Showing results by author "W. G. Sweet" in All Categories

Each evening, after the last of his legitimate surveying work was done, Elias would retreat into his sanctuary. The familiar ritual of preparing his tools – the sharpened quills, the precise rulers, the pots of meticulously mixed inks – now held a new, almost clandestine significance. He was no longer merely a cartographer of Veridia; he was becoming a scholar of the impossible, an archivist of the cosmic. He would carefully unroll the celestial chart, its otherworldly luminescence bathing his small workshop in a soft, ethereal glow that seemed to push back the encroaching smog and ...

Frank Morgan is headed to a small New York town to find out what has happened to a reporter friend of his. A small thing, in the scheme of things. He is not even sure there is a real need to be concerned... At first anyway... But it seems like there may be much more to his friend's disappearance that it seemed at first. Murder greets him and the mystery deepens from there. Whispers of a clandestine group of international crime associates, killers, assassins. Posing as ordinary businessmen, heads of respected organizations, corporations known to millions worldwide. But they are much more ...

In the heart of the vast and shimmering Pacific Ocean, three young ship boys, each no more than a few years past their childhood, found themselves cast away on a breathtakingly beautiful tropical island. This was no ordinary place; it was a lush paradise adorned with vibrant flora and fauna, where the warm sun kissed the golden sands and the gentle waves whispered secrets of the sea. Yet, beneath this idyllic exterior lay the harsh reality of survival in the 17th century, a time when the world was still largely unexplored and filled with both wonder and danger. The boys had been crew ...

America The Dead Survivor Stories One contains the first two books of the America The Dead series. Begins The End: When a catastrophic natural disaster looms on the near horizon, the government releases an airborne virus designed to make the human race better able to survive. Those that do survive are picking up the pieces of their world, and those that have died lay in their death sleep, but in their bodies the virus works on, mutating, setting the stage for a second catastrophe far worse that the first. Los Angeles: An apocalypse of epic proportions has shaken the Earth to it's core. In ...

Lee Crow: Year 2196. Captain Lee Crow leaned back in his pilot's chair as Eagle One slid into Moon Base 14's docking bay with that familiar metallic groan. His fingers flew over the controls, years of muscle memory making the landing look easier than it was. This rustbucket of a cruiser had cost him most of his savings fresh out of college - worth every credit, even if the maintenance fees kept him awake at night sometimes. His great-grandpa would've never imagined this life, back when people still picked their own careers instead of getting Life Mapped from birth. Four years at Specialty ...

The air, once a crisp promise of life, now hung heavy, a suffocating shroud of ochre dust and acrid fumes. Earth, their ancestral cradle, was gasping its last, ragged breaths. Decades of unchecked industrial sprawl, of rivers choked with effluent, of forests razed for short-term gain, had finally brought the planet to its knees. The sky, a bruised canvas of perpetual twilight, offered no solace, only a grim testament to humanity’s heedless ambition. From the viewport of the Eagle Two, Earth was a dying ember, its once vibrant blues and greens leached away, replaced by the sickly hues of ...

Her worn boots crunched on shards of broken glass and twisted metal, remnants of a world that had once teemed with life. Buildings, skeletal remains of their former glory, clawed at the sky, their empty windows like hollowed-out eyes staring blankly at the desolate landscape. She moved with the slow, deliberate grace of someone who had learned to conserve energy, every movement measured, every step calculated. Survival was a delicate dance, a precarious balance between hope and despair. Elara clutched the worn leather satchel close to her chest, its contents her lifeline: a handful of dried...

The dead were all around, pulled from their wanderings by the sound of the wreck and the smell of the living. Johnny shifted Lana's weight more fully onto his shoulder, and lifted the gun, but before he could fire, the truck blew up behind him and he felt himself pushed by the blast out into the street where he struggled to stay on his feet. A warm rush of air moved rapidly past him and Johnny got his feet moving only a second later. The dead scattered. They made an odd clicking sound, a sort of strangled scream, which Johnny supposed was all they could do with no air to move their lungs, ...

I decided that I did not have enough to do in my guitar shop, and so I decided to take some of the cast-off parts, put some work into them, manufacture a few parts myself and build a custom acoustic guitar for studio recording. I import thousands of guitars a year, and I buy a great deal of domestic parts. All of that goes to anticipate and meet my customers' needs. For this I wanted to get by cheaply. Something a customer may not want because it is scratched, broken, poorly assembled doesn't always merit the same rejection attitude from me. I can fix it. I may be making changes that won't ...

The city sprawled beneath him, a glittering tapestry woven with threads of ambition and illuminated by a million indifferent stars. From the aerie of his penthouse, high above the cacophony of the streets, Vinny LaRosa surveyed his kingdom. It wasn't a kingdom of stone and mortar, but of shadow and influence, a sprawling, illicit empire that pulsed with a life of its own. The lights weren't just streetlamps and neon signs; they were signals, markers of territories controlled, deals brokered, and lives manipulated. Each flicker was a testament to his reach, a silent acknowledgment of the ...

The city breathed with a rhythm all its own, a symphony of sounds and smells that were as much a part of Vinnie LaRosa as his own heartbeat. Little Italy, mid-20th century, was a vibrant, chaotic organism, its narrow streets a pulsing artery crammed with life. From the cramped tenements that clawed at the sky, their fire escapes a tangled lace against the brick, to the bustling trattorias that spilled the rich, intoxicating aroma of simmering tomato sauces and roasted garlic onto the cobblestones, the neighborhood was a constant, humming presence. Laundry flapped like colorful prayer flags ...

In the ancient past a cro magnon girl child was born and promised in marriage to a distant related tribe. She has come of age, sixteen and will now be escorted across several hundred miles of wilderness to her soon to be mate in the distant tribe.. Hunters and a medicine woman will accompany her. Once there she will begin her new life and face whatever lies ahead for them... The early morning hours were a symphony of tearful goodbyes. Her father, Torvin, pressed a sharpened flint knife into her hand, his rough touch a silent vow of protection, a final extension of his guardianship. Her ...

The Old West is a collection of five western themed stories set in the old west. Come along for an authentic trip through the west, the way it really was. Jimson Jones, Sarah Johnson, The Cowboy, The Farmers Wife, To Hang a Thief An excerpt from: Sarah Jones One starless night, the tranquility of Harmony Creek was irrevocably broken. The rhythmic chirping of crickets was replaced by the terrifying sounds of shattering glass and panicked screams. A nightmare descended upon the peaceful farm. The familiar comfort of home was replaced by a brutal violence, a darkness that would sear itself ...

The gritty concrete pressed against my cheek, cold and unforgiving. A dull, throbbing ache pulsed behind my eyes, radiating outwards to claim every muscle, every fiber of my being. My body felt heavy, leaden, as if anchored to the ground by unseen chains. The air hung thick and cloying, a miasma of decay and something else… something feral, something primal. I coughed, the taste of blood metallic on my tongue, a coppery tang that clung to the back of my throat. My eyes flickered open, focusing slowly on the blurry shapes around me. The first thing I registered was the stench – the ...

Ethan lives in Harlem with his wife Janelle. The city gets out of control fast as an apocalypse hits the world. Harlem is burning; what is not burning is gang controlled. What is not gang controlled is abandoned. The people are on their own. The cops disappeared, same with fire fighters. The Fires are unchecked. Across the river parts of New Jersey are also burning. Ethen and his wife pick up bits and pieces of newscasts but none of it seems to make sense to them. Things become clearer over the next few nights. Something, or somethings are prowling the streets at night, preying even on the ...

I walked through the park. There were hundreds there already. In the coming days those same people began to make the park home. But that day they wandered aimlessly. In shock. The subway was shut down, most of it flooded. The buses parked. You could not find a cab. The same with the cops. Everything that was the same about the city. The things you could depend on to be the same day after day, were gone. A few short days and they were gone. No more. And it had a feeling of permanence to it. A feeling of doom. I sat down on a bench and watched the people shuffle by. No noisy kids. No babies ...

The end has come for the people of Earth. The forces of nature have aligned, echoing the cataclysms of the past, and a devastating event looms on the horizon—one that will leave only a fraction of humanity standing. From America to Australia, governments will crumble and fall, millions will perish, and the once-mighty military machine will grind to a halt. In the chaos, fanatics and the deranged will seize control of the remnants, only to be consumed by the same relentless forces that brought civilization to its knees. In the aftermath, a desolate planet will remain—one that was never ...

For Billy Jingo, living in Glennville is a dead in life. His trailer home next to the county dump. His dead-end job. The boring life he lived. And then on Friday morning his whole world turned upside down. He suddenly found himself emerged in crime that was so far above his normal reasoning range that, at first, he couldn't even comprehend the implications on it. In a heartbeat he found himself in a fight for his life. On the run with someone's drugs and money and a girl he had not even known just a few hours before. Buckle up, enjoy the ride. Fast paced pulp style fiction...

Are you a fan of post-apocalyptic stories? Do you love a good ol' zombie thriller? Well, let me introduce you to Reset - a gripping new series that will have you on the edge of your seat! Set in a world ravaged by a Zombie Apocalypse, Reset follows the harrowing journey of lone survivors as they struggle to stay alive amidst the chaos and destruction. But it's not just the undead that they have to contend with - there's also the looming threat of gang violence, the constant breakdown of the environment, and the scarcity of safe havens. What you will love most about Reset is the raw and ...

In the epoch before epochs, before the first star ignited or the first whisper of thought coalesced, there existed a state of being so profound, so utterly complete, that it defied definition. It was a boundless, uncolored tranquility, an expanse that knew no north or south, no rise or fall, no beginning or end. Imagine a canvas unpainted, a song unsung, a silence pregnant with all possibility, yet utterly devoid of form or shadow. In this infinite quietude, there were no shadows to define light, for light itself was not yet a concept, nor was there discord to give melody meaning, for ...