Fictionate.Me is home to roughly five hundred original stories written by wildly creative and skilled writers from around the globe. This week, we’re highlighting these three reads because each is wonderfully well-told, well-paced, and uniquely fascinating.
We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.
The Mother From White Letters - Truman Kelsey
Description: Before he passed, Remy Lang's father did two fairly misguided things. First, he named his sons after cognac. Then, the boys believed his lie about their mother. And later in life, after his wife has left him, Remy isn't sure what to think of himself, either.
Thrown into the midst of dueling identity crises, Remy Lang meets a woman whose name he can't keep straight. Once acquainted, she and Remy venture into the Ozark foothills and begin an overambitious relationship and a strange search for truth.
Author Truman Kelsey has crafted three chapters of an elegant and winding mystery. The story, so far, is a combination of delicately recounted memories and a nuanced exploration of religious themes as they cross the narrator’s mind.
This clever oscillation between action and reflection keeps readers pensive and curious. But what we love most about his work thus far is the detailed imagery:
- “The sky was smeared with tasteful pastels, a subtle breeze marked summer’s end, and the people were pleased.”
- “Momentarily taking my eyes off the road, I looked at the thin ring of untanned skin on my finger, curled with its counterparts around the steering wheel.”
- “I could’ve given my skin to the knoll, my muscles to mother earth, my bones to the trees.”
- “My faith was shattered, and all my surroundings, punctured by its fragments.”
- “My palms slid along her head toward the rounding of her skull, between her ears, smoothed over with the fine grains of spotted fur.”
Tasteful, telling, and beautifully written, right?
Montgomery and Carano - John H. Knight
Description: A modern take on Romeo and Juliet. Jenna Carano is a badass demon hunter, hot headed and passionate, while Professor Robert Montgomery is the exact opposite: always calm and disciplined.
They were raised to hate each other but when someone much worse than they are gets loose on the streets of London, they must join forces to protect the city and the people they love.
Within the first two pages, author John H. Knight has us intrigued and questioning everything in this action-packed romance. Who’s the girl? What’s this guy mixed up in? Who’s calling? Where’s he going? Within the second two, we’ve been exposed to a quick flash of magic and our protagonist zips through London to a high-intensity fight with unknown opponents.
Montgomery and Carano is a perfectly paced thriller from start to finish, as John H. Knight continually teases readers with bits of information that leave them wanting more. It’s also the best of urban fantasy, as Knight has fun clashing myth and modernity with some comical Avengers-style storytelling:
“The moment of freedom was beautiful: he stepped out into a sunny, warm autumn afternoon, with just the right amount of playful wind dancing with white cotton-like clouds on the amazing blue sky...and all of these things were instantly ruined for him by his best friend, Marcus, who parked his ridiculously expensive sports car in spite of every possible rule or law right at the bottom of the big stone staircase, with engine running, music playing loudly.”
“Jenna was expecting Victorian-style furniture or something like that, given that the commissioner was like 400 years old or so, but everything was new and state of the art...”
“Now he wore sweatpants, trainers, and a bright yellow hoodie with the phrase ‘Don’t Panic!’ written with red letters on it, which were in harmony with his red hair. He then added his usual dark grey trench coat, which was not going well with the rest of his outfit at all. The long striped scarf and the silver headed cane with all the carved magical ruins on it only made things worse.”
Prepare to laugh, think, question, and rip through this book.
The Molecule Thief - LP Styles
Description: In this sci-fi adventure, a portal brings war with invisible beings from an alternate reality. Genius misfit Spencer Newton is the key to stopping the invasion and keeping the military from bombing both the portal and the research colony where he lives and goes to school.
A mysterious presence arrives; a pixelated entity that appears in reflections calling itself The Molecule Thief. But is it real or all in his head? To stop both worlds from ending, Spencer must travel to the other side... with no way back.
We’re captivated from the start.
Whether it’s the natural flow from one event to the next or the perfectly casual dialogue, reading The Molecule Thief initially feels like vignettes of real life. That is, if real life had an explanation for a liquid hand shooting out of the water and other deeply curious abnormalities…
The story centers around a teenage boy, so it only makes sense that it’s written as if one were narrating. Take the chapter entitled “Pissed Myself” or this pleasant little detail: “Spencer stopped at a picnic table. He leaned against, not noticing the dried bird crap he was rubbing up against as he frowned in deep thought.” Fun, right?
Likewise, the innuendos, disses, and blunt and challenging language used by the Wheeler twins at the beginning of the story easily remind us of whatever meatheads used to roam our schoolyard.
Here, it's the realistic nature of the characters and settings in the beginning that lay the ground for the fantastical twists that follow. When you’re convinced of Spencer’s intellect, awkward persona, and geeky yet endearing mannerisms, you can also come to believe in the otherworldly pixelated presence that may or may not be a huge part of the story…
Well, Thanks for Reading (x3)!