2024 Indie Ink Awards Finalist; Writing the Future We Need: Asian Representation by an Asian Author His life wasn't perfect, but Ewan was content with his life; he had a girlfriend, he had friends. Isn't that what matters? He wasn't looking to be a hero, but when he unintentionally takes a bullet meant for someone else, he is thrown into the afterlife and asked to become one. Defeat an evil overlord in another world? Not what he wanted to do in his first life, and certainly not what he wants to do in his next. But it is his only chance to get back home. So reluctantly, Ewan accepts. After all, you can't keep a good man down.  But things go from bad to worse when he's captured by a secret organization dedicated to a death god. What started as a mission to reclaim his old life becomes a desperate bid to free himself in this one, too.  Unwilling to remain enslaved but unable to openly rebel against his captors, Ewan must carry out these dangerous missions, all while marshaling resources and support, plotting not just the overthrow of that dark lord, but freeing his new world from divine colonizers. If he can't, not only will his new world succumb to total oppression, but he'll never make it home to see his girlfriend again.

The Canterbury Tales meets Dark Fantasy in this epistolary flash fiction collection. Seventeen years. That's all it took, seventeen measly years, for the glory of a thousand-year-old nation to fade. A thief weighs betraying an old friend in her time of need. An armourer survives her campaign only to be stabbed in the back by those she loves the most. A priestess blesses the dead in the aftermath of a battle. A warrior mourns fallen comrades: brother in arms, brother in blood, brother in spirit. A dyer wishes for a grinding war, knowing peace will be his ruin. Countless others cling to survival as warring queens make them fodder for oblivion over and over and over again. Can there be inner peace in a world wracked with turmoil? How can one muster ambition when every gruelling day is a hair's breadth from being the end? Will they succumb to despondency and dread as their homeland marches solemnly closer to a fate from which there is no salvation? These are the lives of ordinary citizens whose only hope lay in memories. By telling their stories, they will be remembered even when the Void lays final claim to their shattered souls. THIRTY-THREE TALES OF WAR is a collection of flash fiction set in the dark fantasy world of The Chroma Books by Emory Glass. Originally serialized in the digital-only publication Worldbuilding Magazine and currently hosted on Campfire, the extended edition makes a return to Kandrisev at its darkest hour with expanded and freshly edited stories, three all-new, full-page illustrations, and additional lore presented by a previously unrevealed framing character.