Deep Core Industries

Deep Core Industries is a science-fiction tabletop role-playing game, set in the 24th century and extending into the 38th century. By the 24th century, humanity had expanded throughout the Solar System by terraforming worlds, establishing orbital habitats, and engaging in extensive mining. To endure extreme environments and isolated deep-space conditions, humanity developed advanced cybernetics, robotics, genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence. These advancements led to the creation of various specialized populations: engineered Canids and Felari, broad populations of Geneborn descendants, autonomous Androids, heavily augmented Cyborgs, and Holograms whose personalities are sustained via expensive Holographic Cores.  

Centuries of relentless expansion eventually drained the Solar System's viable natural resources, sparking a critical energy and material crisis. In response, major governments and private corporations united under Deep Core Industries (DCI) to construct the Dark Nebula—a massive, five-mile-long mining and exploration vessel housing over 1,700 crew members. Operating in opposition to DCI's monopoly, corporate rivals like the Atlas Resource Consortium (ARC) engaged in espionage, tech theft, and sabotage against DCI operations. Built in the Kuiper Belt, the Dark Nebula launched in the year 3779 on an FTL journey to the Large Magellanic Cloud. 

Arriving in 3784, the diverse crew of biological, cybernetic, and digital specialists is awakened from stasis to secure humanity's survival by establishing mining operations, recovering resources, and scanning for terraformable planets. The core mechanics of the game rely on a roll-under 2d6 system. Characters calculate a Target Number by combining a specific Attribute score with a Skill score. 

To succeed, players must roll equal to or lower than their Target Number on 2d6. The dice rolled are categorized as a Boon die and a Bane die. Rolling low leads to success, while generating Boon tokens for the players or Bane tokens for the Game Master (referred to as the AI) depending on which die shows the higher result. 

Players can spend Boon tokens to adjust Target Numbers or advance their stats between game sessions. The AI uses accumulated Bane tokens to introduce sudden environmental hazards, plot complications, and narrative obstacles.

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William The Great: A Children's Fantasy Adventure About Courage and Self-Belief

 

William The Great:

A Children's Fantasy Adventure About Courage and Self-Belief

What if the greatest battle you ever faced was learning to believe in yourself?

William has fears, doubts, and challenges that sometimes make him wonder if he is strong enough. But when he enters a wondrous forest filled with fairies, magical creatures, a loyal dragon, and a mysterious darkness, he is about to discover that being a hero has very little to do with what you can, or cannot do.

Known in this extraordinary world as William the Great, William joins his trusted friend Alex the Magnificent and Princess Sydney on a dangerous quest to confront Eric the Horrible, a dark presence that feeds on fear, doubt, insecurity, and sadness. With each obstacle William faces, he must find the courage to keep moving forward, even when a voice inside tells him he isn't good enough.

But defeating the darkness will require something greater than a sword.

William the Great. A book about overcoming fear facing adversity and growing. The book addresses some common themes of insecurity, bullying, the power of friendship and self belief. The book has a plot twist the main character is actually disabled but still finds the strength, courage and self belief to rise above.

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William The Great:

A Children's Fantasy Adventure

About Courage and Self-Belief

on Amazon / Kindle 

Little Elara: The Magic of the Butterfly Garden

 

 

Little Elara:

The Magic of the Butterfly Garden

Little Elara has been watching the butterflies. They visit hundreds of flowers, but they do not land on every one. In The Magic of the Butterfly Garden, Little Elara discovers her own Butterfly Feeling: a moment to listen to herself before making a choice. A gentle story about kindness, friendship and learning that caring about others does not mean forgetting yourself. For the mother reading beside her, there may be a few words she wishes someone had read to her years ago. Book Two in the Little Elara Series Following Little Elara: A Story for Brave Little Hearts

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Little Elara: The Magic of the Butterfly Garden

on Amazon 

Dying to Serve: Confessions of Suicides (Attempted/Completed) Within Our Military Ranks

 

Dying to Serve:

Confessions of Suicides (Attempted/Completed)

Within Our Military Ranks

Dying to Serve is a candid compilation of twelve moving stories written to honor the memories of United States service members who were facing dire circumstances and chose to take their own lives (attempted or completed). Many of these circumstances were temporary issues that could be mitigated with the right assistance provided. The purpose of sharing these stories and the author's CARE paradigm is to help eliminate these tragedies in the future. CARE stands for Concern, Awareness, Referral and Evaluate, and it reflects a well-reasoned and thoughtful approach to the mental health crisis occurring in both military and civilian populations. This must-read book encourages us all to remain vigilant, act, when necessary to truly help CARE for each other and potentially save lives!

TUCSON, AZ — September 2026 — Local writer N.K. Stephens announces the release of his impactful book; Dying to Serve: Confessions of Suicides (Attempted/Completed) Within Our Military Ranks, available worldwide today. 12 short stories depicting situations that forced some military members to make a decision that impacted their branch of service, themselves, families and friends.

Drawing from a 28-year military career, N.K. Stephens crafts a compilation of compelling stories to ultimately raise awareness about a crisis impacting our military. A crisis seldom discussed outside those who serve. The stories are creative, entertaining and thought-provoking. Readers will connect with the characters and their circumstances. Not every story ends tragically, however each story ends with the same decision. The author uses an acronym: CARE, to strike a chord with readers leaving them to answer questions on how they could potentially help someone contemplating suicide and possibly save a life!  

Dying to Serve is an independent release targeting military members, families, friends, acquaintances and civilians with no military ties at all.  This book is to raise awareness on a subject that many might initially be hesitant to read about. In the end the reader is encouraged by the author to take a moment and recognize using CARE could eliminate this crisis altogether!

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on Amazon / Kindle / Kindle Unlimited 

Bid Whist at Midnight

    

 Bid Whist at Midnight

By Marva Washington

History does not only live-in textbooks—it lives in the people who had to survive it.

A card table, an empty chair, and nearly twenty years of silence provide the deceptively intimate setting for Marva Washington’s Bid Whist at Midnight. What begins as a late-night reunion among former college friends Sardis, Grace, and Dorcus gradually becomes something far more revealing: an examination of friendship, memory, identity, and the history people carry long after the defining moment has passed.

The novel opens in February 1988, when the women reunite for the game that once helped bind them together in college. Their familiar rhythm cannot completely disguise what has changed. Four chairs surround the table, but Taletha will not be joining them, and the absence immediately gives the gathering emotional weight. 

From there, Washington reaches back into their college years, placing personal stories alongside the social unrest of 1968. Student demonstrations against segregation, debates over Black identity, changing attitudes toward beauty and belonging, and the pressures surrounding the Civil Rights era become part of the characters’ everyday lives rather than distant historical footnotes. The friends themselves do not always agree on how change should happen. Taletha embraces activism, while Grace weighs the fight for equality against the possibility of losing the education her family sacrificed to provide. 

That tension gives Bid Whist at Midnight particular relevance for contemporary readers and writers. Washington demonstrates how historical fiction can make large social movements personal. History is not presented only through famous names, protests, or political ideas; it is felt through friendships, family expectations, romantic relationships, ambitions, prejudice, grief, and the decisions ordinary people make when society itself is changing.

The card game becomes especially meaningful in that context. Bid whist is more than recreation. During college, the foursome grows from an uneasy grouping into friends who share personal trials, changing beliefs, and the complications of becoming adults. Their story suggests that meaningful relationships are not necessarily built on complete agreement, but on the willingness to listen, challenge assumptions, and recognize experiences beyond one’s own.

That idea carries considerable weight today. In a society still wrestling with questions of race, identity, inequality, belonging, gender, and generational trauma, fiction can create room for conversations that statistics and headlines alone cannot provide. Stories such as Washington’s remind contemporary writers of the value of preserving lived perspectives while giving readers the opportunity to encounter history through human consequences.

Bid Whist at Midnight offers readers something to carry beyond its final page: the understanding that the past rarely stays neatly in the past—and sometimes healing begins when people finally return to the table.

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Free Life Skills Starter Guide to Help Teens Feel Confident and Prepared After High School

Free Life Skills Starter Guide to Help Teens Feel Confident and Prepared After High School

Is Your Teen Ready for Life After High School?

Whether it's college, work, a gap year, or simply becoming more independent, life after high school comes with new decisions, responsibilities, and challenges that young people aren't always prepared for.

The Life Skills for Teens After High School series was created to help teens and young adults build the confidence, independence, and practical skills they need for that transition.

The main book includes 101 practical tips covering real-world skills such as managing money and responsibilities, communication, decision-making, health and wellbeing, digital choices, relationships, and handling life more independently.

The companion Guided Journal helps teens take those lessons further by writing, reflecting, and considering how they can apply them in their own lives.

Want to see what the series is about? Start with a FREE guide.

The Essential Starter Pack gives teens and parents a preview of 5 practical tips from the full book, with simple, realistic guidance and actions they can start using right away.

Whether they're preparing for college, a job, a gap year, or whatever comes next, it's a practical introduction to greater confidence, independence, and real-world readiness.

Click Here to Get the FREE Essential Starter Pack

 

   

Undo Me

At twenty-three, Emilia returns to the small town she once tried to escape, determined to begin again. With a new apartment, a place at City University, and dreams of becoming a writer, she is ready to take control of her future.
Then she meets Leon.

Dark, magnetic, and infuriatingly guarded, Leon is more than Emilia's across-the-hall neighbour. He is also her college project partner and the one man who refuses to be charmed by her beauty. Their attraction is immediate, their clashes electric, and staying away from each other soon becomes impossible.

But there is something unsettlingly familiar about Leon. Behind his cold smiles and wounded eyes lies a truth he refuses to reveal-a secret rooted in their shared past that Emilia no longer remembers.
As desire deepens into love, Leon's silence threatens to poison everything between them. Because some wounds never truly disappear, and when the past finally resurfaces, Emilia must decide whether their love was ever real-or whether the man she trusted entered her life only to destroy it.

Some people break your heart. Others undo you completely.

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on Amazon / Kindle / Kindle Unlimited