Summer Reading

Summer reading season is fast approaching-- and we all like a little brainless time-suck once in a while when we're at the beach or the park. So to that end, allow me to offer up the Faction Stories-- 3 volumes of stories about teenage superheroes in Iowa.

Yeah, you read that right.

How could this better? What if they were FREE?!?!

Just for July we're participating in Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale-- and they're all free! 

FREE FREE FREE: Here--> Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale

Now read these and find out!

 Vol 1: 

The only thing Rachel Hingis hated more than swimming was having to play well with others. Edgar Fern, nerd extraordinaire, couldn't find anyone to play with. Life would have been just fine if they never crossed paths.

Instead, they collided.

The victims of an accidental experiment deep in the corn fields of Iowa, they and four others -Alex, Celeste, Laura and Susan – were changed, and not necessarily for the better. As a mysterious group (insert sinister title here) starts to pick off Red Bug’s students, they have a choice to make: become victims, or become heroes.

The bumpy road to being a masked avenger is fraught with conflict, mystery, explosions-- and Freezees.

Amazon: Apathetic Avengers

BN: Apathetic Avengers
Smashwords: Apathetic Avengers

 Vol 2:

Being a teenager is hard enough without putting on a mask and making mortal enemies.  But when you have both, and a part time job, things are little more complicated.

Edgar, Rachel, Alex, Celeste, Laura and Susan joined forces to save the their classmates at Red Bug Regional High School from a sinister group that was picking the students off one at a time. The team worked a little better than they had expected and now, they’re stuck… as the Apathetic Avengers.

With the FBI as their secret backers, they begin to discover that Red Bug, Downing City and Freemont County,  Iowa, is not nearly as innocent and naïve as they thought. And they weren't the only ones who shouldn't have been in the playground…

Amazon:  Welcome to Downing City

BN: Welcome to Downing City
Smashwords: Welcome to Downing City

Vol 3:

At some point, black and white starts to run to gray…

Rachel Rae Hingis wants to save the whole world, starting with a tiny corner of Iowa where corruption and Accidentals run rampant.

Edgar Fern wants to save the world, too, if he could just get Rachel to listen to him once in a while. Instead, he spends most of his masked avenger time saving her butt or getting her out of trouble.

Rachel’s stubborn refusal to stick to the rules is becoming a liability, though, as she starts to become more vigilante than avenger. Edgar unwavering adherence to the law puts him in direct odds with Rachel’s noble if misguided mission. And when a little girl named Ginger becomes a victim of ISTH’s greed and corruption they find themselves fighting each other instead of the bad guys. 

Amazon: The Natural Order of Things

BN: The Natural Order of Things
Smashwords: The Natural Order of Things

And coming soon-- Vols 4, 5 and 6! The continuing misadventures of the reluctant heroes... 

Who wants a WIP teaser?!

I know you do!  So here you go. 
From the Volume 4 story, "Better Living Through Chemistry, Part II"

“Rachel, I made my choice,” Alex said, apparently choosing to ignore her quip. “You guys did fine the other night. No one was killed. You don't need me. I just want to be normal for a little while.” He started coughing, and Rachel waited for him to finish.

“Please,” Rachel said. “You’re anything but normal. You are exceptional and--”

He started coughing again, even harder. He was clearly unable to stop it. Alex was gasping for breath and wound up sagging against the wall desperate for air at the end of two minutes he was hacking and generally breathing.

“What was that?” Rachel asked, standing up straight, her mental alarms going haywire.

“Coughing fit,” he said.

“You’ve never had those,” she said, stepping closer.

He whipped his head up to look at her. “Don’t you go getting all Florence Nightingale on me, Rachel Rae Hingis. Who the hell knows why I’m coughing. My body is adjusting to not having the red shit to deal with. It could have been dust. Just back off, and don’t you and the rest of the Musketeers worry about me.”

Rachel stared at him, shocked. “Well. Ok. I get it. Have a nice life, Pansy.” She turned on her heel and marched down the hall toward her next class.

“Rachel, wait,” Alex called.

She turned and looked at him. “Nope. You’ve made your position clear. Bye, Alexander.” She slammed through the door of the hallway into the next area of the school. She made it about twenty feet before her resolve completely gave out and she had to lean against the lockers before she fell over. She felt tired; Alex was changing, and not in the way she liked. She glanced back and sighed. If that’s what being normal does to you, I’ll stay a freak.

She heard him cough, and stifled the urge to walk back and see if he was OK. He’d made it clear he didn’t want her help. Or any of their help. She stared straight ahead and forced one foot in front of the other. She just kept forcing them in front of each other on her way to Neiman’s class. She couldn’t quite get the coughing from behind her out of her head. It wasn’t stopping.

There was a tremendous bang behind her, and she spun, the masked avenger leaping to the front of her brain. She saw Alex as he crashed through the door in what seemed like slow motion. He was coughing, but it was slowly turning into a choke. She could see the whites of his eyes from where she was and as she watched, they rolled back into his head. He crashed to the floor before she could react fast enough to do anything for him.

“Holy hell, Alex!” she screamed, running back to him. She skidded along the floor and yanked his head off the floor and into her lap. He was desperately trying to breath, but she could hear the crackle and panting that went with the horrible shallow breaths he was taking. She yanked her phone out and dialed 911 and didn’t miss the irony in that.