#novelette

I have a very important request. If you enjoy reading book series, how often would you like a book to be released? My goal is to release my series novelettes in a timely manner so that my readers do not lose interest. So, how often should I release a novelette: every 6 weeks, 6 months, etc.? It's important to know how often you would buy a book to continue reading a book series. Your input is greatly appreciated. 🙏🏾

CHAPTER ONE - HERE

The Ignition

If you’d handed me a looking glass when I was a child, maybe I would’ve seen the future coming—seen how the fractures in my life would widen until they swallowed me whole. But childhood doesn’t offer that kind of clarity. I grew up inside a familiar dysfunction, a predictable chaos. It sounds strange, I know, but there was comfort in the consistency. I always knew who would hurt me and how. There were no surprises—just a practiced cycle of harm followed by an eerie calm, as if nothing had ever happened.

No one wondered what the blows, the insults, the dismissals did to my spirit. No one paused to think about how their brokenness was poisoning mine. That was life inside the gates of normalized chaos.

And now here I am—sitting in a gray, sterile room on the fifth floor of Balboa Naval Hospital, surrounded by people the Navy has labelled “severely damaged.” This wasn’t the future I dreamed of. I wanted to serve my country, to be the first woman in my family to wear the uniform with pride. I wanted honor. Purpose. A chance to prove myself.

Instead, I’m here—broken, ashamed, stripped of the identity I worked so hard to build. And seven months pregnant on top of it.

I hate that I let my life fold into this. I hate that I allowed myself to be pulled into this circle of haunted strangers. But I didn’t have many choices left. It was either die at the hands of my Hospital Corpsman husband or go AWOL and destroy everything I’d sacrificed to achieve. Neither option offered any real escape. So I landed here, in the one place I never imagined I’d be.

The damaged among the damaged.

The room is filled with vacant stares—eyes dulled by trauma, by secrets, by ghosts that refuse to let go. I know what it is to be damaged, but sitting here, surrounded by these silent, broken sailors and soldiers, I realize there are levels to this I haven’t yet understood. Their stillness unnerves me. I feel guilty, as if my suffering somehow doesn’t measure up—though I know nothing about their stories. Soon, I will. We all will. We’re required to sit in this battleship-gray room until each of us exposes our deepest wounds.

I’m a stubborn woman. I’ve survived too much to willingly hand over the pieces of my soul. I don’t want to share. I won’t share. The last time I trusted someone with my truth, I ended up here.

The fifth floor.

The place where the broken are stored.

The place where I now wait—angry, exhausted, and desperate for a way out that may not exist.

I close my eyes, inhaling the cold, antiseptic air.

This is my battlefield now. And I’m not sure I’m ready for the war.

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The Damaged by Clarissa Burton, Queen of the Pen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

The Strands by Ro Crown

Writing prompt: Write a story ranging from 7k to 17,500 words, following a robot/cyborg with ADHD and autism who has decided to try out an experimental brain wave attachment to help their impulse control, only to get embroiled in a multi-level-marketing scheme.

Also known as: attempt to write a self-contained short story without accidentally writing a 300k word novel.

At our label, music isn’t the only way we tell stories. We’re also committed to creating books our community can read freely — stories about memory, longing, identity, and the complicated beauty of being human.

Our first publication is Disco Inferno by Nikolas Perčić — a novelette about love, loneliness, and schizophrenia.

Set against the restless streets of Santiago, Chile, the story follows Alex Novak, a young man trying to reconnect with an old university friend and make sense of the emotions, memories, and ghosts that refuse to stay buried.

Disco Inferno is available as a free download through the link below.

Because some stories are meant to be shared, not hidden behind a paywall.

A Better Life – The Softening is free today on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.

Gina has spent most of her life moving through rooms shaped by someone else’s anxieties, doing her best to stay small inside a world that never felt like hers. After her mother’s passing, she’s left with a quiet house, a heavy kind of grief, and a life she isn’t sure how to step into.

Then Norma arrives — steady, warm, patient — and the silence begins to shift. What was supposed to be a short stay slowly becomes a gentle reordering of both their lives, built through shared meals, late‑night talks, and the comfort of simply being seen.

This is a cozy, body‑positive romance about grief, tenderness, and the slow, hopeful transformation that happens when two women finally allow themselves to feel safe.

A Better Life – The Softening is free today on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.

Gina has spent years living in a house shaped by someone else’s fears, moving through her days without really feeling them. After her mother’s passing, she’s left with silence, grief, and a life she doesn’t quite know how to inhabit.

Then Norma arrives — steady, warm, grounded — and the house begins to breathe again. What starts as a temporary stay becomes a quiet reshaping of both their lives, built through shared meals, late‑night conversations, and the soft comfort of simply existing together.

This is a body‑positive cozy romance about grief, comfort, and the gentle transformation that happens when two women finally allow themselves to build something real.