Books and Ebooks by The Writer in Black (David L. Burkhead):
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Wounded in body and spirit after the fall of her kingdom and loss of her lover, the knight Kaila has one last duty to perform before dying: seeing two orphaned children home to their clan in Bringanzo’s Desert.
But all is not lost. When the shaman of Three Mountains Clan takes Kaila on a smoke quest she learns Kreg is still alive, fighting his way across the lands to her. She will raise an army to free him, though hell shall bar the way.
And once they’re united, not even the beast men who overran Trevanta, shall keep them from taking back their land.
$4.99 in Kindle.
Always free to read on Kindle
Unlimited.
The kingdom of Aerioch has fallen. Only Kreg and his newfound friends remain. And while the fearsome changeling armies are no more, the task of rebuilding Aerioch remains daunting. They must first escape the land of Chanakra and somehow cross the sea of Elemak.
It is then, when their troubles will really begin.
Kidnapped by orcs as a child Elara, heir to the elven house of Greenwood, was raised as one of them. So long did she live among the orcs that she scarce remembered her childhood in the Greenwood. She grew to think of herself as orc, even marrying one of them. She earned high honor among them as a worker of steel, and one who could hear its voice.
When elf warriors out of greenwood killed her orc family, slaughtered their clan, and brought her back to Greenwood, she learned that she was the last survivor of the royal house of Greenwood and, thus, their queen by right.
While the elves saw her as their queen, Elara saw them only as enemies, as the ones responsible for slaughtering the family she loved. And so, she bides her time, awaiting an opportunity to bring destruction to the elves who had ripped her from a happy home.
She would have her vengeance.
A short story.
Nobody fishes on the stretch of river called South Bight. There are no fish there.
Rudy Donne decides to ignore that bit of folk wisdom. After all, if nobody had been fishing there, perhaps the fish had returned. Only instead of fish, Rudy finds something else.
Now Rudy is in a race for his very life with a mysterious something that nothing seems to stop.
The Third Eres War is over.
Lieutenant Commander Nobuta Tanaka hopes to avoid a fourth. Working as the Military Liason to the embassy on the Eres homeworld, he aids in the delicate negotiations between the Eres and the Terran Confederation. Yet something strange is happening in Eres space. The Eres are almost too willing, even eager, to reduce forces along their mutual border, a willingness that sets some in the Terran High Command to look for the trap hidden in the Eres agreement.When Tanaka’s counterpart in the Eres government calls him in to deal with the case of a Terran freighter that had a run in with…something, something which made the freighter a very political problem for the Eres, Tanaka learns that the threat is greater than he knew.
As matters escalate, Tanaka’s superiors face the threat of war on a scale that neither humanity nor its allies have ever faced before. And while some seek to avoid a fourth Eres War, others are more than willing to fight a Final Eres War.
None of them imagine the true nature of the threat they face and by the time they learn, it may already be too late.
And that’s exactly the way the vampires want it. For centuries vampires have existed among us, hiding solitary in the shadows, preying on an unsuspecting humanity. Secrecy is their weapon and their security. In times past when humanity discovered them, vampires relied on their other weapon—fear—keeping humans too terrified to use their superior numbers and ability to walk the day to exterminate the vampires.
Dani Herzeg is a dhampyre, born to a vampire mother for the express purpose of serving as an aid and daytime guard. Instead, she hunts vampires. Only now some vampires are no longer hunting alone. Combining into gangs and going on bloody killing sprees, almost uncaring of keeping the secret of their existence from the larger world.With Indianapolis police detective James Ware her only ally, Dani must try to stop the bloodshed before humanity learns the Secret and vampires launch a campaign of terror against the human world.
Or is it already too late?
Whether exploring the solar system in the near future or venturing to worlds of magic and mystery, these fifteen stories take you on a journey to other universes.
Included are stories from the FutureTech Industries series, from the Knights of Aerioch, and an assortment of stand-alone tales.
The stories may be short of length, but they are not short of wonder.
So climb aboard and see what these other worlds have to offer.
Paperback: $10.99
Kindle: $2.99
Kindle ebook free with purchase of paperback from Amazon
I was already centuries old when I encountered the creatures of darkness made manifest that I know only as Shadows. They have chased me down through the years for reasons I have never understood.
Light was the only weapon I had against these Shadows, light that could drive them back but not harm them. And so I ran. Every time the Shadows caught up with me I fled to a new identity, a new life, until inevitably they found me again. At long last, with nowhere left to run, I had to find some way to fight the Shadows, not just for myself, but for the people I had come to care about.
My name is Adrian Jaeger. This is my story
In the Hall of the Giant: Thor and Loki journey to the land of the giants. There, Thor faces his most difficult challenge, and his deadliest foe.
God of Thunder: In the waning days of the Viking colonies on Greenland, a young warrior follows Skraelings that had been raiding their village, and learns the truth of the old stories.
Life among the orcs is hard. So difficult and ubiquitous is brutal labor among them that “Veth oruk”/”Work is” is their most common greeting. When Elara, princess of the elves is captured and enslaved by them that is the life she must learn to live, a life of hard, unremitting labor with no hope of rescue.
Work is.
Earthquakes in the South Pacific, at a location dubbed as the most remote spot on Earth, raise tsunamis all along the West Coast. Air Force Captain Jamal White, pilot of a C-130 Hercules is pulled off of search and rescue duties to ferry two scientists to investigate. What they find is a new continent arisen from the deep. And on that continent something stirs, bringing terror and madness in its wake.
Two monsters, one from the frozen North Atlantic, one from the remote South Pacific, on a collision course with the survival of mankind hanging in the balance.
When even the gods are at a loss, all they can offer is a spark of hope.
Kreg lived an ordinary life as a computer consultant–safe, secure…dull. He was content, with his hobbies and a passion for history.
Thrice weekly judo classes and weekends at the archery range imagining he was at Agincourt or Crecy let him at least pretend to excitement in his life.
When Kreg saw a rape in progress he tried to be the hero and was struck from behind. He woke in a world he had never imagined, a world of blood and pain, a world that seemed mired in the Middle Ages. Trapped and despairing he met and befriended the rough swordsmistress Kaila and her wizardly father. With new friends came new foes, a horde that poured from the small nation next door in seemingly endless numbers that threatened everything his new friends cared about.
Now, Kreg was in a race against time to find the source of this horde, and to stop it before everything he had come to care about ended in fire and death.
Baroness Talisa leads the last few surviving members of her household through the mountains in the dead of winter, fleeing the changeling hordes that have destroyed the kingdom. In that world of white and gray she stumbles on an oasis of green, a garden, sacred to Treva, goddess of the wild things of the world. There, Talisa encounters the enigmatic guardian of the place who possesses great and mysterious magical power and who claims Talisa’s life as forfeit for trespassing in Treva’s Garden.
What can a spaewife do, when even the gods are against her and the future she foresees is full of horrors?
For years Katla Gudmarsdottir told no one of the things the Norns, controllers of fate, told her were coming. She shared forecastings of when to plant and when to harvest and other simple things, but not the dread visions the Norns gave her.
Now Ulfarr, the Foul one, has kidnapped her and holds her children hostage for her foretelling.
And alone, forsaken even by the Norns, Katla must save herself, her children and her people.
War!
A series of diplomatic crises precipitate a limited nuclear war on Earth. Missile defenses block access to space. Nothing goes up and nothing comes down.
The people of the various space stations, the moon base, and a space colony whose construction had just begun must find a way to survive until the war is over.
The ultimate survival test.
Richard Schneider forms a new company to develop a space launch system. His philosophy is simple: don’t cut corners; find better ways. His main rival, however, operates on a different philosophy. Originally written as near-future SF, the story is now alternate history, a tale of what might have been.
Match Point:
Set some years after The Future is Now, top ranked tennis player Tom Stryker is stricken with a neurological disorder that slows reflexes. No longer able to compete in professional tennis on Earth, he decides to try his hand at the low-G variant of the game, finding himself in a rivalry with the top-ranked low-g player in a match on the Moon.
The nightmares of the past become the terrors of today.
Staff Sergeant Mike Yamada is the only prisoner of war every recovered from the Eres. Although afflicted with debilitating PTSD he is the only source of knowledge on the real fate of prisoners of the Eres. When the hospital ship Mercy comes under fire from an Eres task force, Yamada must face his worst nightmares brought to life and must somehow find the strength to rise above his fears lest that dread fate befall not only him but the remaining crew of the Mercy.
Anthologies containing work by The Writer in Black (David L. Burkhead)
For over two decades, the late Marion Zimmer Bradley, best-selling and beloved author, discovered and nurtured a grand generation of authors. The roster of contributors over the years includes Mercedes Lackey, Charles de Lint, Diana L. Paxson, Emma Bull, Jennifer Roberson, and countless others.
Sword and Sorceress 26 includes stories by Kat Otis, Deborah J. Ross, Jean Tatro, Jonathan Shipley, Melissa Mead, Michael Spence and Elisabeth Waters, Margaret L. Carter, Dave Smeds, Patricia Duffy Novak, Michael H. Payne, Pauline J. Alama, Steve Chapman, J.C. Hsyu, Jonathan Moeller, K.D. Wentworth, David L. Burkhead, Julia H. West, Joette M. Rozanski, and Katharina Schuschke.
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The Writer in Black 