StephenRuddy

'In the gravest of times, at the end of human history, only the most ridiculous may survive.' A group of students from Huddersfield party so hard they miss the end of the world. They proceed to keep partying and fail their way through the post-apocalypse. This is a testament to the short, strange lives of these misfit anti-socialites and a higher education in how not to do it. Dead Kings Of Nothing is the dark, offbeat and eccentric story of a group of students who come to after a wild house party to find that the world around them is desolate and abandoned. The hapless bunch of ne’er-do-well students awaken hungover into a world where a disaster has stricken their home town of Huddersfield. All around are signs of a panicked mass exodus of the town and a looting of its buildings. The few people left have become rabid and feral with a strange kind of sickness that has turned them mindless and ghoulish in appearance. Perhaps some military strike or invasion occurred; the student friends can only guess because during this time they had such a wild house party they could barely remember it. Whatever happened, they missed it all and can only speculate at the devastation left behind. Now, with no adult supervision or guidance there is nothing left for the motley bunch of decadents except figure out where the next meal (and drink) comes from. Each member of the group has different ideas on how to proceed, few agree with each other, and collectively they don’t have the competence to carry out any plan due to their continual debauchery and smoking of a strange narcotic herb they cultivate in the garden shed. The students try something, fail, try something bigger, fail harder, then try something so spectacular that they fail so hard things could never be the same again. This, to them, is progress.

The labours of the six miners of The Righteous Anglian Mining Company of Our Lady’s Hallowed Earth show no signs of ending. The miners' ore seams are drying up and the discovery of new Lodestone deposits puts them on a collision course with a greedy industrialist and an obsessive artisan who harness the otherworldy powers of the caverns. Caught in the complex and fraught relationship between the two, and with constant interference from the caverns' magical inhabitants, the miners must once again dig deep into their resourcefulness and test the depths of their guile and courage. This title is available to keep through Amazon Kindle: https://www.stephenruddy.com/lodestone-book-2-excerpt

Six miners are sent on a program of indentured servitude for private company The Righteous Anglian Mining Company of Our Lady’s Hallowed Earth. Their task is to mine a particular kind of iron ore - Lodestone - which has the unique property of being able to absorb magical energy. They will work to pay off their debt to the company and earn their freedom, but must contend with the dangers, and wonders, that they encounter in these extraordinary mines. ​A crumbling, ruined chapel shall be their new base of operations in the vast caverns beneath the ground. There, they are greeted by someone who claims to be a Company veteran who has made the caverns their home. Foul, feral, and secretive; the miners will decide how much trust can they put in their new guide who tells them that he is officially dead, off the grid, and desires retribution on the Company that sent him there. The miners' time in the huge network of caves shall bring them to face otherworldly forces and malevolent entities. While not natural fighters, they must use all their resourcefulness to overcome the dilemmas that obstruct their work. All the while, they must deal with the supernatural residents of the caves; creatures from English folklore who were thought lost to the world. Their journey ahead is what they can learn and gain from each encounter, and how they can use this to escape the unending toil into which they have been trapped. (6 parts: concluded) This title is available to keep through Amazon Kindle https://www.stephenruddy.com/lodestone-book-1-excerpt