Now available:

The Baker’s Apprentice

He’s a baker. Not a traitor.

An enemy of the kingdom? The worst thing baker’s apprentice Hanno has done is burn some cream puffs. Wait, all right, he might have accepted a tiny bit of magical help with his baking. From a secret source. Was that a bad idea?

When he was rejected as a wizard’s apprentice, Hanno needed a new path. So he apprenticed with a pastry baker instead. It’s a respected career with a bright future. He’s been making friends and finding a place in the kitchen.

When the baking lessons got challenging, he didn’t ask for help. But the pressure to succeed got intense. The offer of magical help popped up and he just …didn’t say no.

Now the King’s Wizard is looking for a traitorous rogue magic user. Hanno has a bad feeling it might be himself. Ridiculous, right? Bakers don’t get beheaded for treason.

Probably.

The Baker’s Apprentice is a full-length novel of about 90k words, with themes of friendship and family, perfect for fans of The House Witch or A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking.

***

Cozy science fiction:

The Human

He’s never met a human before. Now one’s booking a ride on his ship.

Kekitaka has never met a human before, but this one needs a ride, and Kekitaka needs the money. He’s been stranded on this dingy, backwater space station for three years with a broken down ship. This human’s family is offering to fix his engine in exchange for passage, so Kekitaka’s jumping at the chance. He’s going home. He doesn’t know much about humans, but he’s got a book about them. It seems fine… until he meets his passenger.

Alarmingly, the human turns out to be terrified of him…and are humans supposed to be this small? Spending ten days alone together on the journey home could be more complicated than Kekitaka thought, between a scared young passenger, a ship that keeps breaking down, and a galaxy full of people who fear and misunderstand his species.

If they’re going to make it to Kekitaka’s home planet, these two people of very different worlds will need to overcome their distrust and pull together into a strange little two-member crew… or maybe even make friends.

“The Humans” is a short standalone story of about 10k words, ideal for fans of character-driven, found-family science fiction, such as The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.