Showing results by author "J.L. Shojosh" in All Categories

Humans are mostly made of water. Tessa is mostly made of molten iron. The petite firefighter had always grown up fearful of her abilities, and went through life harboring this deep secret. Until her encounter with a strange man, Tessa wasn’t sure what kind of freak she was...Begrudgingly; she begins her quest for self discovery. Will Tessa ever know freedom, or will she know happiness instead, or are the two synonymous or inseparable?

Based on real life events, and embellished in the quirkiest manner, this short story explores the moment that a janitor’s rags turn to riches. The inner workings of Alfredo’s mind are brought to bear in the outer world, since: As within so without, as above so below.

This short story unfolds as journal entries. The journal’s author takes you through his grief stricken teenage life, having lost his girlfriend to the afterlife. The lad uncovers something fascinating about the magical book that he’d found in his attic, but what are the consequences to all this newfound power?

Includes the stories King Maker, Iron Born, Ungodly, Strange Ties, Soul-Bender, and Eclipse.

Rolana and her father escape a higher dimension in order to free themselves from an oppressive regime. However, no sooner would their new life come to a start, the pair would be separated. The telepathic teen is instantly flung into the deep end, as all alone, she now has to figure out how to live and blend amongst humans.

In this dark, paranormal short story and coming-of-age tale, Scott and his family move into their new home in the middle of summer. On the surface, they are settling into your typical quaint lower-middle-class suburban neighborhood. We follow Scott’s exploration of the place as he battles to make friends, gains acquaintances, and goes on to discover that his new home harbors a dark secret. Can one tell the difference between imagination and actually talking to a non-human entity?

Aisha, an orphaned youth from the streets of Baghdad during the Middle Ages, seeks to raise herself from the poverty and squalor that surrounds her. Fleeing her unknown past, and her petty life of crime, the young Persian ventures off to Egypt, where she’s approached by a man who claims to belong to a secret sect of assassins. After the convenience of free food and shelter ceded importance to the heaviness of the dark acts being asked of her, Aisha tries to escape The Order of the Hashashin. But Aisha’s story was more intertwined with The Order’s than was initially apparent.

James is tossed into the flames, so to speak. He has a pair of masked assassins on his tail. After finding himself having been teleported to a different realm, James finds refuge in Grace’s willingness to rebel against the Shadow Clan - an oppressive regime. Thus, Grace will side with anyone that the Clan deems as a threat or an enemy. In truth, James discovers that Grace’s motivations are tied to the prophecy of the rise of the King Maker. Who was this King Maker? Does James ever get to go back home? Do the people of Tartra ever get their freedom?

Seven strange stand-alone tales involving unusual people caught in disturbing circumstances are presented in this collection.

A collection of seven cautionary short tales find characters in unnerving situations, all dealing with strange and sometimes supernatural events.

General Jack Lupis, an intelligence officer, receives a call from a stranger. His son has been kidnapped. To free his son, Jack is instructed to jailbreak eight dangerous and high-ranking war prisoners and thus betray his country. Jack races against the clock to move things along as discretely as possible, but things quickly take a wrong turn during the prisoner exchange.

In this modern day fantasy short story, Shojosh paints a world of seers, sprinters and normals, humans with different or no abilities, who live alongside a world of bountiful creatures, on several of earth’s dimensions. Beneath the façade of your typical coming of age story is an atypical coming together of several mystical forces. Lana and her family are secluded from the rest of Pink Coral, a tiny town that now assumes the worst of the seldom seen and rather odd characters within the Mackenzie compound. But how groundless is the townsfolk’s fear? What evil approaches Pink Coral?

In this reincarnation story, Goovu and Katala’s destined life together is cut short by transatlantic slave traders, who were traitors and cousins from a couple of villages away. The couple’s home village was ravaged to smithereens. Five hundred years later, and in the present-day United States, could there be a chance for the two souls to reunite? After a fateful car accident sends a youth, Jason, into a coma, the young man begins to remember a past life, which now haunts him to seek out the woman of his actual dreams.

Nothing ever happened around Aiden's Loch or the rural town of River Fall. Though, unbeknownst to the human inhabitants of this quaint cadre, a hidden community of alter-dimensional beings known as Roji and nayaps live among them. The little town is teeming with all sorts of other-dimensional beings who are stuck there and, likewise, plastered to the routines of this realm - the third dimension.

In this psychological short thriller, an elderly loner, who spends most of his days at home, becomes the subject of a home invasion. A young and unmasked man with a gun soon arrests the elder to a chair, beginning a daylong ordeal that both men will never forget.

In this psychic magical-fantasy short story tale, Amanda, Jeff, and Lukas travel to South America for their vacation. Later on, after an unfortunate incident leaves the trio stranded on a remote and vast stretch of land, they’re forced to find their own way back home. Yet as the group encounters an unknown tribe in the thick wildness of jungle, they’d come to find all of their initial suspicions about the place to be wrong...Where the heck were they? How were they still alive?

Danny is trapped in Leria, an alternate realm, made by sorcerers and for sorcerers. There’s only one problem with this magical world: Four of the five kingdoms have been invaded by an authoritarian regime. Having narrowly escaped Leria and found his way back to his realm, will Daniel risk it all and go back, in order to save an ally that he’d made and left in turmoil? If he was a sorcerer by blood and his mother had never mentioned it to him, could it be that his magical heritage comes from his long-deceased father?

Three lives are indefinitely altered on a little girl’s birthday. Two decades later, this small town girl ventures off to the big city to seek higher education and better opportunities. Becky navigates successfully through life in the big city of Brockville, but is soon caught off guard by the baggage that comes with her job. Her family history, and the reason why her father had no pictures of her as a baby, would abruptly and painfully catch up to her.

In this short story magical fantasy, an oddball group of sailors embark on a botanical research expedition. However, at the journey’s onset, the starkly differing personalities in the vessel would clash and misunderstandings festered. As if being on a four-month-long journey wasn’t bad enough, the crew had to contend with the possibility that the waters beneath them may purposefully have been working against their progress.

Nine-tenths of the world’s population is dead. A biological scourge - a dark blight swimming through human veins - was to blame. Adam is thrust into a world of loss and would no sooner set out in search of a woman for whom he is willing to travel across the broken globe to see again, if only to serve as her piece of comfort for a loss that they both share.