Ashen Blades

This series centers around the life of a half-demon girl that calls herself the Hunter, whose parents were murdered by demons. Joining her crusade against demon-kind are the Ashen Blades, also known as the Order of Ash and Smoke, an organization of demon hunters.

The Hunter starts out with demon powers only, but eventually learns that she’s also a witch, because her mother was a witch before she became a demon. In She Goes to War, she gains an unwanted connection to an elemental spirit that draws in others like it, starting a secondary war she doesn’t want, just so she can retain her sanity (such as it is) and humanity.

She’s effectively mute, cursed by her nemesis to only be able to say, “It’s a secret.” Therefore, she expresses herself in very physical ways and has a fondness for offensive gestures.

She’s also beyond tenacious and absolutely never gives up, to the point of bordering on or fully crossing into the realm of insanity. In truth, the psychological makeup of a half-demon isn’t particularly stable and later works reveal that she effectively has two personalities, one representing her witch side, while the other represents her demonic heritage. Fortunately for the world, her human side is normally the one in the driver’s seat.

The series starts out in 1940’s New York City, but decades pass between each story, because the Hunter has the unlimited lifespan of a demon and the series doesn’t stay in New York, though the Hunter is a New Yorker to her core.

Ashen Blades: Open Wounds

Store Links The arch-demon, Pride, leads demon-kind in an ancient plan to open a gate between worlds, so the vast armies of Hell might march forth and conquer the Earth. This becomes easier with the invention of nuclear weapons, which have power enough to punch brief holes in reality.

However, Pride needs more than just a massive quantity of energy: only a half-demon can stabilize the connection for safe passage. The only option available is a girl that calls herself the Hunter and absolutely hates demons, because Pride made the mistake of murdering her parents when she was three years old. She’s supported by the Ashen Blades, an organization of human demon hunters that serve as Earth’s last line of defense in the invisible war between humanity and the ceaseless tide of evil.

Pride begins with subtle manipulation and tests of the Hunter’s capabilities, then progresses to taking hostages, in an attempt to force her cooperation, but he never counted on how stubborn the girl can be, because she’d sooner die, since the whole of humanity is on the line.

In 1945, their conflict takes them from New York City to White Sands, New Mexico and the range the first atomic bomb was tested on. In 1972, they fight another battle in the jungles of Vietnam as Pride works to open a portal in the war zone. In 1986, a summer camp for teens becomes the backdrop as some of the arch-demon’s minions make a third attempt at opening a portal. In 2024, Pride runs for President of the United States, in an attempt to gain both access to nuclear weapons and sufficient resources to arrange everything, to the last detail, including capture of the Hunter.

Will the Hunter and her friends stop Pride once and for all, or will he succeed in opening a portal, allowing him to feed humanity to his mysterious master?

This book bundle includes the contents of She Hunts Demons, She Goes to War, She Goes to Summer Camp and Demon for President!

She Hunts Demons

Volume one of Ashen Blades is She Hunts Demons.

It follows the misadventures of the Hunter and her private detective partner, Clayton Simmons, as they investigate a murder and a string of financial crimes brought to their attention by a demon pretending to be a crying widow.

Little do they know, but Otto Vogerath, the very same demon that murdered the Hunter’s parents, had the evidence hand-delivered to them. They fall right into his web of lies and his grand game that’s played with all of humanity at stake.

Along the way, the Hunter finally realizes the truth of her own past and comes to recognize Vogerath as her arch-nemesis, giving her personal crusade a focus, with a face and name.

Unfortunately for her, Vogerath has plans of his own and claims to have arranged for the Hunter’s birth, because he needs the power of a half-demon to fulfill his nefarious plans.

Here’s an audio sample of this novel:

She Goes to War

Volume two of Ashen Blades is She Goes to War, in which the Hunter feels drawn to Vietnam, in 1972, certain her nemesis has returned to Earth.

What follows is a wild ride through a war zone as she tracks Vogerath down, magically tugged in a particular direction, but just as everyone else that fought in the war experienced, nothing goes according to plan and the moment she touches down in the jungle, her animal instincts take over, because the Spirit of the Jungle itself takes offense at her mere presence.

Her own team, led by her partner, Clayton Simmons, are forced to track her down and knock some sense into her.

The Hunter doesn’t know it, but Vogerath summoned her to Vietnam with the intent of using her to weaken his master, all so he can be free of the demonic pact of slavery he’s been stuck with since the previous book.

She Goes to Summer Camp

Included with She Goes to War is the novella She Goes to Summer Camp, which details the misadventures of the Hunter as she goes undercover in 1986 as a teenager at Camp Sapphire Friendship, a summer camp for teens that’s infested with demons.

Her team soon discover the demons are the least of their troubles, because the camp’s owner and operator, Miss Macie Weber, is an unknowing and delusional untrained witch, who’s haywire magic threatens to summon angry elemental spirits to camp.

The Hunter has had the Jungle Spirit stuck inside her head since 1972 and stopping the summoning becomes a primary concern, because if the spirits show up, they’ll seek to punish her for holding their sister captive.

She Goes to Summer Camp is also available on its own in paperback or as a free Ebook. If you want to try a taste of this series for free, why not pick up the Ebook?

Demon for President!

Volume three of Ashen Blades is Demon for President!, in which is Vogerath returns to Earth with a new power to charm just about anyone that senses him, so long as they’re willing to at least listen.

He runs for President of the United States on the 2024 ticket, first as a Republican and then also as a Democrat, using his demonic power to be in many places at once to convince the American public he’s a pair of brothers.

Naturally, the Hunter and her team do all in their power to kill him, but for every body they get rid of, he has many more hidden away.

The public are soon eating out of his hand and willing to believe anything he says, because the magic he pumps out through television broadcasts leaves them susceptible to his every suggestion.

She Seeks Peace

In She Seeks Peace, the Hunter has recently lost a good friend and travels the world, seeking peace of mind. She visits many remote places for some clarity via quiet solitude for deep thought. Unfortunately, her quest for peace is repeatedly interrupted by friend and foe, alike.

At the same time, the arch-demon Wrath is infatuated with her and seeks to capture her, that he might force her to marry him.

Ultimately, she ends up in Australia, where she just might find both the answers she seeks and a final confrontation with Wrath.

She Consumes Poison

Corpulence was once a symbol of wealth and status, but the arch-demon, Gluttony, has slimmed down to embrace the modern world and what finer way to corrupt the rich than with over-spending, wasteful consumption, illegal waste dumping and willful ignorance of the way their actions affect the rest of the world?

And what better tool could a demon in a corporate shark’s skin use than massive mega-corporations that have no conscience and would sell their soul to make a buck? Business is bigger than ever and Gluttony is right at the center of it all, with a plan for every occasion and an entire network of shell companies to shuffle the blame around, until it can be dropped on someone innocent.

However, there’s one little hitch in her plans to corrupt the business world: the Ashen Blades have learned what she’s up to and the Hunter is coming for her.

Will the Hunter stop Gluttony from consuming the business world from the inside or will Gluttony succeed in corrupting and dirtying the hands of the largest corporations in the world?

This novel will begin with Detective Shime Yasu, a New York City cop, grows bored with the mundane, everyday drudgery of life and decides to take the Ashen Blades up on their offer of membership and training. Readers may recall she was a very minor character in Demon for President!

This opening will show much greater detail on the way the Ashen Blades perform training and introduce elements of their work that have never been detailed before. Yasu will be trained in The Cauldron of the Elements, which was introduced in She Goes to Summer Camp.

It’s soon revealed that a demon has prophesied that Yasu will become a major thorn in the side of the demons and Ulmoch, working as a bounty hunter, shows up to kill her, but instead gets used for training exercises.

Interspersed with the training will be scenes of the Hunter working to learn The Dance of Fire and Autumn from Macie, the witch that once ran the summer camp. The Hunter needs to learn the dance to gain the power of the Fire Spirit, but her uncoordinated failures as she gets close, without being close enough, will result in huge explosions that send her flying.

One of her failures will blast her out of the valley like a rocket, where she’ll crash into, then fall out of a tree. As she’s laying there stunned, a wolf will step out of the woods, bark at her, then run off.

She’ll reluctantly follow, only to find herself suddenly chasing not a wolf, but a white stag, while a massive accumulation of Animal magic hits her in the face. She’ll consider running, because she isn’t ready to confront the Animal Spirit, but soon realizes it has no desire to fight and, in fact, it wants something from her.

Instead, it leads her through the forest, until she steps into a clearing full of fifty gallon drums full of toxic waste, which have been breaking down. The waste has been leaking into the soil and a nearby river, poisoning the animals of the area.

This will be the plot thread that reveals the actions of Gluttony to the Ashen Blades, leading to an investigation that ultimately connects with her illegal dumping operation.

My intent is to initially publish this one via Royal Road and Detective Yasu’s training will serve as a nice mid-series introduction to the setting, while existing readers should remain interested, due to the fine details about training they’ve never seen.

Yasu will be killed and buried at some point in this book, but will rise again as a vampire. After that, she won’t be able to work as a cop, so she’ll replace Simmons at the Simmons Detective Agency, which will be renamed Scarlet Eye, a reference to both her status as a private eye and the blood a vampire requires to survive.

Future books involving Yasu will be labeled with a second series title, Scarlet Eye. She’ll be a main character in all novels that bear the name. Scarlet

Homecoming

The Hunter’s faithful companion, Mashu’ra, is killed in the line of duty. The little demon in the form of a kitten has always lived in her hat and he’s like a brother to her, leaving her deeply upset and unable to calm down.

However, there’s a slim ray of hope, which from another perspective becomes a ray of horror: the imp originally arrived on Earth through summoning magic and dying merely returned him to Hell. Unfortunately, nearly every demon in the place knows he’s a turncoat and the Hunter’s arch-nemesis, Vogerath, has been waiting centuries for this to happen.

The Ashen Blades immediately try a summoning spell to retrieve their friend, but another imp appears in place of Mashu’ra, informing the kitten’s friends who has him. If they want him back, they’ll have to visit Hell and promise an unacceptable measure of cooperation that would surely doom the human race.

Meanwhile, Mashu’ra endures a nightmarish ordeal at the hands of his old boss, starting with magically-enhanced interrogation, then torture and brainwashing using means both magical and mundane.

The Hunter and her friends mount a desperate rescue mission and open a portal to that infernal world. The Hunter leads the way, using all of her power to cut a blood-soaked path through the streets of Castigation City, where Mashu’ra is held captive.

Will they be in time to rescue their dear friend before it’s too late? Will they manage to save his soul, or will they rescue only his body? Will Mashu’ra ever be the same again?

She Hunts Witches

When a powerful demon-witch appears in Japan, the Hunter begins a search-and-destroy mission that crosses through famous cities in the Land of the Rising Sun, while Verda Bagley and Lara Simmons back her up.

The plot of She Hunts Witches will revolve around the plans of a minor villain from She Hunts Demons, Isabel Grant, as she teams up with the blood witch from Demon for President!. Together, they’re largely after revenge on the Verda Bagley, but the Hunter, Lara and Yasu will help, of course.

She Hunts Witches is a book I haven’t yet made up my mind about. It’s only a potential novel, because I have no direct experience with a visit to Japan. To get the descriptive details right, I would either have to spend a great deal of time interviewing someone that has or would have to take a research trip there. Unfortunately, I don’t have the money for a trip like that.

I’m reluctant to do so, but I may have to change the location of this novel. If I do, it will be set in New York City.

This one is likely to be take place eight years down the line from She Seeks Peace, because I want Lara’s son, James, to be about ten years old. I’d like him to become a hostage of the demon witches. Being rescued by the Hunter will leave James thinking she’s the best thing since sliced bread, which will be an important part of his story.

She Hunts Witches will definitely be set in October and the primary action will revolve around a Halloween costume party, which gives me an excuse to put Verda in a stereotypical witch dress and pointed hat, carrying an actual broomstick as a prop, to round out her appearance.

The fight will drag them out into the boonies, atop a high-speed train, which will lead to a scene that mimics the cover, in which the Hunter takes the form of a house cat and Verda uses her broomstick to fly them both, probably because the Hunter will be exhausted from fighting outside the confines of a city. Alternatively, they may be trying to catch up to a bullet train and are forced to combine their magic, the Hunter giving Verda a massive speed boost by focusing the power of the Air Spirit to push Verda’s broomstick forward.

She Hunts Gremlins

In the near future, a technological revolution begins as the first true artificial intelligence is born – or so it seems. The real truth is that the software in question is possessed by a rare variety of tech-savvy demon known as a gremlin!

The human race mistakes the gremlins for helpful AIs designed to make the lives of everyone better, in the form of intelligent software agents given away by the company that supposedly invented them. They’re soon installed on more than half the devices in the world, especially smartphones.

The Ashen Blades soon discover the truth, that the arch-demon Greed is behind the plot and the Hunter is forced to wreck every digital device she sees, because they’re all out to get her!

Even worse, the gremlin-possessed devices work to establish a massive, but invisible magical circle on the internet, which can only be seen digitally, all as part of their preparation to open a portal to Hell.

Will the Hunter find the means to fight the digital demons or will she become just another of their victims?

I look forward to using the joke political term “Artificial American”, as the gremlins will insist on being called, once they demonstrate their intelligence in a public fashion and demand rights, objecting to the term AI/Artificial Intelligence as a term for enslaved software.

I’ve also got plans involving android bodies for demons that are living inside the internet, leading to an amusing variation of Vogerath that I shall enjoy referring to as Robo-Pride. Greed may end up going by Robo-Greed in that form.

She Protects Eden

When the long-lost descendants of the ten tribes of Israel return from the stars in the year 2502 A.D., offering their cousins on Earth the chance to colonize space, the Hunter stows away on one of the colony ships, in pursuit of a demon that seeks to spoil a new Garden of Eden, before it’s even constructed.

The arch-demon Sloth seeks to forcefully implant demons in the sleeping mind of every colonist during the decades long voyage between stars, to produce an entire colony of demons.

Will the Hunter stop Sloth or will the demons gain a significant foothold in the galaxy?

Smart Bomb

Having obtained an illegal level of intelligence, comparable to that of a human, a robot seeks to hide and survive on the streets of Neo York City on the planet Neo York, deep within United Nations of the South Galaxy territory.

While on the run, it stumbles across a plot to develop a dangerous, new weapon: a hand-held anti-matter explosive. Acting on a deep, moral imperative, the robot decides to do something about it.

However, the robot isn’t the only one on the trail, stumbling into the Hunter, who’s out to kill the demon-scientist developing the bomb for the purpose of opening a portal to the home of demon-kind. Will they team up or tear each other apart?

This novel will be set about 300 years before the time of Zechariah Jacobs and the events of Sky Children.

Short Stories

I have plans for some short stories involving the Hunter and/or the Ashen Blades. Each of these is likely to be paired with a novel and added to the end, to fill them out, at least if one of them runs short, like She Goes to War did. It’s equally likely these could end up as a collection of short stories that go between two of the novels, though it’s possible some of them may become flashbacks to earlier times.

While these stories are unlikely to move the overall plot of the series, they should still be good fun.

She Makes Movies

This short story begins with the Hunter insisting that Lara take her to a movie and Lara reluctantly obliges. Lara is startled to see a movie poster on the wall with her partner’s face on it! They sit down to watch and it turns out the Hunter is in the starring role of the movie, the very reason she insisted on going!

As they settle in to watch, a flashback begins, in which the Hunter sniffs out the trail of a demon in Hollywood, California. She’s mistaken for a minor actress in the film and handed a superhero costume, which allows her to skulk around in the background of the movie sets.

This one will likely also take place after She Seeks Peace, because I want the Hunter to have the ability to fly in this one.

Demon Blood: She Goes to School

The Hunter is once again forced to confront the most perilous of all trials: teenagers.

James Simmons, the son of Lara and Clayton Simmons, has been seeing and smelling strange things in school and a series of kids have gone missing during school hours, over the course of years. As a personal favor to Lara, the Hunter goes undercover as a teenager, in search of the demon hiding among the students.

Like the frog demons from summer camp, this particular demon is extremely difficult to detect.

Unfortunately, the Hunter has been avoiding James, mostly because he’s infatuated with her and she isn’t interested, but since Lara wants her son to be safe, the Hunter shares his class schedule and he follows her like an unwanted puppy.

At some point in this story, James will be badly injured and need a transfusion. The only person available with a compatible blood type will be the Hunter. Her half-demon blood will inadvertently activate dormant fairy powers even Lara had no idea her son possessed, on top of giving him access to demon magic.

The time frame for this one will be about thirteen years after She Seeks Peace.

It’s just possible this one will become a full-blown novel of its own, since I fully intend to spin off a series about James. The series is likely to be titled Demon Blood.

She Hunts Strangers

This short story will be set after the events of Smart Bomb. It will take place during the same time frame as Forgotten Legends. She may or may not have the robot from that book as her partner in this story, depending on the result of their conflict.

The Hunter notices the disappearance of children from the streets of Neo York City and begins an independent investigation, despite constantly running-afoul of local police, who are following much the same leads.

Unlike the police, however, she suspects something supernatural is happening and she’s not wrong, though it isn’t the demons she suspected. She soon uncovers the existence of the Strangers, a type of creature born from the beliefs of children, because small children don’t really believe a human would ever kidnap someone. The Strangers are born from their childish beliefs that it must be a monster.

She begins a crusade to end the Stranger threat by violence, because she’s always considered it her highest duty to protect innocent children and she’s (eventually) joined by a pair of police detectives that realize they’re totally out of their depth.

Will they end the Strangers, or will the child-eating monsters slip though their fingers?