AEPennymaker

Power. Some kill to get it... Some kill to keep it... Some kill to keep others from having it.Aside from being a Ranger's daughter, Aurora Amethyst Makepeace (yes, that is her real name, bless her ever-loving Mum) is about as normal as normal can get. She has to study hard to get through school just like most people, she has to do laundry and help with the family business like every other young person in her District, and she has to walk on her own two feet just like God intended. She has never raised a flag on the Flameseeker's visits to her settlement. She is absolutely certain she is NOT a Spark. As the only son of High Councilor Kederov, Dane Kederov is a fourth-generation Sparkblood. Not only does that make him royalty, it makes him an Inferno - one of the most powerful Sparkbloods on the planet. It also makes him an extremely valuable political pawn. He lives a life of extreme privilege, high above the tensions and riots that have been escalating between the Sparkbloods and the Norms... until his father is murdered after leaving an ominous message for him, and Dane is suddenly a liability. Someone wants him gone. Someone who has the resources to kill an Inferno. Someone who is determined to claim power for themselves at any cost. Dane flees the Capitol, flying into the vast expanse of untamed wilderness that surrounds the city state of Firestone. Two weeks later, Rory goes on a tracking mission to find whatever is killing Biddy Correl's hogs... and discovers a lot more than a rogue bear out there in the Wildlands.She finds her exact opposite, in more ways than one. With Sparkblood hunters on Dane's trail, and Rory's father going after the bounty, Dane and Rory wind up thrown together in a mad, desperate attempt to solve the murder of Dane's parents before the riots and inter-racial tension boil over into all out war. No matter what, their lives are never going to be the same.…

AEPennymaker

Brenorra Warring's father is going crazy. That's the only conclusion Bren can make when a fire destroys everything they own, and his answer is to take a job in the uncivilized Coalition Colonial Region on the other side of the ocean. Then disaster strikes again. Her father is lost at sea, and Bren is left with nothing but the clothes on her back, the things in her father's satchel, and the discovery that he has been lying about his reasons for leaving. When more of her father's secrets come to light, it becomes clear that someone powerful is killing innocent people to keep those secrets hidden - and they are hunting for Bren. As the only person alive who can figure out what her father knew, Bren winds up forming an alliance with two very different men. The first has been tasked with keeping her safe, and will do anything it takes to bring down the organization stalking her, no matter the cost. The other is a brilliant but icy Naval hero who has been branded a wanted man by the enemy. With time running out and danger rising, Bren must solve the trail of coded messages her father left for her and find the last piece of the puzzle before it falls into the wrong hands. The only rule of this game: do not get caught. [Longlisted 2018] [Featured on Wattpad's Wattpad Picks List, Sept-Oct 2018] [First Place in the Adventure Category in the One Million Project Awards, 2018][First Place in the Pen and Ink Awards, Summer 2018] [Tridents Award 2019 Winner][Featured on these Ambassador Profiles: Adventure, Adult Fiction, Mystery]…

AEPennymaker

Bren's new life with the Innkeeper's team of rebels is dangerous and demanding, but with Captain Arramy's help they are doing real damage to the Coventry. Then disaster strikes, and Bren and Arramy wind up running for their lives across the Coalition provinces, trying to find a way back to the resistance. Instead, Bren is taken by the Caerhundars. Once again crossing the sea by boat, this time Bren is in shackles, chained to fifty other people in a cargo bin, bound for the Coventry's sprawling fortification hidden deep in the colonial mountains. At first Bren is only trying to survive the brutal working conditions of the Agricultural Sector. Then her language skills present an opportunity to work as a translator in the Paradazh Headquarters. It means close and constant contact with the very people who are still hunting for her - but how better to spy on them? Surrounded by enemies, Bren races against the Coventry's plans to overthrow the Coalition, relaying information to her enigmatic contact in the Illyrian underground. With all-out war looming, Bren must come face to face with the truth: winning may cost her the man she has come to love. NOTE: this is the sequel to Shadow Dance, and the last book in the Shadow series. Reading Shadow Road first, followed by Shadow Dance, is strongly suggested, although it might not be absolutely necessary to understand this story.…

AEPennymaker

With the discovery of a new lead in Nimkoruguithu, Brenorra Warring has been drawn back into the game. At first, Bren hopes that all she'll have to do is solve another secret code, and then she'll be able to return to the Island and the people she has come to love, but it soon becomes clear that there is much more at stake than finding her father's last binder. When a devastating betrayal nearly costs Bren her life, trust becomes a treacherous commodity, and friends become suspects as the fight to bring the Coventry down moves from the jungle of the Colonies to the ballrooms of high society on the Altyran Coalition continent. Through it all, Bren must discover just how far she is willing to go to finish what her father started - and how much of herself she is willing to lose.NOTE: This is the second book in the Shadows Rising series, and it isn't exactly a standalone. The plot will be understandable, but there are references to characters and events that are built from the first book in the series. It is highly recommended that you start with Shadow Road. You won't be sorry you did.…

AEPennymaker

An escaped military-grade human experiment, Nox is running from men determined to keep him a secret. Critically wounded and loosing fuel, he makes one last, desperate move, and crashes into Cress Montgomercy's farm truck. Cress has her own mountains to climb trying to keep her family together, and at first she thinks having a Mech around might save the farm - until the men who are hunting him show up. In the life-or-death race that follows, Cress, her brothers, and Nox must learn to trust each other if they are going to survive the brutal journey over the mountains to the protection of the rebel forces on the border of the Coalition Colonial Region. But with the threat of war blossoming in the Colonies behind them, mercenaries on their trail, and an uncertain future in the rugged Illyrian settlements ahead of them, will they find safety, or will they be swept up by the battle Nox was designed for?…

AEPennymaker

Witchspawn. Rotbringer. Child of Darkness. There are many names for someone born under a Warmoon, and Rhoa Strongcastle has heard them all. It doesn't help that on the night she was born, the Rot arrived, bringing sickness in its wake. In spite of the suspicion surrounding her, Rhoa works hard, training to become a Keeper like her father and brothers, guarding the ancient monster locked in the tower above Ardusk. But every twenty-one years the Warmoon rises again, and under its pull the monster grows stronger. With her twenty-first birthday less than a fortnight away, Rhoa's family is preparing for a new battle to keep the monster from breaking free and unleashing fiery havoc on everyone in its path. Things are not going according to plan. Tragedy leaves Rhoa to defend the Strongcastle fortress alone, and she makes the terrifying discovery that the Rot is more dangerous than she ever imagined - and it is coming for the tower. As threats to the fortress mount from multiple directions, Rhoa faces an impossible dilemma: trust what she knows or throw all of her hope on the very thing she fears. Open Novella Contest 2020…

AEPennymaker

She's been left behind by her childhood sweetheart. He's been jilted by his fiancée. Her sweetheart left her for his fiancée... Miss Rosemary Griffiths has been looking forward to the day her childhood sweetheart returns from his year abroad. He promised to make their secret engagement public, and her life will finally start moving forward. But he returns, and there is no engagement. There is only the discovery that Frank has 'outgrown' her. He has decided he wants a woman of passion, and Rose is too calm and practical. That, and he is to inherit both a title and an estate from a distant relative and has found a wife with money. Rose is left with broken dreams, a shattered heart, and a list of things they were going to do once they married. So, she sets out to 'undo' all the things on that list by doing them backwards. Or in the opposite direction. Whichever. She is determined to prove that she can be contrary when she puts her mind to it. But this is 1870s England. Going anywhere as a young unmarried woman requires that she go with her doting, but overwhelming, family in tow. Then, while contriving to take the stage to the resort that was supposed to be her honeymoon destination, she meets Mr. Walker. When the two of them keep bumping into each other at the resort, it comes to light that they are there under similar circumstances. It only takes a short conversation for Rose to figure out their situations aren't just similar; they have a detail named Frank in common: Mr. Walker's former fiancée is going to marry the new Duke of Windham. The two wind up in several hilarious escapades as they try to help each other finish the things on their lists to spite the people who hurt them, while also trying not to get themselves into a romantic entanglement with each other. But when Mr. Walker's list is finished, will that put an end to their burgeoning friendship? Or have they stumbled upon something neither thought possible?…

AEPennymaker

In which A.E. muses on the ethics of Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater, and other random stuff. Note: None of this is meant to be taken seriously. Note Note: Don't try any of this at home. At all. EVER.…

AEPennymaker

In which dead authors of classical novels are interviewed by A. E. Pennymaker…

AEPennymaker

Tygan Reaver has never had it easy. His parents ran from the Arius Station massacre only to die, homeless and destitute, in the brutally dangerous Understory of the Andaran Megapolis, a vast, sprawling, overpopulated trade outpost in the Interstellar Collective. Left to fend for himself at the age of twelve, he learns to scrape by, and manages to scratch out a meager living for himself selling whatever he can find for whatever he can get. Until he finds Sierra; beaten, traumatized, and discarded in a municipal garbage heap. But the first contact Tygan has had with another human in ten years doesn't go anywhere near the way he imagined, and Sierra turns out to be much more trouble than he bargained for. Special Ops Lieutenant Sierra Jameson knows things she shouldn't know, and she will do anything it takes to get that information back to her unit, even if it means kidnapping the street tough who dragged her out of the trash. To her surprise, however, the street tough manages to save both their lives when the forces hunting her catch up with her again. Stuck together by circumstances now out of their control, the two of them make a mad run for the Centauri Outpost and what Sierra assumes is safety in the human-controlled Genevan Quadrant. But the clock is ticking, and their desperate journey takes increasingly dangerous turns, stretching their uneasy alliance to the limit as their fight to reach Sierra's military handler becomes a battle just to survive.…

AEPennymaker

Short Man has a problem. He can't make things the way his brothers can, no matter how hard he works, or how much he studies. Even worse, what he can make doesn't seem very useful... until he meets a girl named Olivia, and discovers that what he is good at can make a surprising difference. This was the winning contest entry for the Children's Fiction and Adult Fiction ambassador profile collaborative competition, Fall 2018. You can also find it in the Children's Literature anthology, Bedtime, on the @childrensfiction profile page, and it has been translated into several languages. Artwork: @AEPennymaker…

AEPennymaker

A collection of odds and ends and contest entries that I don't feel like cranking out a separate cover for. Peruse at your own risk. NOTE: The content may change periodically, if I decide to make a cover for something.…