Showing results by narrator "Jake Ruddle" in All Categories

Magpie’s Ladder comprises five stories that came to me while working on my visual art. My preferred drawing technique is stippling in ink, creating images with countless dots using a mechanical pen or brush. During those long hours, my imagination would wander, introducing strange characters and settings. The elements began to cohere into stories. Writing them down became a new path for expression and for approaching the worlds that I enjoy creating.

What happens when heroes are as broken as the world they must reforge? A mad king’s genocide destroyed Alea's home and left her sanity in tatters. Caught in the crossfire between the gods and their creators, Alea realizes the darkness inside her is the only thing that can end the bloodshed. Across enemy lines, bastard lieutenant Brentemir Barrackborn is horrified by the blood on his hands. He must choose between the gods he worships and newfound family if he has any hope of redemption - or surviving the war.

In a time when pirates ravage the seas, Damean Briggs' mutinous crew kidnaps the admiral's daughter, Penelope. James Cutlass must join forces with pirates to find her and combat the murderous Pirate King. Neither allies nor enemies are ever as they seem out on the great seas! Forced to trust such strangers, will James be able to save his friend, or will they all meet their miserable demise in Davy Jones' locker?

In a wasteland ravaged by plague, Lumsden Moss steps out of a decaying prison. Armed with a satchel of yellowed notebooks containing the fragile memories of five murdered children, he is determined to track down and confront their killer. Lumsden, accompanied by a stranger, begins a long journey to the ancient City of Steps where he is forced to confront the horrors of the past and present.

For detective Johan DeGraaf, the morning of April 29th, 1904 began with a foreboding gale wind, a kidnapping, and a homicide - all before arriving at the station house. The search for the abductee, a young H.P. Lovecraft, leads DeGraaf on the trail of a mysterious Prince Khan, a bizarre crystal, and a clandestine underworld of intrigue and debauchery centered around an ancient alien evil older than humanity itself.

I do not think Forres Manor is haunted. The ancestral Scottish home my ailing aunt manages is dark, solitary, and falling into ruin, but as a man of science I cannot support her notions that a ghostly woman dwells upstairs. My only aim is to give medical assistance to my aunt. But here, the vicious past melds into the present. Perhaps I'm running from ghosts too.

Michael Holland is a grim reaper working the worst beat in the worst town. Michael’s best friend is a pot-smoking tooth fairy, his boss is the angel of death, his psychiatrist can read his mind, and he counts bogeymen, demons, and clones as his acquaintances. His nine-to-five is a succession...