Creativity Hacker

After a lifetime of constant warfare with the nuns who run the orphanage, 13-yr-old Tayna learns a shocking truth: her parents are still alive. But the tearful reunion every orphan dreams about seems unlikely, because her mom and dad are in grave peril, trapped in a world of magic. And that means it's now up to her to save them. All she has to do is bust out of nunnish prison, get herself into the other world, and then figure out where they are. Plus it might be useful if she knew their names. But compared to being an orphan? This should be a piece of cake.

In a world that has known only peace, a Warrior-King has arisen. His Gnome army swarms unhindered through the Forest. Refugees scatter. And the Three Avatars of the Dragon have chosen sides in their contest to either restore the peace … or to shatter it for all time.

In the midst of this chaos stands Tayna, a runaway orphan from the streets of our world, who must make an impossible choice: find the parents she had thought were long dead…

…or embrace her destiny and save the freaking world.

Tam, Kern, and Merrik are all failing at life: a homeless thief, a disgraced baker’s apprentice, and an incompetent smith. But witnessing a strange ritual in the middle of the night sets them on a collision course with destiny—and with each other. Accused of crimes they did not commit, the boys must band together to clear their names. And in the process, they just might have to do something useful, like battle monsters and save the city. But frankly, that sounds a lot like work.

In a world where government-manufactured super-heroes have replaced war and terrorism as the world’s greatest threats – and it’s only source of salvation – there’s only one thing that sucks worse than having no powers at all. And that’s being the powerless son of the greatest hero of them all, and a prisoner inside the family fortress of solitude. For his own protection, you understand. Well, Spencer Harrington, son of the Crimson Mask, has had enough. He’s tired of playing by dad’s rules, and this time, he’s going to do things his way.

On one level, a straight-up adventure story, on the other, a fascinating tale about fathers and sons divided by their incompatible expectations of each other. Came for the action, stayed for the angst.
— Jefferson

Check out the IOD Report here.

Charlie’s the kind of boy that no one notices. Hell, his own mother can’t remember his name. So when a mysterious clockwork man tries to kill him in modern day Philadelphia, and they tumble through a hole into 1725 London, Charlie realizes even the laws of time don’t take him seriously.

A fast-paced romp across history. Alice in Wonderland meets Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
— Jefferson

Check out the IOD Report here.

After growing up in hiding, a letter with a peculiar talisman changes everything for a young baker’s girl named Duchess, and leads her into a dangerous world of thievery and intrigue where the only thing she has at stake is her place in the world and the truth about that terrible childhood night in which she lost everything.

Duchess of the Shallows is a deceptively simple book, but rich in details. The plot revolves around Duchess, once the youngest child of a wealthy family, but forced to live in secret as the daughter of a baker after the horrifying death of her father and family. The story is driven by a single mission – a heist – in which Duchess, assisted by her street-friend, Lysander, must pull off an impossible robbery in order to gain admission to the secret world of thieves. The plot is simpule, but the world, and the characters inhabiting it, are anything but. Political maneuvering, rival factions, and power-players working in the shadows—all of this serves to create a richly textured world with depth and appeal. I was rooting for Duchess right out of the gates, and didn't come up for air until reaching The End.
— Jefferson