In the foreseeable future, America has legalized a new simulation machine called S.T.E.A.M., which allows users to play out any fantasy their minds can conjure--whether it is something legal, or as most often the case, something illegal. This story follows different, ordinary characters and their vices, in a country where their most carnal desires can materialize with a simple flick of a switch. LOVE, AMERICAN STYLE delves deep into some of the hardest questions we must all ask ourselves: How evil would you become if you had your country's approval? Where would you draw the line? Would there even exist a line at all?

When Kevin Cooper and his troublemaking friends venture off to explore Ashmore house, Victoria tags along to protect her classmate, Icarus, from the manipulative tricks of Kevin and his posse. But the irresponsibility of their actions catches up to them when Icarus suddenly goes missing. Did he run home in fear, or was he victim to a supernatural misdeed? The answer becomes clear when Victoria and the others find themselves trapped and tormented by the psychotic ghost of a man who murdered his family a hundred years ago. Now she and Kevin will be forced to set their differences aside if they are to survive the night and save their friends. And through the haunting acts of demonic possession, clairvoyance, and a palette of other deadly horrors, they'll discover that they have a deeper link to the house...one that will threaten to tear the fabric that separates this life from the realm of the dead.

This book is for a mature audience only. 18+Guest author for volume 8, Benjamin Card, contributes a horror fairy tale entitled "The Girl and the Hag". A young girl is orphaned and sent to live with her grandmother, who is not all cookies and kindness. Will the girl escape, or will the witch recruit her young granddaughter? Berti contributes a bizarre tale of a pirate who flees the seas and the terrible monsters who will stop at nothing to find him.Alex gives us a tale of a little blind girl and her friend the flying eyeball. Tune in each month in 2016!

Kirk Stone is dead. So is his wife. Now he wants to spend eternity with her. There's just one problem: he has to convince the judge to let him. From author Benjamin Card comes another mind-bender of a tale, with the ultimate question of what happens to us after death? The answer may surprise you.

Benjamin Card's first collection of short stories, in the vein of YA, contemporary fantasy and horror, and psychological drama. In the title story, Angelo and his wife Kimberly have been having marital issues for some time. Things take a catastrophic turn when one morning an invisible entity in the sky claims Kim's unconditional love...and that of every other female on Earth. Now the women are shouting, crying, and ripping each other apart to earn the love of this mysterious and seemingly non-existent being in the sky. And Angelo, along with every man in the world, needs to figure out a way to snap the women back to reality before it's too late. These ten subtly unnerving stories all dig deep into the uninhibited recesses of the mind. In "Blind Date", a man discovers that his dream girl may live in a different dimension; "I'll Spend It With You" is a brief glimpse of the afterlife, where two dead lovers may be forced to spend eternity separated; and in the nerve-twisting "Late-Night Snack", young Dennis is constantly visited by his demon-possessed father during the night. Jennifer Serling, niece of the legendary Rod Serling, provided the foreword.

"As humanity embarks on the monumental task of exploring the heavens and colonizing other star systems, it is imperative that we approach this endeavor with our utmost dedication and foresight. The survival and prosperity of future generations depend on the actions we take today. We must harness our collective ingenuity, compassion, and courage to ensure that our expansion into the cosmos is not only successful but also sustainable and ethical. This pivotal moment in our history calls for us to put our best foot forward, creating a legacy that honors the indomitable spirit of human exploration and discovery." - Dr. Katherine Tange, Committee for Planning and Collaboration, The Traverseon Project A fragile peace had emerged in the years after the uniquely capable and ethically minded artificial intelligence created by Dr. Maxwell Clarke had been allowed to enter the networks and systems of most of the planet's countries-and had necessarily driven its way into the assets of certain oppressive regimes as well. The democratic nations of the Earth had then been forced to decide how and where this uniquely benevolent and gifted entity should have a place in the world and, as humankind expanded its reach farther out into the stars, the entirety of the Universe. This becomes a critical issue when a new threat to both organic and electronic beings raises its fearsome head, putting every peace-loving entity at risk.

What would you do if, every time you fell asleep, you woke up in another body, half a world away? For Frank Harkins and Mwamuila, it's not an idle question, but reality. One a successful businessman, the other a poor African man, and neither wanting anything more than to finally, at last, Wake Up.

"We are in an endless race to build combat machines, and whichever side builds more-and more capable-machines will doubtlessly maintain its lead for some time. Truly capable robots are extremely expensive to construct, extremely expensive to repair, and extremely easy to destroy. The human body is one of the most efficient machines both on the face of this planet and in the stars above, and it is highly available. The trick has been to find a sufficiently reliable means for harnessing human bodies to give their actions robotic levels of accuracy, and then to enhance the bodies so they could perform at robotic levels of strength." - Dr. Aoi Hinimoto, Lead Author, Command Activated Program Charter, Global Alliance Command The free world has created a program by which virtually any able-bodied human can be turned into a special operations soldier. Unfortunately, when humanity develops any grand new capability, there will always be those who will use it for evil. Now, even citizens having special needs have been put at risk by a shadowy organization operating within the Command Activated program...

"falling" is a poetry and prose collection book based on the September through December 2012 issues of Down in the dirt magazine (byline: "revealing all your dirty little secrets", founded 2000, http://scars.tv/dirt, was originally a ection of cc&d magazine from Scars Publications in 1994) into this poetry and prose (and 1 piece of artwork), published by Scars Publications. Contributors in this colledction book inlcude Janet Kuypers, P. Keith Boran, Rex Bromfield, Jon Brunette, Eric Burbridge, Benjamin Card, Jim Carson, Michael Cavazos, Benjamin Christensen, Brittany Clark, Kenneth DiMaggio, Annabelle Dura, Kristen Forbes, Cassia Gaden Gilmartin, Chad Grant, Michael Greeley, Travis Green, Michael Gruber, Nathan Hahs, Fritz Hamilton, Jack Hill, Christopher Hanson, William Wright Harris, Shaun Horton, Marlon Jackson, Eleanor Leonne Bennett (with art), Loukia M. Janavaras, Larry January, Christopher Reinhardt Krueger, Christie Lambert, Lasher Lane, Kathryn Leetch, Brian Looney, Gary Lundy, Sarah Lucille Marchant, Denny E. Marshall, Kevin Moore, Zach Murphy, Jeffrey Park, Steven Pelcman, John Ragusa, Larry Schug, Alessandra Siraco, Liam Spencer, Bob Strother, Brian Sullivan, Don Thompson, Frank Traverse, Mark Vogel, Nicholas Viglietta, Allen M Weber, Megan Willoughby, and Bill Wolak.