Marchverse

Did you ever hear the fairy tale about the trans, autistic witch who doesn’t fall in love with the pretty villager and instead learns the word “demiromantic”? Or the one about a gay allo-aro man who agrees to travel into hell in return for the gift of his own identity? Or the story about a young sapphic woman who needs a dragon’s reassurance on the nature of her non-romantic attraction? Or the yarn about a boy who goes searching for a magic sword and instead finds an entity set on upending his life? Or…

This page collects every current Marchverse story, including side stories, web posts and exclusives, listed in chronological order.

Subscribers can find many of these stories in the exclusive collection Bones, Belts and Bewitchments.

* Indicates bonus side stories and Patreon exclusive stories.

Friendship*

Cover image for Hallo, Aro: Allosexual Aromantic Flash Fiction by K. A. Cook. Cover features black handwritten type on a mottled light green background. Cartoon images of arrows--in four different styles--sit in diagonal rows across the cover, the fletching and shafts coloured in the stripes of the green/light green/white/yellow/gold allosexual aromantic pride flag.

A sapphic aromantic wishes to partner a dragon’s handmaiden without the complications of a romantic relationship, but finds comfort in her friendship with her own dragon.

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon | WordPress | Tumblr

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 993 words / 4 PDF pages.

Attraction*

Cover image for Hallo, Aro: Allosexual Aromantic Flash Fiction by K. A. Cook. Cover features black handwritten type on a mottled light green background. Cartoon images of arrows--in four different styles--sit in diagonal rows across the cover, the fletching and shafts coloured in the stripes of the green/light green/white/yellow/gold allosexual aromantic pride flag.

A sapphic aromantic fears that her interest in another girl may be best explained by a word she doesn’t wish applied to her–romance.

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon | WordPress | Tumblr

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 989 words / 4 PDF pages.

A Gift of Naming*

Cover of A Gift of Naming by K. A. Cook. Cover shows cartoon-style tall-trunked trees growing on a green mountain slope with a high green canopy before a blue and grey clouded sky. Brushes and small green shrubs grow at the base of the trees in the foreground. Text is written in a white, handdrawn, fantasy-style type.

If one’s parents provide a shirt that tears when tugged over their child’s shoulders, isn’t it cruelty to force the wearing of it, however well-intended the gift?

Even in the best of circumstances, it’s no easy thing to tell the parent who named you that your name no longer fits.

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon | WordPress

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 1, 200 words / 4 PDF pages.

Abrasive

Cover image for Those With More (and Other Suki Stories) by K. A. Cook. Cover shows a garden growing against a grey stone wall, with trees and blue sky visible behind it. Garden includes several layers of beds filled with palms, ferns and yellow and red orchids. The foreground shows a green lawn with a moss-covered tree-trunk and two translucent blue mushrooms. Title and author credit are written in a white, fantasy-style text.

Spending Midsummer night with a pretty man shouldn’t be a problem for Suki … except for everybody else’s romantic expectations.

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon | WordPress | Tumblr

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 999 words / 4 PDF pages.

The Complexity of Human Decency

Cover image for Those With More (and Other Suki Stories) by K. A. Cook. Cover shows a garden growing against a grey stone wall, with trees and blue sky visible behind it. Garden includes several layers of beds filled with palms, ferns and yellow and red orchids. The foreground shows a green lawn with a moss-covered tree-trunk and two translucent blue mushrooms. Title and author credit are written in a white, fantasy-style text.

When Mama Lewis continues to browbeat Suki into becoming the kind of girl who doesn’t tick off unwanted romantic suitors, she knows the best thing to do is leave. The port city of Malvade offers work enough to pay for her own room, but Suki’s freedom comes with long hours, a leaking roof, outhouse mould and a yearning for a world that offers her more than bare subsistence and continued disregard.

A red-robed priest of the Sojourner may hold answer and opportunity … if only she can endure a conversation with someone preaching a truth anathema to everything a proud woman of Freehome should believe.

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon | WordPress | Tumblr

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 3, 580 words / 11 PDF pages.

If Absurd Works

Cover image for Those With More (and Other Suki Stories) by K. A. Cook. Cover shows a garden growing against a grey stone wall, with trees and blue sky visible behind it. Garden includes several layers of beds filled with palms, ferns and yellow and red orchids. The foreground shows a green lawn with a moss-covered tree-trunk and two translucent blue mushrooms. Title and author credit are written in a white, fantasy-style text.

An unexpected letter sees Suki of Sirenne, a red-robed priest of the Sojourner, doing the unimaginable: returning home to farewell a dying Mama Polly. After ten years of studying the ways of Spoken Service, she’s built a life that serves her nature … even if she’s still inclined to a sharp turn of phrase. Can’t she now explain her feelings and choices in ways easier for Mama Lewis to accept? Shouldn’t her mothers now be easier to manage?

Yet one conversation leaves Suki feeling that she’ll never stop being the brittle, abrasive young woman who left Freehome … and presents her a problem only solvable by remembering priesthood’s first lesson.

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon | WordPress | Tumblr

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 3, 526 words / 11 PDF pages.

The Sorcerous Compendium of Postmortem Query

Cover image for The Sorcerous Compendium of Postmortem Query: A Marchverse Short Story by K. A. Cook. Cover shows a cemetery at night, with various tombstones in the foreground, surrounded by grassy rises and green bushes, with a tumbledown stone fence and trees in the background. A lit candle sits on the ground at the front of the cover, showing a glow of orange light illuminating grass and part of a tree branch. Cover and author credit are written in a white, fantasy-style text, the type bright against the dark sky and shadowed leaves.

Necromancer Mara Hill has waited weeks for the Thinning: the one night the dead walk freely amongst the living. Her wandering great-aunt, Rosie, was wise in the way of magic and the world, and Mara knows of none other to ask. Books and magic alike haven’t restored her fading love, and Benjamin Lisabet is too wonderful to risk losing. Why can’t Mara keep herself from falling out of love whenever the girl she yearns for dares love her back?

She’s sure that Aunt Rosie’s spirit will offer up needed advice. She just doesn’t expect a deluge of deceased villagers set on unravelling everything Mara knows about what it means to love and be in love.

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon | WordPress | Tumblr

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 8, 221 words / 32 PDF pages.

The Mundane Progression of Premortem Colloquy

Cover image for The Mundane Progression of Premortem Colloquy: A Marchverse Short Story by K. A. Cook. Cover shows a cemetery in daylight with various tombstones in the foreground, surrounded by grassy rises and green bushes, with a tumbledown stone fence and trees in the background. A picnic basket sits on the grass at the front, filled with bottles, vegetables and a purple flower. Cover and author credit are written in a white, fantasy-style text.

After a night of revelations to her dead aunt Rosie and her living brother Esher, Mara Hill must dare another with Benjamin Lisbet. If she’s truly the woman Mara hopes, surely Benjamin will be receptive to a conversation of the “I love you and want to be with you, just not romantically” sort? Surely this afternoon won’t stray beyond Mara’s preparations of a picnic basket, chives, rehearsed speeches and less-rumpled clothing?

Yet her months of searching for magic to refresh her fading love means there’s too much she doesn’t know about Benjamin. Too much Mara needs to know to hold this conversation without losing Benjamin’s friendship.

Mara thought speaking of her fading love under cover of dark difficult enough … but speaking of romance in daylight is another challenge entirely.

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon | WordPress | Tumblr

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 7, 160 words / 30 PDF pages.

What Makes Us Human

Cover image for What Makes Us Human: A Marchverse Short Story by K. A. Cook. Cover shows an archway set into a stone wall, the wall covered by a dull green creeper. A small peach sphere of light glows underneath part of the creeper at the top of the archway. Inside the archway is another stone wall behind a courtyard comprised of a few rocks, two spindly trees and a striped purple cushion. Title and author credit are written in a white, fantasy-style text, the type bright against the grey background.

Moll of Sirenne needs prompts in their girdle book to navigate casual conversations, struggles to master facial expressions and feels safest weeding the monastery’s vegetable gardens. Following their call to service, however, means offering wanderers in need a priest’s support and guidance. A life free of social expectation to court, wed and befriend does outweigh their fear of causing harm—until forgetting the date of a holiday provokes a guest’s ire and three cutting words: lifeless and loveless.

A priest must expand a guest’s sense of human worth, but what do they do when their own comes under question? Can an autistic, aromantic priest ever expect to serve outside the garden? And what day is it…?

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon | WordPress | Tumblr

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 8, 062 words / 32 PDF pages.

Those With More

Cover image for Those With More (and Other Suki Stories) by K. A. Cook. Cover shows a garden growing against a grey stone wall, with trees and blue sky visible behind it. Garden includes several layers of beds filled with palms, ferns and yellow and red orchids. The foreground shows a green lawn with a moss-covered tree-trunk and two translucent blue mushrooms. Title and author credit are written in a white, fantasy-style text.

When Mara Hill’s magic results in her brother’s impossible, wondrous transition, of course Suki wants to know how she did it! What if Sirenne’s magic workers can help others find euphoria? What if this magic can heal Suki’s hands—or at least lessen her pain? But Mara, distrustful of priests after their failure in protecting Esher, won’t share her power.

A senior priest must bear responsibility, but Suki suspects her problems lie deeper than lack of oversight, and her reluctance to discuss her aromanticism with a woman who needs support only proves it. Would she have preserved Mara’s faith and Esher’s health if she hadn’t first avoided revealing herself to her aromantic kin? If she’d faced their expectations that she shoulder their pain and grief as well as her own?

Suki has lived her life by the Sojourner’s second precept, but how does she serve when she doesn’t have more to give—and never will?

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon (Part One | Part Two) | WordPress | Tumblr

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 9, 100 words / 27 PDF pages.

Love Spells, Rainbows and Rosie*

Cover of Love Spells, Rainbows and Rosie: A Marchverse Short Story by K. A. Cook. Cover shows a wooden door set into a wooden wall with a paper sign on the front reading Mara Hill, Witch. Stones, bones and feathers tied to string dangle over the top of the door, along with a creeping vine, and two potted plants sit on either side of a wooden doorstep--white daisies in a bag and orange roses in a brown pot. A straw broom rests propped against one side of the door and a piece of torn paper reading Absolutely No Love Spells sits on the step. Text is written in a white, handdrawn, fantasy-style type.

Lovers’ Day is good trading for a witch who deals in enchantments, ribbons and dyed flowers. For Mara Hill, it’s long been a holiday of tedious assumptions and painful conversations–once best handled by casting petty curses on annoying customers. This year, when a girl asks about love spells, it may be time to instead channel a little Aunt Rosie.

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon | WordPress

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 3, 429 words / 10 PDF pages.

Ringbound

Cover image for Ringbound by K. A. Cook. Cover shows an eight-pane window set into a cream brick wall above a stone and wood table or bench, with various items sitting on the table--candles in vases, bottles, a large shell, a white vase filled with flowers, two gold rings propped against the vase. The text is written in brown fantasy-style handdrawn type. Through the window, scrubby green trees and a blue-green sky is visible. The subtitle "a kit march short story" is written in white handdrawn type.

If Kit can’t find anything unfair about the contract or the man, why is the ring so heavy?

Kit March is a signature away from marrying the man who loves him. He should be delighted, but for reasons he doesn’t understand and can’t explain, his future with Lauri weighs upon him. What is a magician to do when no script extant has words for the confusion he feels?

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon | WordPress | Tumblr

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 2, 561 words / 8 PDF pages.

Love is the Reckoning

Cover of Love is the Reckoning: A Marchverse Novelette by K. A. Cook. Cover shows a cartoony-styled indoors tavern scene with a lot of different brown wood textures: wood panelling on the walls, wood floor, a square wood window frame, a crooked wooden table in the centre of the image and a wooden stool and a wooden barrel sitting in front of it. A candle stub sits on the window frame, looking out to dark green trees against a star-lit sky. The table bears beer glasses, a green wine bottle, a brown bottle of spirits, orange liquid in a glass, a plate of biscuits and a plate bearing a wedge of yellow cheese with red rind. A wooden log rests against one side of the window frame, an unsheathed longsword against the other, and a sack sits against the wall underneath the table. A cage bearing a twisted, vine-style plant sits in the top right-hand corner, above the table. Text is written in a white, handdrawn, fantasy-style type.

Esher Hill left his home and kin a crying wreck of a man, too depressed and dysphoric to care what his people make of him. If he’d had his way, that would have been the end of it.

His sister Mara, the village witch, made sure he didn’t.

Two and a half years later, Esher owns two dogs, a blade, a career and a new body—the shape of masculinity he always felt he should be. A miracle Mara refuses to explain. A miracle the Sojourner’s priests reject and fear. A miracle, say the Grey Mages, that cannot exist without something precious sacrificed in exchange: a soul.

Returning home in search of his sister and the truth isn’t just a matter of enduring stares, whispers, explanations and the condescending pity from those he left behind.

Love holds edges sharper than Esher’s sword, for nobody wins but demons in the sale of souls.

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon | WordPress

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 10, 463 words / 39 PDF pages.

A Quest of Spheres and Phalanges

To save Mara’s life, all Esher Hill need do is ride to Sirenne, get his guiding priest to permit his addressing the Grey Mages and convince representatives from a powerful collective of magic workers to heal a dying sorcerer. He has his fathers’ money and a willingness to work off any remaining debt. How much more, short of his now-unsellable soul, can her life cost?

It seems simple enough a prospect, if Esher ignores the encumbrance of a family friend, his inability to remember his medicines, his hand’s meeting a wall, a tray-spilling mishap and the Greys’ staggering disdain for altruism. Not to mention his increasing lack of sleep, stability and sanity following his kin’s revelations and manipulations! But when Esher learns what—and where—he must seek for the Greys’ promise of healing magic, his hope of retrieving their long-lost artefact seems as broken as his right hand. How can he survive the Gast’s pantheon of horrors when he feels increasingly unable to survive his own mind?

How can he help Mara if he can’t even help himself?

Patreon Links: Met the Wall | Vertigo | Sufficient Level of Normal

Length: 14, 185 words (thus far).

Absence of Language

Cover image for Absence of Language by K. A. Cook. Cover shows a red brick wall behind a wooden step, a red curtain covering half the wall, with a small wooden bench sitting on step. A chair, a hat and a squarish bag sit in the foreground of the image and a fabric banner hangs on the wall in the background. An assortment of coins and buttons litter the floor, and two yellow roses are shown floating inside clear bubbles. The scene looks like a magician's performance area or stage. The subtitle "a kit march short story" is written in white handdrawn type.

Four months ago, Kit March abandoned his fiancé without even a note of explanation for a deserving man.

Leaving Lauri should have freed him from the pressures of romantic expectation, so how does a talented magician end up performing flash magic for buttons and hairpins in Raugue’s worst tavern? Kit doesn’t know and doesn’t care, as long as he can keep drowning guilt in beer and spellworking. As long as he can keep not thinking!

When a stranger offers the word “aromantic” followed by an opportunity to join a dangerous quest to the Gast, Kit may have more distraction than he can survive—and more comprehension than he can navigate.

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon | WordPress | Tumblr

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 8, 785 words / 33 PDF pages.

Old Fashioned

Cover image for K. A. Cook's "Old Fashioned: an Amelia March Story". Cover has a vector image cartoony style picture of a bedroom with rough-made furniture--bed, stool, chest of drawers, a shelf. Magical items like bone amulets, glowing mushrooms and spell bottles are hanging from or sitting on the shelf. The title and author credit are written in red and white handwritten type.

Amelia March is tired of suitors breaking into her house after dark to express their undying love. Sure, it might be the fashion, but whatever happened to getting to know someone first? Why won’t they listen to her when she says she isn’t interested? And what does it mean that her cousin Kit thinks there’s a word for her approach to romantic relationships?

Old Fashioned is a story about finding words and the importance of fake cobwebs in the windows.

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon | Smashwords | Gumroad

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 5, 108 words / 14 PDF pages.

Conception

Cover image for K. A. Cook's "Conception: An Amelia March Story". Cover has a vector image cartoony style picture of a lounge room with rough-made furniture--mantel, rocking chair, stool, table--in front of a stone fireplace. Magical and household items like bone amulets, glowing mushrooms, spell bottles and a glowing capsicum sit on the mantel, books and flowers sit on the table and a loaf of bread sits on the stool. A round brown rug covers the stone floor, and laundry hangs from the roof. The title and author credit are written in a red and white handdrawn type.

With Kit gone to the Greensward, Amelia March is content with her faked witchery, the ailments of her villagers and romance confined to a novel. She isn’t pleased, therefore, to find her cousin darkening her doorway—her cousin with two feet, a belly, a sword of some distinction, a story, a young girl named Osprey, a beaming smile and an undying hatred for the elves. Still, Amelia thinks she can survive the chaos, at least until Kit announces a grand plan to start a school for divergent magicians…

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon | Smashwords

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 7, 966 words / 29 PDF pages.

Kin of Mind*

Cover image for Bones, Belts and Bewitchments: A Marchverse Collection by K. A. Cook. Cover shows the opening to an unlit cave in a face of grey rock, covered in parts by trailing branches, vines and leaves. Barren trees grow around the cave entrance and white and broken bones rest around and inside the opening. Title and author credit are written in a white, fantasy-style text.

A dragon in need of a human attendant finds providence in the arrival of a magician in need of a library, but more than phalanges and history binds Azhra and Darius in companionship.

Patreon Links: Part One | Part Two | WordPress Preview

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for subscribers on Patreon.

Length: 4, 047 words / 12 PDF pages.

Certain Eldritch Artefacts

Cover image of “Certain Eldritch Artefacts” by K. A. Cook. Cover image shows a cartoony, stylised vector image scene of a market scene with hanging peppers and fabric above the text and rows of corked potion bottles sitting on a wooden counter display surrounded by vegetables and sacks. Title and author name are written in a dark brown handdrawn type.

Newly-graduated, divergent magician Darius Liviu has scoured half the world in search of the rarest of rare magical artefacts: a tolerable talking sword. After a year of failure, one last rumour sees him risk Rajad’s chaotic, cluttered, terrifying Great Souk. The noise, the smells, the people and his inability to move without provoking disaster make everything difficult, but Darius dares the nightmare of chaos and conversations in hope of an item will draw the eye of the man he thinks he loves.

The sword he finds isn’t elegant. It isn’t tolerable. It has no intention of being gifted as a lover’s token. It is, however, set on destroying Darius’s acceptance that awkwardness and a life of misunderstandings is the best he can hope for.

Certain Eldritch Artefacts is a story about autism, adulthood and the reasons why one should never enchant inanimate objects…

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon | Smashwords | Gumroad

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 10, 588 words / 29 PDF pages.

Love in the House of the Ravens

Cover image for Love in the House of the Ravens by K. A. Cook. Cover shows a wooden bed set against a stone wall, with filmy curtains draped over the wall and bed. A translucent room divider is set off to the side, with a chest and boxes visible through it. The subtitle "a marchverse short story" is written in white handdrawn type. Title and author text is written in brown handdrawn type.

After seven years in Rajad, Darius has fallen out of love with the unattainable and avoided falling in love with the companionate. If he lives at arm’s length from passion, isn’t that better than risking the abuse his fellow mercenaries so eagerly deliver to an autistic who can’t quite fit in? But when the right person suggests a romantic relationship, “yes” still won’t grace his tongue, and Darius hasn’t the least idea why. He likes Harlow. Shouldn’t he want to love her?

The only thing he can do is turn to his old friends and rescuers, the Ravens. They have an answer if he can stumble his way through asking the question … but it may upend every truth Darius thinks he knows about himself.

Love in the House of the Ravens is a story about what it means to be aromantic and autistic when the world isn’t accepting of either.

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon | WordPress

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 10, 451 words / 40 PDF pages.

One Strange Man

Cover of One Strange Man: A Marchverse Short Story by K. A. Cook. Cover shows a wooden door, bolted shut, set into a stone wall, with dangling ivy and climbing roses obscuring the wall and part of the door. The ground in front of the door is brown earth and has a thin-bladed green bush growing in front of it. A glowing white marble sits on the earth by the base of one of the roses on the bottom left-hand side of cover. Text is written in a white, handdrawn, fantasy-style type.

How can the want for another person make an intelligent man gift something so precious?

When Akash’s former lover refuses to return a family heirloom, Darius knows only one way to help his mate—even if it means ignoring several laws in the process. The magic he mastered in surviving the College and the mercenaries has surprising utility in the art of larceny, at least once he gets past the stomach-knotting anxiety. When Darius makes the mistake of asking Akash why, however, getting caught in a stranger’s third-floor bedroom seems like nothing compared to comprehending the mysteries of romance and friendship.

Links: PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for subscribers on Patreon.

Length: 7, 673 words / 22 PDF pages.

The Morning After*

Cover image for Bones, Belts and Bewitchments: A Marchverse Collection by K. A. Cook. Cover shows the opening to an unlit cave in a face of grey rock, covered in parts by trailing branches, vines and leaves. Barren trees grow around the cave entrance and white and broken bones rest around and inside the opening. Title and author credit are written in a white, fantasy-style text.

Stiff fingers, an aching knee and a headache are the smallest prices Darius pays for last night’s escapades when a furious Halima knocks on Akash’s door. Darius, groggy and slurring, needs to convince her to accept a restitution that doesn’t involve his arrest, but there’s nothing easy about forging compromise when Akash and Halima wield schemes of their own. And how does Darius keep all this secret from the belt…?

Patreon Links: Part One | Part Two | Part Three

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for subscribers on Patreon.

Length: 9, 973 words / 28 PDF pages.

King’s Pawn*

Cover image for Bones, Belts and Bewitchments: A Marchverse Collection by K. A. Cook. Cover shows the opening to an unlit cave in a face of grey rock, covered in parts by trailing branches, vines and leaves. Barren trees grow around the cave entrance and white and broken bones rest around and inside the opening. Title and author credit are written in a white, fantasy-style text.

When Efe and Aysun Kadri meet Master Ayako to discuss the hiring of a magically-talented mercenary guard, Efe doesn’t expect said mercenary to come with a laundry list of warnings.

Links: Patreon

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for subscribers on Patreon.

Length: 4, 794 words / 14 PDF pages.

Scholar’s Gambit*

Cover image for Bones, Belts and Bewitchments: A Marchverse Collection by K. A. Cook. Cover shows the opening to an unlit cave in a face of grey rock, covered in parts by trailing branches, vines and leaves. Barren trees grow around the cave entrance and white and broken bones rest around and inside the opening. Title and author credit are written in a white, fantasy-style text.

When Efe Kadri writes to Faiza Hiba Khalil for advice on how to work with an autistic mercenary-magician, it startles him to discover why Faiza is less than appreciative of his efforts.

Links: Patreon

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for subscribers on Patreon.

Length: 2, 759 words / 20 PDF pages.

The Adventurer King

Cover image for The Adventurer King by K. A. Cook. Cover features a red leather-bound journal sitting on a wood panel background, like that of a tabletop or floor, with the text sitting on top of the book image in a gold fantasy-style handdrawn type. Objects sit on top of the book cover: a blue pen with a gold nib dripping ink, a screwed-up piece of white paper, a cream scroll with a green seal, a cream and silver compass, and a piece of rope. A grey single-edged sword blade sits underneath the book, and black handdrawn type atop the blade reads "an efe and darius story". The images have a cartoony, vectory feel.

Seven years ago, Darius Liviu met a talking sword belt in the Great Souk, an eldritch being who changed his life forever. In that time, he has learnt something of the sword, mastered strange magic and survived dangerous jobs, but while he has friends in Rajad, he still feels out of place—too divergent to be welcomed and accepted as mercenary and magician.

When an unexpected meeting with potential employers goes wrong, his first instinct is to flee. But a wandering monarch, Efe Kadri, has an offer that might provide the certainty for which Darius has been searching, if only he has the courage to say yes…

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon | Smashwords

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 11, 322 words / 31 PDF pages.

Different in Other Ways*

Nevolin ein Yinne sells books, curses low ceilings, promises his father that he won’t get himself killed and looks a little too hard at pretty men. Men he wants to date, men he can’t date, men–even in Ihrne’s queer underground–who expect a comprehension of romance he doesn’t possess.

Harper Mitzin Seili serves dishes, never removes his gloves, promises his mother that he won’t get himself killed and has no idea how to comprehend an interest in people that won’t stop changing. An interest bordering on irrelevant while he keeps secret the nature of his masculinity.

Nevo isn’t good at pretending to be straight.

Harper isn’t good at pretending to be unremarkable.

Different in Other Ways is a series of sketches and vignettes about gender, abrosexuality, quoiromanticism, customer service, working-class queerness and friendship.

Patreon Links: Booksellers Who Know Things | Men Bound by Blood | Jeile | Getting to Be

Their Courts of Crows

Cover image of "Their Courts of Crows: A Tale of the Eagle Court" by K. A. Cook. Cover has a waterstained paper background with grey line drawings of a crow sitting on a branch, a tree, three falling dandelion seeds, a feather and an arrow, with the title written in alternating serif and handdrawn type. The effect is something like a sketch in an antique journal.

The best he can find is ugly compromise.

Prince Paide ein Iteme has lost his father, his family, his people and his home to a conquering necromancer queen and her armies of the risen dead. A last horrific battle sees him forced to discuss surrender, but that conversation is no small amount complicated when said conquering necromancer is his mother. Who might not have been entirely wrong in her overthrow of Paide’s father…

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon | Smashwords | Gumroad

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 5, 108 words / 14 PDF pages.

Maybe When the Bones Crumble*

Cover image of Maybe When the Bones Crumble by K. A. Cook. Cover has a waterstained paper background with grey line drawings of a textured feather, a dandelion head, a spilled ink bottle, a broken pen and an arrow, with the title written in alternating serif and handdrawn type. The effect is something like a sketch in an antique journal.

And how is your hand today?

His hand broken, his father dead, his brother rebelling and his mother dancing the bones, Einas ein Iteme has nobody at the Eyrie but his uncle and one cursed question he can’t escape.

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon | WordPress

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 4, 945 words / 14 PDF pages.

Like the Other Prince

“Be sensible,” Mama says, “or be dead.”

Harper Mitzin Seili is many things: fashionable, witty, queer. Cautious … not so much. Nonetheless, life as a tavern server on the working side of Ihrne’s dividing wall demands preparation and limitation. He obeys the rules that matter. He remembers what Mama sacrificed for his chance to live as a man. Besides: the end-of-war Proclamations, issued in the name of Ihrne’s trans crown prince, promise a new, better world. A world in which safety doesn’t require his rejecting connection, intimacy and that shifting, nebulous thing called “attraction”.

But when the Traditionalists take up violence in protest of noble-issued laws, Harper’s risky ventures and glib tongue don’t just fail to steer him out of trouble: they destroy the life he and Mama spent two years building. He can stay and suffer at the hands of his neighbours … or begin anew in another place, under another name. A place where he must now submit to every restriction Mama, in her fears for him, deems “safe” and “sensible”.

A third way exists for Harper, if only he dares break Mama’s foremost rule … and several of his own.

Contains: An abrosexual, abroromantic trans man who can’t bring himself to perform restrictive masculinity but clings to the illusion of fine amid deepest hell; a gay, quoiromantic cis man struggling to help a liar he loves in a not-a-crush way; and a world in which cishets’ violence and hatred twist even queer affection into a weapon harming their own.

Chapter Links: One | Two | Three | Four

Length: 10, 733 words (thus far).

A Prince of the Dead

"A Prince of the Dead: A Tale of the Eagle Court" by K. A. Cook. Cover has a waterstained paper background with grey line drawings of a sparrow sitting on a branch, a knife, a falling dandelion seed, two leaves and an arrow, with the title written in alternating serif and handdrawn type. The effect is something like a sketch in an antique journal.

Too alive to die and too dead to live.

Bones interred under the palace, gold given to field-ravaged farmers and Parliament dallying over amendments: war is ended for Prince-Regent Paide ein Iteme. Or so it should be, but returning home to Ihrne in a broken body ensorcelled by a necromancer leaves Paide struggling with politicians who ignore him and servants who condescend to him. What good is a title and purpose when his words and desires have become meaningless to those around him?

Surviving the dismissal of the Eagle Court is harder than facing an army of shambling corpses. How does a dead soldier fight it when he no longer wishes to live?

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon | Smashwords

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 9, 890 words / 28 PDF pages.

Loveless*

Cover image for Hallo, Aro: Allosexual Aromantic Flash Fiction by K. A. Cook. Cover features black handwritten type on a mottled light green background. Cartoon images of arrows--in four different styles--sit in diagonal rows across the cover, the fletching and shafts coloured in the stripes of the green/light green/white/yellow/gold allosexual aromantic pride flag.

When Paide ein Iteme says the words “I don’t love”, he doesn’t just refer to romantic relationships.

Links: PDF (read in browser) | WordPress | Patreon | Tumblr

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 1, 000 words / 4 PDF pages.

The King of Gears and Bone

Cover image of The King of Gears and Bone by K. A. Cook. Cover has a waterstained paper background with grey line drawings of the bones of a human hand and wrist, a head of wheat, an acorn, a small dandelion head, a long-legged wire-haired dog and an arrow, with the title written in alternating serif and handdrawn type. The effect is something like a sketch in an antique journal.

In a nation of liars, an honest man cannot rule.

Einas ein Iteme knew he wasn’t a princess. That first truth provoked violence, murder and war, leaving him the heir to the throne of Ihrne—a throne he doesn’t want and can’t hold. How can he when he struggles to put words together, won’t look courtiers in the eye and avoids people on general principle? Yet the Eyrie, even Zaishne, simply assumes Ein will find a way to become the allistic ruler he can never be.

When his brother Paide invites him to a private discussion, Ein sees a chance to voice the second truth. Paide, though, keeps secrets of his own—and doesn’t seem to recognise the fate bound to him by hundreds of devouring angels.

To begin to save Paide’s soul, Ein will have to learn what the world never stirred itself to teach: trust.

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon | Smashwords

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 12, 495 words / 34 PDF pages.

⁕  Blog  ⁕  Fiction  ⁕  Collections and Anthologies  ⁕ Nine Laws  ⁕ Allo-Aro Fiction  ⁕