DefCon One Publishing

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DefCon One Publishing

Indie publisher that publishes Mad Scientist Journal, the Kensei series, and other titles.

07/29/2024

"There, in neat print, the receipt acknowledged that Lydia Smythe, aged 2, had been taken for delivery to Yalding Towers."
A Russian pilot using a bit of magic and music to rescue her compatriot. The family impacts of a crossroads deal unfulfilled. Ethnographic observations and misinterpretations. A magical organization devoted to stopping demons. A Victorian-era pr******te takes on Jack the Ripper. Children mailed to a strange fairy tale land. And an unusual pairing of European nobility that spans the centuries. In this second volume of truths stranger than fiction, you'll find six stories and a poem in which history and fiction are blended together. Each piece is accompanied by a brief essay detailing the history that the story or poem twists.
https://www.defconone.com/book/unfixed-timelines-volume-2/

07/29/2024

It’s a multi-billion dollar industry in a country that would rather look away–an insidious crime so horrible that authorities are powerless, or unwilling, to stop it.

Not even Cobalt City, the bright, cosmopolitan center of the superhero world, is safe from human trafficking and s*xual slavery. For heroes used to dealing with madmen and megalomaniacs, the decentralized nature of the blight is difficult to comprehend, much less impact. How do you combat not just criminals but the very nature of a crime itself?

Velvet, society girl turned powerhouse, has slugged it out with gods. But when she crosses paths with a dead young woman, she finds herself dragged into a grim underworld that challenges her understanding of the city. With the mysterious vigilante Bantam as her guide, Velvet goes in search of justice for the victims of s*x trafficking—whether the deadly Harlequin and Crime Kings of Cobalt City like it or not.

But how can she hope to stop something as nebulous as an idea?

And who can she really trust?

https://www.defconone.com/book/cobalt-city-ties-that-bind/

07/29/2024

An explosion in the bay, a prominent film actor believed dead, and his brother missing. Sarah Castile, former superhero turned private investigator, is on the case!
When Clarisse Glenn hires Sarah Castile to investigate the death of one of her brothers and the disappearance of the other, Sarah is ready to hit the streets to get to the bottom of the mystery. But there's more to the situation than meets the eye, and she's soon dealing with film studio consultants, the mob, and rumors of outside influences. She'll need to leverage all of her connections and use every trick in her playbook to figure out what's really going on!
https://www.defconone.com/book/sure-shot-in-las-capas-the-case-of-the-absent-star/

07/28/2024

Doorways can lead to many marvelous places. In this collection, however, the scenes they reveal are shrouded in gloom and darkness. See where the doorways take you in flash fiction, poetry, and two short stories at the darker end of the spectrum.
https://www.defconone.com/book/doorways-in-the-gloom/

07/28/2024

Secrets buried under the sands of Turkey, the murder of a small-town sheriff, zombies at Vicksburg, otherworldly entities recruiting at a high society ball, and a daring escape from pirates. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, and in these five stories, the two are blended into tales of alternate history. Each short story is accompanied by a brief essay detailing the history that the story twists.
https://www.defconone.com/book/unfixed-timelines/

07/28/2024

Do you like teenage superheroes navigating school, family, and love? Check out the Kensei series--two novels and four novellas--from author Jeremy Zimmerman!
https://www.defconone.com/series/kensei/

07/28/2024

"I do love it when you talk like a supervillain."
Once upon a time, Ruby and Vivienne were rivals and enemies. Now? Theirs is a happiness neither one of them saw coming, and things between them are almost perfect.
Almost.
There’s still the matter of The Raven. Ruby intends to make Vivienne’s on-again lover, off-again nemesis pay for the harm he’s done to both of them.
"Let him suffer tenfold every injustice he has done to you."
Too bad Vivienne insists on leaving him alive.
But Ruby has other ways of dealing with the men who have wronged her.
“You enchanted him, didn’t you…? Jesus, Ginger, what did you do?”
A web of lies, a tangle of magic, and one dark and dirty secret threaten to destroy everything they’ve built together.
“Darling, I can’t just let you compromise all my hard work.”
Love is messy, especially when all involved have BAD INTENTIONS.
https://www.defconone.com/book/bad-intentions/

07/28/2024

Unusual spacecraft, aliens among us, and finding new ways to survive. New Moons Under Which to Sleep is a collection of science-fiction short stories, flash fiction, and poetry exploring the future of life on Earth, in space, and on other planets and moons. Journey with characters young and old as they find their proper places in their universes.
https://www.defconone.com/book/new-moons-under-which-to-sleep/

07/27/2024

Warning: Contains Snowflake

This hyper-evolved and foul-mouthed panda has had a variety of jobs, from pilot to a super hero team to sidekick to a motorcycle vigilante. This book contains three tales of Snowflake's solo adventures in the world of Cobalt City! In "A Snowflake's Chance in Hell," he finds himself in trouble at a sinister carnival. "One Giant Leap for Panda-kind" has him face off against an evil version of himself from an alternate reality. And in "Better Dead Than Red," a new story created for this collection, his past catches up with him in the form of a deadly assassin.

https://www.defconone.com/book/snowflake-war-journal/

07/27/2024

No one understands an apocalypse like the people who have experienced it. Mad Scientist Journal has brought together twenty-three tales of people who have seen the world end. These accounts range from irreverent to surreal to heartbreaking. Zombies share space with global wars, superviruses, canned peaches, and the death of the sun.
https://www.defconone.com/book/selfies-from-the-end-of-the-world-historical-accounts-of-the-apocalypse/

07/27/2024

This woman hurt Jaccob, and she's Lady f***ing Vengeance.
Vivienne Cain has come to Cobalt City for one reason and one reason only: to confront the villainous sorceress who broke her friend's heart. Getting hired by said villain to purge her shiny skyscraper of an invading demon was not on her agenda, especially not given her messy past with possession.
Nor did she anticipate exactly how hard it would be to resist a redhead bombshell in a green silk dress...
The other other woman…?
Of course Ruby Killingsworth is ready for her once-flame Jaccob "Stardust" Stevens's dangerous goth b***y call. But she isn't prepared for exactly how good she looks in leather, nor for the demon that has made her tower its new feeding ground.
If she's going to get her tower and her empire back, she'll have to make a deal with Lady Vengeance, one that involves both business and pleasure...
Self destruction be damned… she wants this.
It will take every ounce of knowledge, skill, magic, and trust the two can conjure to defeat their supernatural adversaries and save Cobalt City, the world, and each other.
Femmes Fatale is the s*xy, sapphic story of two women battling their demons, both within and without.
https://www.defconone.com/book/femmes-fatale/

07/27/2024

At the national fencing championship, Yumi Kujikawa has to balance the ethics of competing as a superpowered individual, the ghost haunting her, her cursed ancestral katana...

And her nemesis Danielle Swain, member of a network of international assassins, who is playing a treacherous game...

Oh, and Yumi's growing crush on her cute team manager, Lisa!

Drama! Secrets! Swords!

https://www.defconone.com/book/we-are-the-champions/

07/27/2024

COMING AUGUST 13!
People are messy.
As far as Ruby Killingsworth is concerned, personal entanglements are far more burdensome than managing her billion-dollar entertainment empire. Up to this point, she's preferred to avoid them whenever possible.
But some things can't always be helped ...
From the complexity of a long-distance romance to a rekindled fling with the handsome hero next door, to somehow finding herself playing hostess to her lover's super-powered niece, Ruby has never had so many people in her life at once.
And much to her own surprise, she doesn't even hate it.
Follow Cobalt City's hottest villain through six short stories as she navigates life, love, music, politics, the limits of her own power, and the pitfalls of being publicly hero-adjacent.
Preorder now! https://www.defconone.com/book/afoul-affairs/

07/26/2024

Cerulean City, California. Home to the film industry, beautiful beaches, an extensive harbor, and superheroes. With superheroes come supervillains, and conflict between the heroes and villains of Cerulean City has persisted for generations.
Coast to Coast Stars introduces a reluctant visitor learning about the heroes and villains of Cobalt City's sister city on the other coast, then follows a few of these heroes and villains throughout their respective histories in five short stories, some of which are published here for the first time. Meet J.J. and the Justice family of heroes, Preethi, Cyclone and Celadon Cyclone, Doctor Ruthless, and Cobalt City's own Gray Dawn, the alter ego of pop sensation Cassidy Sweet!
https://www.defconone.com/book/coast-to-coast-stars/

07/26/2024

In Denizens of Distant Realms, fantastical things intertwine in half a dozen fantasy short stories. Dragons and witches fend off suitors by unconventional means, old pacts with demons are fixed with true love, dark magic threatens lives and livelihoods, and magical shoes and mermaids both offer young women new opportunities.
https://www.defconone.com/book/denizens-of-distant-realms/

07/26/2024

Once a year, thirty racers gather from all over the world to compete in an illegal cycle race from Mexico to Canada. Big money and bigger bragging rights go to the winner of the Devil's Run International. Some would do anything to win--even murder.

It falls to Manuel de la Vega and his vigilante alter ego Gato Loco to find this murderer among madmen. Or his friend Xander Tesla might be the next victim.

Follow de la Vega and his panda sidekick Snowflake for a high-octane thrill ride up the Pacific coast, where danger waits around every bend, and death comes at you at 200 miles an hour!

https://www.defconone.com/book/ride-like-the-devil/

07/26/2024

"The writing on the old bunker looked like graffiti in alien script. As we learned their language, we realized it was names--specifically the names of our missing."
Visions of the future aren't always gleaming starships and utopias. Sometimes, things are a whole lot darker. Dead-Starred Futures collects thirty-three brief tales of dystopian sci-fi, ranging from poems and drabbles to microfiction and flash fiction. Enjoy and learn from these quick glimpses of where we might be heading.
https://www.defconone.com/book/dead-starred-futures/

07/26/2024

Mad Scientist Journal has brought together eighteen tales of people who have either lived in this strange corner of New England or had the misfortune of visiting. Mixed in with nods to classic Lovecraft icons are stories that bring a new eye to the genre. Tales of horse drawn carriages share space with orbital shuttles, alternate worlds, and football.
https://www.defconone.com/book/that-aint-right-historical-accounts-of-the-miskatonic-valley/

07/25/2024

"As [Kensei] grew closer to the sound, the last of the crowd parted past her, and she saw the source of the commotion.
A robot. With a chainsaw."

Jamie Hattori can't get a break. As the superhero Kensei, she defeated the goddess Eris and figured her life could just get back to normal. Or, at least, as normal as things can be when you fight crime and can talk to the spirit world. But now her girlfriend is flaking out on her, her parents have separated, and a World War Two supervillain has come back from the dead with plots to kill Jamie.

As if that wasn't bad enough, she has to deal with two of her least favorite people: her grandparents.

https://www.defconone.com/book/the-love-of-danger/

07/25/2024

Dani finds the new director in her college theater department more than a little unnerving, but she has barely scratched the surface on just how weird things are about to get. Lucy just wanted a date for homecoming, not the heaps of trouble her wish cookie has stirred up in her high school. Unable to find the inspiration for a performance for her dance troupe, Mia calls upon a muse and gets far more than she bargained for. Mikayla feels bad about having drifted away from her BFF Ashley, but Ashley's new lifestyle may be more than Mikayla can handle. Julia doesn't know how she came to be bound to a painting in a hotel, but she's about to find out how to break the curse. And Seattle homicide detective Moira O'Connelly has more than a suspicion that a recent arson is tied to an orphanage fire years ago. But how the young psychic who calls herself Cassie is connected is not what she was expecting to find.

The supernatural abounds in this collection of six dark contemporary fantasy short stories by author Dawn Vogel. Stories staring teenage witches and ageless childlike ghosts sit side by side with those featuring normal women confronting eldritch gods, muses, ghouls, and mad scientists. Everyone's got problems, and these characters are dealing with more than their fair share!

https://www.defconone.com/book/volatile-figments/

07/25/2024

"The Gate was in a cave underneath the ministry offices, its fifty foot height filling one of the cave walls. It was a baroque edifice wrought of true gold, covered in glowing angelic script ...."
Non-human romance. Tarot-powered difference engines. The bureaucracy of the gate to Hell. These and more appear in this anthology of strange stories by Jeremy Zimmerman. This anthology collects five genre-bending tales from fantasy to steampunk to cyberpunk.
https://www.defconone.com/book/crossing-the-streams/

07/25/2024

It's an honor to be chosen as the avatar of a god, raised to the ranks of superheroes in Cobalt City by their patronage. But for Friday Jones, a fun-loving biochemistry major working to solve world hunger, it's more of a burden than she expected. Follow Friday, aka Dulcamara, and her friends through four stories of the Cobalt City Universe, as she deals with a clone of her bestie, a literal dragon, a roommate too smart for anyone's good, and a seriously rude customer.
https://www.defconone.com/book/avatar-of-freya/

07/25/2024

"The initial impression most people got of Ruby Killingsworth was that of a wicked queen from a fairytale film reimagined as a mid-century pinup."
https://www.defconone.com/book/rites-desires/

07/24/2024

Cities are filled with the strange and unusual, especially when you add the supernatural to them. INTERCITY ILLUSIONS by Dawn Vogel collects urban fantasy stories and poetry highlighting the abnormal goings-on across myriad cityscapes. These tales will leave you wondering what is real and what is merely an illusion.
https://www.defconone.com/book/intercity-illusions/

07/24/2024

In the windy skies of the Republic, it's not always easy to chart your own course...
When Svetlana Tereshchenko, captain of the airship The Silent Monsoon, catches wind that a cask of mythical Cranglimmering whiskey has been stolen, she and her renegade crew of outcasts fly off in search of it. With the promise of a reward worthy of the cask's legendary lineage from both the Heliopolis Port Authority and the head of the Kavisoli crime family, Svetlana and her crew embark on a breathless chase that takes The Silent Monsoon from one end of the Republic to the other.
What Svetlana assumes will be an easy search and recover mission quickly becomes more complicated as each step she takes uncovers secrets and lies about the cask and its contents. Now, with an ethereal Ghost Ship haunting their path, friends reveal themselves as enemies and alliances develop with the most unlikely associates. The lives of her crew hang in the balance as Svetlana makes the crucial choice of whom she can trust and whom she should fear.
https://www.defconone.com/book/the-cask-of-cranglimmering/

07/24/2024

Jamie Hattori's alter ego, the masked hero Kensei, has been doing pretty well protecting her neighborhood from petty villains with her martial arts skills, her father's katana, and a little help from the local spirits. But things get rough when the spirits start flaking out, the Goddess of Discord throws a few cursed apples, and an online gossip site sics an angry football player on her. Then there's her slipping grades, the vampire owls, and the cute roller derby chick looking for romance. And even worse, Jamie's hero-hating mom is starting to get suspicious. Can Jamie defeat her mysterious nemesis without tearing her family apart? And more importantly, will she score her first kiss?
https://www.defconone.com/book/kensei/

07/24/2024

Supernatural Reform School or Horrifying Death Trap?

Dedwydd Academy is meant to be a third chance for Briar Williams, exiled from the fae realm of Idyll for her part in a rebellion against the aristocracy and removed from human society for a night of mayhem in the small town of Artis. Upon arrival, she begins to make friends, but she also finds a dangerous enemy in the volatile Jaylin. Now she must navigate a new level of high school politics, one with deadly consequences. And what will her new friends think when they learn about what she's done?

https://www.defconone.com/book/promise-me-nothing/

07/24/2024

Sabrina Alvarez never wanted to be a superhero. But when she was chosen by St. Jeanne d'Arc, Sabrina had to rethink her priorities. Now an archbishop is trying to draft Sabrina into his secret army within the church, forcing Sabrina to make a decision about where her loyalties lie.
https://www.defconone.com/book/kensei-tales-unorthodoxy/

07/23/2024

Dive into the complete collection of tales from the Cobalt City’s Adventurers Club. From the gaslight mysteries of the nineteenth century, to mayhem in the twentieth century, to high-tech thrills of the twenty-first century, explore the city with its champions. Meet two generations of Wreckers, American Spirit, Wild Kat, and more. This expanded edition includes the beloved novella "Wrecker of Engines" plus new stories and bonus content. Welcome to Cobalt City, where the adventures keep changing, but some superheroes are timeless.
https://ow.ly/kVIb50RjwBt

07/23/2024

The gods of old have become stories, as though they no longer involve themselves with the mortal realm. But in this collection of short stories and poetry, the myths of the ancient world, from Greece and Italy to Egypt and Assyria, seep through to the modern era, breathing new life into old legends and creating new fables. Along the way, these tales make stops in the lands of the Norse and Celts, and travel outside of Europe and Africa to Japan and the Americas.
https://ow.ly/jc6e50RjwAR

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