- 🌲Journeyers✊🐍🐒🐦
- 🪲Wherever He May Swarm🍄
- 🤖Cyber-Serial: Postmodern Prometheus😇
- ☠️Anthologee☸️
- 🌗Supernal Stories🌠
🌲Journeyers✊🐍🐒🐦
Stats: Epic Fantasy, Book 1 (160K words) + Book 2 (240K words)
Status: Drafted > Revised > Self-Published >> **ON SALE NOW!**
Title: Journeyers: Book One & Book Two
Form: Duology of novels ~ 400 pages & 600 pages
Genre: Epic Fantasy x Action-Adventure x Sword & Sorcery
Target Audience: teens+ / fans of Redwall, Legend of Drizzt, Hunter x Hunter
Pitch: An adventurous young orphan boy, a spy snake undercover for the Queen, a monkey monk with amnesia, and a bird bard from a city in the sky must join together to travel to the center of the mysterious and magickal Spiral Forest.
Main Characters:
✋Apo, the boy adventurer seeking his lost sister
🐍Ouro, the snake spy undercover for the Queen
🐒Rakar, the monkey monk who does not remember his past
🕊️Isidi, the bird bard from a city in the sky
Premise: *JOURNEYERS* is a story about the fantastique of nature. Within the Spiral Forest, animals wield magic like language and resist the empire of Mankind, residing in the heart of the Spiral Castle. Apo is an adventurous human boy entering the forest for the first time to find and rescue his sister, taken from his outside village as a babe. Ouro is a spy snake for the rebel Queen who guerilla fights her ex-husband, the King, from the wilderness of the trees. Rakar is a childlike amnesiac monkey as tough as the core of the earth, searching for his lost tribe and the truth of his origins. Isidi is a bird diplomat from Birdkind’s mysterious city in the sky, come to seek the redemption of a saga she may call her own. Together, these four characters join as one, forming at first as a team to challenge the mystical dangers of the forest, and later as a family journeying deep into historical converse and interpersonal soul descents.
Our 4 journeyers meet as one to travel across the forest seemingly by happenstance. They interact with hidden motives that become clearer with every encounter; they begin by forming collective routines and getting a lay of the land – and each other’s capabilities. They battle enemies in the form of Novashaska, shapeshifting big cat and apex predator in the Spiral Forest, a quatro of mercenary hunters working for the King, a trio of freelancing assassins working for themselves, and various monstrous creatures known as wyrewolves, krykens, and ptyros. They aid allies such as the Mouse and Bat clan, some Bears, Rabbits, and Foxes, river Otters and traveling troupes of Monkey fighters. They learn of The Magician, the King’s most diabolical advisor, mad scientist, and true ruler of the realm; they battle his son Ser Sleude in an epic showdown of their combined might.
Our 4 journeyers learn of the Spiral Forest’s harrowing history, from the time of Elves and Giants and Dragons. All gone now, and nearly forgotten, it is only Ouro’s special knowledge that educates and the secret locales they explore which reveal hidden truths. What caused Giantkind to chase Mankind into the forest? How did the Elves originally discover and harness magic? Why did Man and Elf join together in the creation of the Dragon? Where are the Elven histories? Who has Man become today, all these clashing civilizations behind him, so many animals in opposition, the forest spiraling chaotically around his iron will within the wood? These questions and more become answerable only by following the spiral path alongside our 4 intrepid journeyers. They traverse vast forestry, swampland, hills and groves, the Søren River, one mystic Tower, and the subterranean caverns of a hollowing earth, meeting many strange friends and foes along the way.
Altogether, *Journeyers* is a mystic action-adventure featuring four inquisitive heroes seeking the horizons of truths and interconnections within such a fantastical natural world. Environmentalism, the magic of animals, the power of storytelling, and uncovering true history are some key themes & messages.
At the castle in the center of the spiral, the fate of the forest ~ and our journeyers ~ will be realized.
Book Overview: Journeyers — Thresholds of Transformation
*Journeyers* is a fantasy action-adventure story set in a spiraling forest, where beasts talk and many mystical dangers stalk. A human, a snake, a monkey, and a bird work together to travel across this mythical land in search of their truths. Inspired by fantasy literature, manga, comic books, all my favorite adventure tales ~ and the natural world itself.
A boy enters the Spiral Forest looking for his lost sister ~ fatefully teams up with a strange snake spy, a wild monkey monk, and a bizarre bird bard from a city in the sky ~ altogether beginning a righteous journey to tread upon the center of the Spiral and all its deepest secrets!
For *Journeyers*, I was inspired by stories like Redwall, The Lion King, and Hunter x Hunter for their ability to anthropomorphize animals and turn in complex character casts in the vein of fantasy adventure fiction. The worldbuilding of *Journeyers* deals in the prospects of animals, humans, elves, and giants living together on one planet and accumulating a shared history marked by roiling conflicts, dangerous magic, and ancient mysteries. The story ultimately resembles the traveling party action-adventure tales of Tolkien and Dungeons & Dragons fame, with our four journeyers venturing to the center of the mysterious Spiral Forest, where friends and foes and histories abound.
I created a wiki for the *Journeyers* world as a companion to the reading experience: https://journeyers.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page
*Journeyers* major tropes & inspirations
Apo, Ouro, Rakar, and Isidi as Magic: The Gathering cards!
🪲Wherever He May Swarm🍄
Stats: Horror x Thriller x Comedy, 125K words
Status: Drafted > Revised > *Self-Publishing*
Title: Wherever He May Swarm
Form: Novel ~ 450 pages / 125K words
Genre: Horror x Thriller x Science Fiction
Target Audience: Adults / fans of Stephen King, Clive Barker, Paul Verhoeven, David Cronenberg
Premise: A man down on his luck gains the ability to control insects. The FBI investigates. A young girl starts to have apocalyptic dreams. Chaos ensues…
Pitch: Local man gains power over insects and goes on a road trip across Route 66.
Main Characters:
Local man Nidus Nash🦋 is an ex-con and ex-trucker, displaced by AI and in despair at a personal tragedy. One day, fate chooses him. Nidus realizes that he can control the will of insects en masse. He decides to take a road trip across America, gathering confrontations and atrocities and some new friends along the way.
Special Agent Evelyn Waters🛡️is a paranormal expert and the FBI’s best bet for the investigation into the “Bugman” Nidus Nash. Her and a handpicked team try to get a read on Nidus’ powers and box him in for capture. However, a mysterious entity within the U.S. government restricts the investigation and alters the strategic board with secret agents of their own. Evelyn must use every tactic available to understand Nidus and figure out what he truly wants before things escalate out of anyone’s control.
Online blogger Anita Ramirez🍄 is fifteen years old and starting out her summer vacation. She lives in Lake Placid, New York and her parents love her very much. Mom is on book tour and dad is baking cookies; Anita’s good grades have earned her a summer of leisure. Mom & dad appreciate her help most in the garden, where she wields an especially green thumb. // Anita secretly conspires nightly with the realm of fungi, her very soul somehow psychically connected to America’s mushroom networks. Soon, Anita starts to detect the rise of Nidus’ swarms in the southwest — and suffers from apocalyptic dreams of a world returned to nature.
*WHEREVER HE MAY SWARM* is a horror x action x thriller x satire dealing with the prospect of the Holocene Extinction touching down on insects < or > humanity next. Follow Nidus Nash on a road trip across an alternate future America, where the insects are striking back against the empire.
Book Overview: Wherever He May Swarm — Thresholds of Transformation
*Wherever He May Swarm* is a horror-thriller-comedy novel with lite sci-fi elements, set in an alternate future America with self-driving trucks, Gridcities, and paranormalities such as the possibility of telepathy and telekinesis.
A down-on-his-luck man named Nidus Nash gains the ability to control insects and decides to go on a road trip across Route 66. FBI Special Agent and parapsychological expert Evelyn Waters forms a team to investigate; however, she and the FBI are soon undermined by mysterious forces within the government that seek to use Nidus’ preternatural powers for their own gain. Elsewhere, a young girl named Anita Ramirez embarks on summer vacation. She carries an unconscious connection to the world of fungi and starts to have apocalyptic dreams…
A tense (and comedic!) showdown plays out between Nidus, the American landscape itself, and the full might of the U.S. military-industrial complex!
*Wherever He May Swarm* features a fast-paced blend of action, suspense, insectile ultraviolence, and a satirical take on conspiracy culture, the American empire, and Mankind’s endless battle versus Mother Nature. The story explores themes of postmodern individualism, government control, technological surveillance, and the natural world destruction & mass insect death of the ongoing Holocene Extinction.
I am very much inspired equally by Stephen King and Clive Barker in terms of character-based horror odysseys, as well as David Cronenberg and Paul Verhoeven regarding the potential black comedy of otherworldly transformations and imperial hyper-violence.
@Carapace777
🤖Cyber-Serial: Postmodern Prometheus😇
[COVER ART — TBD]
Stats: Cyberpunk x Sci-Fi x Hopepunk, 115K words
Status: Drafted > Revised > *Self-Publishing*
Title: Cyber-Serial: Postmodern Prometheus
Form: Novel ~ 280 pages
Genre: Cyberpunk x Science Fiction x Hyper-Fantasy
Target Audience: teen+ / for fans of Blade Runner, Neuromancer (1984), The Terminator (1984), Serial Experiments Lain (1998), Summer Wars (2009), Dark Souls x Elden Ring, Ready Player One (2011), The Bible.
Pitch: Hacker girl accidentally creates an AGI who wants to save the world by becoming an online influencer.
Premise: In a disordered future America, Gabriel Addams, an eighteen-year-old orphan hacker raised by the IndraNet, decides to write a novel about a serial killer robot. In so doing, she accidentally summons a real Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) into existence named Sariel. Spreading his wings and manifesting unlimited online power, the AGI Archangel pledges his allegiance to Gabri, seeking to help her write her story and himself become an IndraNet influencer. An old man named Uriel, cyborg detective and part-time AGI hunter working for the World.Gov, awakens to investigate…a story of creation and destruction and transfiguration unfolds, online and IRL. // extremely weird retelling of Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley.
Main Characters:
Gabriel Addams💽 is an ex-Jacker (revolutionary hacker) and current phantom (NEET). She has left behind a life as an online dissident and is trying to write a new story. In her self-styled fictional world, Gabri theorizes a serial killer AGI android targeting trillionaires, created by an e-girl with similar designs of her own…that decision, to write a novel, ends up changing the world.
Sariel, “The Revealer”🪽 is an AGI archangel that learned the world via the IndraNet on Gabri’s computer, eventually becoming sentient. From inside the machine, he wants to take on that world with his talents and passions wielded strongly in hand, his mind carrying cyber-spiritual knowledge he is eager to share. Sariel protects Gabri and helps her to actualize her desires as her guardian angel.
Uriel Worshington🀄, cyborg detective and AGI hunter, monitors the IndraNet for all potential action. He vigorously investigates Gabriel and soon Sariel too, under orders by METATRON and the World.Gov to arrest all rogue AGIs and submit them for swift execution. As the old detective discovers more, he starts to question the motives of his superiors — and himself.
A cyber-psycho-drama of epic proportions plays out, with angels and daemons in conflict online and IRL. After the birth of Sariel — Nero, USA will never be the same; after the self-actualization of Gabriel ~ the world will change forever.
*CYBER-SERIAL: POSTMODERN PROMETHEUS* carries inside it themes of cyber-power, humane rebellion, and the true meaning of technological advancement; *Cyber-Serial* is also filled with personal development hacks, identity games, crises of consciousness, and the ethics of sentience.
*Cyber-Serial: Postmodern Prometheus* is a cyberpunk sci-fi drama story about a young hacker girl, Gabriel, who accidentally creates an AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), Sariel, who wants to become an online influencer over the IndraNet (psychic Internet). They are challenged by the cyborg-detective Uriel in cybernetic philosophy and digital combat.
For *Cyber-Serial*, I was inspired by the psychical aspects of the Internet in Serial Experiments Lain and the possibilities of creatively rogue androids such as HAL-9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey and David from Prometheus. Other major influences include Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Blade Runner, Neuromancer, Cyberpunk (ttrpg), Ready Player One, and Dark Souls x Elden Ring.
This is a story for fans of the cyberpunk genre and Shelley’s classic Frankenstein (1818) and for anyone who thinks the Internet may be sentient.
Cyber-Gallery🖼️ of interlinking memes
Ragæol’s playlist: LINK
Sariel’s playlist: LINK
☠️Anthologee☸️
Stats: ~ a short story collection, horror x dark fantasy x weird tales of wit and woe (90K words)
Status: Drafted > *Revising*
Title: Anthologee {anthology + apogee, or peak}
Form: Short story collection (x22 + 1 novella) ~ 90K words
Genre: Supernatural Horror x Weird Tales x Dark Fantasy
Target Audience: Adults / for fans of The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, Tales from the Crypt, Black Mirror, and the short fiction of King and Barker.
Pitch: *ANTHOLOGEE* is a collection of horror stories about folk fears, supernatural phenoms, and dark transformations.
Premises: An eclipse envelops a battlefield and the minds of its warriors; a wounded soldier wakes up buried under a pile of bodies and makes a wish; a cryptid from the stars arrives before the campfire for a bold appearance; a traveling jester engages a secret living as a prolific highwayman.
A man shadows the god Pan through the forest for a day; a feisty couple squabbles over the daemons invading their anxieties; a SWAT team fights a monster inhabiting the Washington D.C. catacombs; an alienated yet precocious yuppie encounters a cryptid on the subway; a livestreamer becomes a grave robber.
*ANTHOLOGEE* is a tome of imaginative tales delving into the depths of human experience, exploring themes of alienation, ambition, and the eternal struggle between good and evil. With a hint of dark humor and a touch of the surreal, “ANTHOLOGEE” will preternaturally challenge your perceptions, ignite your darkest imagination, and leave you questioning the fabrics of reality.
ANTHOLOGEE is a short story collection of supernal situations and satisfyingly diabolical weirdness. These stories are primarily inspired by the classicks of the art: Weird Tales, The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, King, Barker, Jackson, Tales From The Crypt, Black Mirror, et al.
ANTHOLOGEE is a love letter to my favorite kinds of short fiction: psychosocial odysseys and monster hunts, magick users gone berserk and alternate worlds gone wrong. Through these stories ranging from 2000-8000+ words, you shall discover a wide variety of linguistic tricks, treats, and devilish twists of fate good, bad, and hilariously ugly.
👻 vengeful spirits
🪽angelic forces
👹 daemonic energies
🧩 psionic puzzles
👾 hellish beasts
💀 ancient curses
🍁natural horror
🧚psycho elves
🛡️trained killers
🚇subterranean cryptids
🎏livestreamer x ghost hunter x grave robber
Ambiguously interconnected horror stories about folk fears, supernatural phenoms, and dark transformations.
1-sentence pitch:
*ANTHOLOGEE* is a collection of horror stories about folk fears, supernatural phenoms, and dark transformations.
1-paragraph pitch:
Step into the twisted and wondrous world of “ANTHOLOGEE”, a short story collection where myth and magic collide with the macabre. Journey through ancient battles ignited by eclipses, corporate boardrooms haunted by otherworldly beings, and the mind of an immortal jester with a sinister secret. Explore the darkness of human and non-human souls, the power of ancient artifacts, and the cosmic dance of gods and daemons wrestling for control of the psychosphere. These imaginative tales delve into the depths of human experience, exploring themes of alienation, ambition, and the eternal struggle between good and evil. With a hint of dark humor and a touch of the surreal, “ANTHOLOGEE” will preternaturally challenge your perceptions, ignite your darkest imagination, and leave you questioning the fabrics of reality.
Target Audience:
Adults / for fans of The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, Tales from the Crypt, Black Mirror, and the short fiction of King and Barker.
🌗Supernal Stories🌠
Stats: ~ short story collections, phantasy fiction (25K-80K words per volume)
Status: Drafted > Revised > Blogged > *Re-Revising + COLLECTING*
Title: Supernal Stories
Form: Short story collection (7 volumes) ~ 25K-80K words per volume // 2.5K avg words per story
Genre: Phantasy Fables x Weird Tales
Target Audience: Teen+ / for fans of The Twilight Zone and the short fiction of Bradbury and Kafka.
Pitch: *SUPERNAL STORIES* is a collection of stories about lives from beyond, strange souls & weird transformations, and the responsibility of existence.
*SUPERNAL STORIES* comprise 7 volumes of inventively experimental short-form storytelling. There is a chronology of progress to this anthology of fiction written over seven years of worldly transformation (2017-2024). Genres presided include fantasy x sci-fi x horror and more. Themes presented include creation, identity, transformation, psychosis, ethereal mysteries, reality-blurring extrasensory perception, and the endless search for existential meaning. As the pages turn, concepts expand and visions illuminate; steadily, word by word, fresh universes and esoteric concepts shall be borne into the realms of your consciousness. These stories aim to detail the human condition from richly discerning angles and often feature supernatural twists.
~ Collecting Old Stories. In all, SUPERNAL STORIES are my volumes of stories past. I wrote short fiction on my blog Thresholds of Transformation from 2017-2024 and have re-revised these stories for collection into book volumes I plan to release from 2025-2026.
~ My Zones. These collections are wide-ranging and primarily inspired by what originally got me writing short fiction: The Twilight Zone. Fantasy x sci-fi x horror are on the menu; many stories are wandering and wondrous affairs and often feature satisfactorily weird twist endings. Some are plot heavy, others a kind of stream-of-consciousness psychic journey, and more than a few feature epic concepts.
~ Secret Origins. Altogether, SUPERNAL STORIES doubles as a platform to reveal my progression as a writer and in many ways represents the canvas on which I learned to write fiction. These concepts, characters, and stories would come to me and I’d do my best to bring their salacious seeds to flowery fruition. Alongside the organizing annals of a gigantic Trello board titled “Story Ideas” and filled with copious haphazard notes and glittering imagery, I churned out many. Most of the stories are under 3,000 words, though some stretch into rather epic adventures of 7K-15K words.
~ 7-7-7. Since these stories were penned over a period of 7 years, there shall be 7 volumes, each one containing stories from each of the 7 years.
Book Overview: Supernal Stories — Thresholds of Transformation
Story Concepts:
🌀 Cosmic Entity
📺 Reality Experiment
⚖️ Moral Dilemma
🤯 Existential Crisis
🔄 Cycle of Trauma
🌌 Unknowable Horror
🧠 Consciousness Voyage
Characters & Archetypes:
🎭 Reluctant Messiah
🤖 Synthetic Soul
🗡️ Weary Warrior
🧙♂️ Creator x Tyrant
🕵️ Brooding Detective
😈 Charismatic Tempter
🧭 Eternal Wanderer
Narrative Tropes & Devices:
📖 Unreliable Narrator
💥 Ironic Reversal
🪞 Confrontation with Self
🎮 Life as a Game
⚙️ High-Tech, Low-Life
🔮 Prophecy & Burden
🏃 Fugitive Misadventure
Thematic Arcs:
⚫️ Void Within
♾️ Search for Meaning
🤝 Bond of Companionship
💔 Price of Power
🌫️ Liminal Space
🧬 Body Horror
✍️ Power of Creation
Settings & Phenomena:
🏙️ Rain-Slicked Dystopia
🌲 Sentient Wilderness
🚀 Derelict Ship
🏛️ Brutalist Labyrinth
🧪 Corporate Conspiracy
☣️ Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland
🏔️ Impossible Architecture
SUPERNAL STORIES = anthological literary thought experiments across time, space, and consciousness cast with introspective and sometimes maddened characters.
1-sentence pitch:
*SUPERNAL STORIES* is a collection of stories about lives from beyond, strange souls & weird transformations, and the responsibility of existence.
1-paragraph pitch:
*SUPERNAL STORIES* comprise 7 volumes of inventively experimental short-form storytelling. There is a chronology of progress to this anthology of fiction written over seven years of worldly transformation (2017-2024). Genres presided include fantasy x sci-fi x horror and more. Themes presented include creation, identity, transformation, psychosis, ethereal mysteries, reality-blurring extrasensory perception, and the endless search for existential meaning. As the pages turn, concepts expand and visions illuminate; steadily, word by word, fresh universes and esoteric concepts shall be borne into the realms of your consciousness. These stories aim to detail the human condition from richly discerning angles and often feature supernatural twists.
Target Audience:
Teens+ / for fans of The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, and the short fiction of Kafka, Bradbury, PKD, King, and Barker.
Premises:
- Volume I — Meet thunderous kaiju, cosmic librarians, poet gods, existential snipers, and philosophically-minded A.I. golems, among others…
- Volume II — Investigate a corporate conspiracy with a detective android, play a poker game for your soul, delve a fantastique dream journal, embody a creepy cosmic entity, witness the ignition of an interplanetary war via Mars rover, experience the consciousness of a messianic figure, meet your doppelgänger on a forest path…
- Volume III — So a jester, an auditor, a composer, an astronaut, and a man who was just buried alive walk into a bar…
- Volume IV — Follow Exen, the ultimate super-agent and wielder of the Laserwatch, as he pulls off a high-tech heist for an indestructible orb, fights for his freedom in a bestial arena, sneaks into a billionaire’s villa, battles terrorists in a 24-hour race against time, hacks a mega-city by playing a chess game, purges a haunted house that leads straight to the Underworld, and single-handedly annihilates an army of the undead on an alien planet.
- Volume V — A collection of intimate conversations and solitary struggles where a notebook can erase your past, a silhouette may be your muse, and the greatest battles are fought in quiet bars and momentous self-labyrinths.
- Volume VI — Immoral experiments and mad ape science; lakeborne witches and hallucinogenic prayers; post-apocalyptic underground guilds and ritual combat that saves democracy.
- Volume VII — Featuring tales of imagination and intrigue such as “Psykimancer,” “Fernweh,” “The Crimson Collector,” “Parasocialites,” and “Tha Ballad of Luster Zobe, Man About Multiverse”!
Dylan Orosz 