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eBook Category: Fantasy/Young Adult
eBook Description: At the age of thirteen, half-hobgoblin Bounty Fenetre found herself on her own, which was fine by her. There was a cute chainmail number at the smithy's she had her eye on, once she figured out how to fix it so it bared her midriff. Then Ma Fortuna adopted her and she met Luc, her new foster brother. Four years later, at the age of seventeen, Bounty is older and wiser, and really wants to Seek Her Fortune. She and Luc ambush a hero and steal his armor, because as everyone knows, the first step to becoming a hero is to look like one. The second step is to be recognized as a hero by the world at large, which surprisingly, isn't as hard as it sounds. Mocklore is a land where magic crashes and smashes through the landscape, exploding with abrasive sounds and colors, the ideal place for a clever half-hobgoblin fosterling and a charismatic hero-in-progress to make their names. But what happens when your reputation gets too big for your boots?

eBook Publisher: Scrybe Press/Scrybe Press, Published: Chapbook, 2004
Fictionwise Release Date: September 2008

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When I was thirteen years old, my mother ran away from home. No one was surprised. She had always been the flighty type. I was old enough to take care of myself anyway, always running off somewhere on an adventure or a scrape. Truth is, I was hardly home at all and when she left our village it is entirely possible that she just forgot about me.

Or maybe it was me she was running away from.

In any case, I was prepared to go it alone. I'd been planning to Seek My Fortune at some stage, so why not now? There was this cute little chainmail number at the smithy's which would suit me perfectly--well, it would once I figured out how to fix it so it bared my midriff. And boots, I was going to need some seriously slinky boots if I was going to make my way in the world. Yeah, I had it all sorted out.

Ma Fortuna had other ideas.

Everyone knows Ma Fortuna and no one ever argues with her. She wasn't born in our village, she just turned up one day, married old "Ticker" Triclover and started producing kids by the bucketful. In the year my mother left, Ma Fortuna was a recent widow and just about the most respectable person in the cosmos. There was no way she was going to let a thirteen year old girl make her own way in the world--not without a good hot supper inside her, anyway. Minutes after the news of my mother's departure spread through the village, Ma Fortuna was standing on my doorstep with a hot kettle, a handful of dusters and a look of extreme determination.

Before the tea was cold, I had somehow agreed to come and live with her family. Don't ask me how it happened. I remember trying to explain what my plans were, but she just kept dusting things. The subject was closed.

So I was hustled with my few worldly belongings into the big, rambling house on the hill. I was pushed into a room teeming with the Triclover clan, ranging in ages from twelve to three years old. I found myself staring across the room at Luco (Luc to his friends), Ma's firstborn and the one with the most right to protest me being dragged into his family.

We had always been on opposite sides of the playground, Luc and I. While I was causing havoc with the Void twins among the girls, he was kinging it over the boys. I had never been able to figure out what they saw in him, a skinny little nobody like that. What had he done to make himself leader of the pack?

That evening, with the Triclover kids crowding around to set the table, most of them crashing into me as if I was already accepted as one of them, I caught Luc looking at me. He had a funny little face, a long nose and very serious eyes. When he saw me staring, he smiled. Not the slow, strange smile of a boy discovering girls for the first time--I'd seen enough of those that year.

No, it was nice. He looked for a moment like he was considering the possibility of liking me--and suddenly I liked him right back.