complex and insane?Two people, three minds, and an unresolved mystery converge between the pages of a decade-old notebook. What happens next proves that identity and self are ephemeral concepts, and that murder does not always leave a body. ❖❖❖Content Warning: This book contains dark themes and depictions of psychological distress that may be disturbing to some readers. Proceed at your own discretion.…

SmokeAndOranges

Welcome to my profile! Add this book to your library for profile updates beyond what I announce: ❖ Progress reports on my ongoing projects❖ Announcements of new things I'm writing behind the scenes ❖ Rambling about anything from queer rep to covers❖ The occasional celebration ❖ Frequently asked questions / ongoing AMA ❖ Sneak peeks into my writing process❖ And more!Updates 1-2 times a month unless otherwise stated. FAQ / AMA currently updates weekly.…

SmokeAndOranges

[MOVED TO PATREON] It's not supposed to snow in the South Forest, but the weather in the second-emptiest corner of Shelha is not the only thing behaving strangely. When an ex-tyrant started acting up again, Sethral had hoped it meant the end of lazy days and monotonous, lengthening winters. She is starting to regret what she wished for. Winter the Mountainair has settled in the south, forfeiting her migratory habits and taking a renewed interest in a lifestyle she dropped years ago. Just why is a mystery, but then again, most things about her are. It takes a handful of new friends for Sethral to realize there are still creatures who know who Winter used to be. It takes Winter's reaction to their friendship to realize the tyrant would rather those creatures disappear. Now the peace of the forest may rest on finding those who can help reassemble the world's past and Winter's... before Winter finds them herself. ❖❖❖ Book I of the Stories of Shelha series, a work only split into books because nobody picks up an epic on Wattpad ;) Comments and critiques are welcome. I'm here to improve.Frost on the Grasslands has been proudly featured on:@Adventure - Fantastical Adventures@Fantasy - Featured Fantasy Stories, Wintery Worlds, Fantastic Beasts@HighFantasy - Wonderland @Magic - High Fantasy, Magically Thrilling/Unexpected@Mystery - Happy Holidays@StoriesUndiscovered - Diamond (x2)…