If Tolkein and King did lunch . . .
Steve W. Vera wrote his first story on the backs of forty-seven restaurant placemats at the age of eleven, and hasn’t put the pen down since. His passion is in the realm of fantasy and all of its sub-genres, including high, dark, and urban.
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Steve was born and raised in West Hartford, Connecticut, but has since lived in eight states and traveled to many more. His career began in the Air Force as a Pararescue Trainee, but later shifted to the family business of the culinary arts. In between writing marathons at the corner cafe and deep-wood cabins, he conducts research as a captain in a Michelin-starred restaurant.
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What better to accompany a good book than a great glass of wine?
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Steve lives in Sunnyside, New York City with his girlfriend and their good-for-nothing furball, Sergeant Skip.
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The Debut Triology
THE LAST OF THE SHARDYN
AVAILABLE NOW
AT YOUR FAVORITE DIGITAL BOOKSTORE
“Reads like vintage Dean Koontz–fast-paced and suspenseful.”
— DD Barant, author of the THE BLOODHOUND FILES series
DRYNN
Book One of The Last of the Shardyn
Montana police chief Skip Walkins is hot on the trail of a murder suspect when his investigation turns otherworldly—he witnesses a drifter free the Lord of the Underworld. Seventeen years ago, five knights from Earth’s magical twin, Theia, entombed Asmodeous the Pale, Lord of the Drynn, in Skip’s town. Now that the dark god is free again, he’s anxious to get back home and finish the war he began…to enslave all life. It begins with killing the knights who trapped him.
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Deprived of their magic, the knights fight back using whatever they can get their hands on, from samurai swords to assault rifles. Skip gets reluctantly drawn in to their struggle while Donovan Smith, the demi-god murderer whom Skip was after in the first place, plots to find the Lord of the Underworld and butcher him on his own.
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Together, these unlikely heroes might just save the world.
If they don’t kill each other first.
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In the Making
If Anthony Bourdain set up shop in Middle Earth...
At first nothing happened. He could feel the stares of the others pressing into him. After a few moments, just as Hardigan had suspected, the blood began to sizzle. He smiled. Once fizzing, the blood seemed to crawl of its own accord and configured itself into letters that gleamed like red wine in firelight. Blood and fire, same as it always was. The Guild might be a lot of things but original was not one of them.
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Within moments the forming letters began to configure into words. It was a list.
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“How can you know such things?” Rogan asked, his curiosity beating out his fear.
“I’m a bard,” Hardigan said distractedly. “We know all kinds of things.”
Seven names written in neat black script. The first five had thick red lines through them. In fact, Hardigan recognized two of the crossed out names--one was the master shef of the iconic feast hall The Purple Warbler of the First Duchy of Devonia. If memory served correctly, the poor woman had been gored to death by a wild manticore last month. Talk about bad luck. The other name Hardigan recognized was the name of the wine lord of the prestigious House Prioras in the Second Duchy of Langoria. A legend who’d been found floating in a cask of his own wine a couple weeks back. Unsolved. Until now.
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The other three names he didn’t know. Only two remained. Hardigan’s own and someone named Palos Glencairn. He’d never heard of him. Hardigan held the scroll up to Vallard. “Why us? For what?”
Vallard’s glazed, bloody eye studied him with dispassion. For a second Hardigan thought Vallard just might answer, but then the man closed his eye and said with a weary sigh, “Run, all you want, bard,” he whispered. “But you’re a dead man.”
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