Update 2019-06-29.

I must confess that I've become a complete and total Audible addict. Last year I went through fifty books, and I'm definitely on track to break that this year. It's so good that it's replaced music for most of my listening time. A lot of people like what I write, far more than I ever expected when I first made this account to post the first couple chapters of Oath of Blood, so I figured you may want to know what I've been reading. If you've never tried audio books, give it a shot. A good story with a good narrator is downright infectious. *I am not sponsored by, affiliated with, or compensated by Audible in any way, but I still feel compelled to share the good stuff to my readers.*

Here's a few of my favorites thus far:

Destroyermen Series - Taylor Anderson (audio by William Dufris) (Ongoing): An old Wickes class destroyer running from the IJN in 1942 gets sent to an alternate earth, where humans are not the only intelligent species. Lots of good old fashioned naval combat, uplifting(bloody iron age aircraft carriers), and discovery. Solid lineup of characters and a very well crafted world. Hands down my favorite alternate history series so far. The series is notable for giving new life to real ships that never got a chance in our timeline.

Arisen Series - Michael Stephen Fuchs (audio by RC Bray) (Main series complete): The best zombie apocalypse story ever done. A former soviet bioweapons scientist sells a nasty virus to Al Shabab in Somalia. Al Shabab mishandles it, and the end of the world begins in Hargeisa. Heaps of excellent special forces combat, and zombies that don't become irrelevant.

Artemis - Andy Weir (audio by Rosario Dawson): The world's first colony on Luna is a rough frontier town. One girl working the docks gets in way over her head as a result of her part time smuggling operation, and has to do some seriously crazy stuff to make it right.

Nantucket Series - SM Stirling (audio by Todd McLaren) (Complete Trilogy) - In 1998, the island of Nantucket gets teleported back to 1250 BC. Exploration, discovery, plenty of war, and one of the most unique forms of torture ever conceived.(with a jaguar). Everywhere from ancient Britain to Achaean Greece to Babylon and beyond.

FREE STORY IDEAS: Anyone that ends up here can take any of the below ideas and do whatever you want with them. I do not have the time or the will to write them.

Warcraft (Wrath Rewind):

The horror of the Scourge was unprecedented in living memory. Great, powerful Lordaeron, devoured by the Lich King, and transformed into the rotting Plaguelands. Eternal Quel'Thalas, brutalized and violated by Arthas, and his legions of the dead. Through it all, Sylvanas Windrunner saw, lived, and unlived the worst of the Third War. Now, after years of war and suffering, the fronts are closing in on Icecrown Citadel. Sylvanas herself leads the assault on the Frozen Throne, once again facing her nightmare. The battle wears on, and the Scourge gain the advantage against the allied forces, but Arthas himself cannot escape the Banshee Queen. Her blades break against Frostmourne, but the cursed runeblade cracks under the strain, before itself shattering against her armor. The countless stolen souls and power explode outward, and the world goes white.

The Banshee Queen and the Lich King, their souls both among those stolen by Frostmourne, are thrown out of time by the unholy energy. Each awakens alive, unbound, but forever changed by the unfathomable suffering they have endured. Sylvanas awakens in Silvermoon, a living Quel'Dorei woman in the comfort of her own bed. Arthas, holding Light's Vengeance, returns to find himself in Strahnbrad, a Blackrock Orc swinging a crude axe at his face. In the days before the Third War, how will it's most ruthless leaders fare with the task of returning to the living, and facing the horror all over again. Will they walk the familiar paths, waiting for the perfect moment to strike, or strive to remake fate as each sees fit?

Code Geass: Time Travel.

Something misfires at the Sword of Akasha after Charles and Marianne die, sending Lelouch back to six months before his mother's assassination. With the truth revealed, he plots the destruction of both parents. Using Geass, he manipulates the palace guard to conduct the assassination of Marianne himself, saving Nunnally and ensuring his mother's permanent death. He makes sure Guinevere and Cornelia are implicated as a suitable distraction while he builds his own power base within Britannia with the goal of defeating the Geass Directorate.

Code Geass/Civilization:

In his final moments, Lelouch vi Britannia made a wish. A wish to return to the beginning. However, fate can be a bitch at times. Instead of returning to the beginning of his revolution, or even to the beginning of his life, Lelouch finds himself armed with both Code and Geass...in the year 5000 BC. With immortality, mind control, and an understanding of the world seven thousand years in the future, can Lelouch overcome the enormous challenge of building a nation from scratch to conquer the world? What of the other Code Bearers and Geass users? How will the ancient world react to such immense power? Can Lelouch vi Britannia build a Civilization that will stand the test of time?

Code Geass: Captured (Lelouch x Sayoko) Dark

Lelouch and Nunnally are discovered and forced back to Britannia. Charles keeps Nunnally secretly as a leash when he forces Lelouch back into the royal family. He becomes the Emperor's pawn once again, and has effectively lost everything for the third time. He starts to mentally and emotionally crack under the pressure. He is forced into a politically arranged marriage to Charles' benefit. Sayoko, having sworn her life and service to Lelouch years earlier, follows her master to Britannia on her own. Upon discovering that rescuing him is impossible, she infiltrates the Aries Villa, assassinates his personal assistant, and replaces the dead woman. The prince clings to the ever loyal Japanese assassin as he tries to survive his own worst fears. In the middle of this nightmare, they become far more than just master and servant.

Code Geass: Lelouch, Emperor of China.

Lelouch and Nunnally are separated when they are exiled from Britannia. Nunnally is sent to Japan, and Lelouch is sent to the Chinese Federation as further punishment for his defiance, and so never has any connection to Japan. CC follows Lelouch to China. When Japan is invaded by the Empire, Nunnally goes missing in the fog of war, and she is presumed dead. Lelouch views this as an outright betrayal by Britannia and the royal family. He forms a contract with CC much earlier than anticipated, in order to obtain the power necessary for revenge. The ex prince turns the High Eunuchs into his slaves through Geass, and uses them to fake his own death and rule China by proxy. Seven years later, Zero (Either Kallen or Naoto), kills Clovis and absorbs the broken remnants of the JLF. The Black Knights quickly grow into the strongest rebel army in Britannian territory, with advanced weapons imported from the EU. Cornelia is sent to fight the Black Knights. By this time, Lelouch has total control of China, India, and Korea, and is the supreme leader of the Federation in all but name. Having waited long enough, he decides to add Japan, and its sakuradite, to his empire. He orders a massive invasion of Kyushu as the opening shots of a global war against the nation and family that betrayed him. Japan becomes a three way fight to the death between China, Britannia, and the Black Knights.

Warcraft: (Warcraft 3 AU)

The Scourge is unstoppable. Lordaeron's towns and cities are reduced to ruins, their occupants risen in service of the Lich King. King Terenas is dead, his armies broken and scattered. Plague cauldrons spew endless clouds of toxic corruption across the land. For Arthas, the first Death Knight, victory is within reach as his endless legions of undead overrun the strongest human kingdom. His next target is Quel'Thalas, and the Sunwell. Initially, the High Elves fair little better than their human neighbors. Zombies and Ghouls swarm through their forests, killing everything they can find. Faced with extinction, King Anasterian decides that if Quel'Thalas is to fall, the Scourge will not have it either. Using ancient techniques forbidden for thousands of years, he draws an extreme amount of power from the Sunwell to launch an apocalyptic magical attack at the cost of his own life. As Sylvanas and her rangers prepare to make a last stand at the gates of Silvermoon, a beam of light many times brighter than the sun strikes to the south. In an instant, 90% of Quel'Thalas is burned to glass. Everything is evaporated by the explosion, including the Scourge army. Arthas, leading from the front, survives with only a few dozen ghouls, and is forced to retreat as Sylvanas launches a merciless counterattack. Silvermoon holds, and the Sunwell is denied to the Scourge. With the Lich King's plan in ruins, and a third of his Scourge obliterated, can they be defeated for good? Can the survivors of Lordaeron rally and reclaim their ruined kingdom before it is completely consumed? Without Kel'Thuzad, can the Burning Legion find an alternate path of invasion? Can fate be changed, or is the rise of Arthas an inevitability that has only been delayed?

Halo/Warcraft 3:

Ambushed by a fleet of Jul 'Mdama's Covenant warships, the CAS class ship Shadow of Intent is heavily outnumbered. The carrier attempts to perform an emergency slipspace jump to escape. However, multiple direct hits on the engines cause the slipspace field to destabilize. The ship returns to normal space, just in time to crash into the surface of an unknown world. Upon inspecting their ship, the Sangheili discover that the slipspace drive is severely damaged, shield capacitors fried, and their sublight engines completely destroyed. Main reactors and weapons remain functional, although most are blocked by the ground beneath them. As misfortune would have it, they have landed in Lordaeron, just north of Corin's Crossing in what would become known as the Eastern Plaguelands, as the Scourge is devouring the kingdom. Immediately assaulted from all sides by waves of Scourge, the striking similarity to the Flood parasite provokes a vicious response. The Arbiter declares that the undead be destroyed, but without any functional ships to glass infected areas they must do so the hard way. It is a daunting task in their condition. Completely cut off and surrounded with only a disabled ship to call home, the vast superiority of Sangheili technology can only do so much with no hope of reinforcement or resupply. Caught in the middle of the brutal Third War, their survival, much less a return to Sanghelios, is far from guaranteed.

Star Wars:

Rebel forces conduct a massive series of bombings on Imperial troops during the tenth Empire Day. Some are captured alive, and Vader interrogates them, discovering that an unknown rebel leader is on Alderaan. Vader travels to Alderaan and summons the royal family and other officials. Ten year old Princess Leia, who has suffered from recurring nightmares of a lightsaber duel over lava her whole life, has a full blown Force vision in Vader's presence. He taps her mind and they both effectively relive the events on Mustafar. In a momentary lapse due to shock, Vader is unable to prevent Leia from seeing into his own mind. Leia discovers that her whole life is a lie, and Vader uncovers the depths of Sidious's deceptions. With absolutely no training to hold her back, Leia lashes out at her adoptive parents, who she never had a good relationship with anyway. She manages to hit Bail Organa with a blast of lightning, knocking herself out from the strain. Vader kills everyone except for Bail and Breha to cover her outburst of dark side power from Sidious. Vader is then faced with the challenge of having a Force sensitive daughter that he is utterly desperate to keep hidden from the Emperor.

Guild Wars/X Crossover:

The awakening of the Elder Dragons proved to be a threat to every civilization on Tyria. Surrounded by such overwhelmingly powerful enemies, The Pact was formed by the five strongest species in continental Tyria. By combining their strengths and vastly different technologies, The Pact kills the Elder Dragon Zhaitan with Charr aircraft and Asura energy weapons. Victory only serves to strengthen the bonds between them, and they turn their might upon the other Elder Dragons. Half a century after they began, every known dragon has fallen to the alliance. However, they only control a small portion of the planet, and airships are sent to explore the world. Dozens more Elder Dragons are discovered, and a further three centuries of continuous warfare ensues. When the last is defeated, Tyria knows relative peace for the first time in its history. With the massive advances in technology driven by constant conflict, they have everything they need to take the next step. Advanced kinetic and energy weapons, two forms of FTL in the form of Asura Gates and line of sight teleportation, and extensive experience in ship building. An Asura Krewe is the first to break atmosphere in a modified airship. Within a generation, colonies are founded on the nearest moon. The Tyrian Alliance takes to the stars, and who knows what's out there.

Guild Wars/GATE Crossover:

2025, a magical gate appears without warning in Ginza. Within moments, monstrous plant creatures swarm out from the portal, indiscriminately attacking everything in sight. Tokyo is transformed into a battlefield as all available SDF and US military units respond. The unknown enemy proves to be terrifyingly resilient, with even their common infantry taking a dozen rounds or more from standard small arms to go down. In the sky above, gunships do battle with fast and agile creatures resembling vine dragons. Casualties exceed twenty five thousand in the two days it takes to fully repel the invaders. The Japanese find out the hard way that the gate is unnaturally resilient, and decide not to deploy the devastating level of firepower necessary to destroy it. The SDF launches an expeditionary force through the magical portal, and they find themselves in a desert environment infested with the creatures. This is the Silverwastes, and the armies of Mordremoth are like nothing ever seen on Earth. How will they fare, caught in a strange world full of dragons and monsters, where magic can often keep pace with advanced technology?

Destiny (The Taken King AU): (Potential Mass Effect crossover)

Discovering the power of Oryx and his fleet, Queen Mara Sov chooses the preservation of her people over assaulting the Hive Dreadnaught. The Awoken of the Reef, along with the remaining loyal Fallen, bolstered by defectors from the House of Exile, prepare to run from the Taken King. With the assistance of Dead Orbit, Mara Sov assembles the largest and most powerful fleet in the Sol system. Using a Cabal strike against Oryx as cover, they flee Sol for the Epsilon Eridani system, where they find a habitable moon of a gas giant to land and rebuild.

(ME Crossover) A century after their exodus, the Systems Alliance, controlling two stars and made up of Dead Orbit, Mara Sov's Awoken, and her rebranded Fallen House of Exodus, uncover a Mass Relay, and come into hostile contact with a rising Batarian Hegemony. With Guardians and their completely alien technology, devoid of Element Zero, the Systems Alliance finds itself at war with an aggressive race of hostile slavers. Although heavily outnumbered, the Systems Alliance has the memories of their near extinction in their home system still fresh in their minds. How will the Batarians fare against three advanced races that will never surrender, whose super soldiers learn and adapt with every death? What will the Council do? Even closer to home, what of the Darkness, the Cabal Empire, and the other Fallen Houses they evaded at Sol? Will this be the end of a slow death, or the beginning of an ascendancy?

Halo:

The Spartan II program was one commenced at great cost. Seventy five children were taken to become the UNSC's greatest supersoldiers. In their place, an equal number of flash clones were left behind. Grown to replace the abducted, in part to conceal the existence of the program, they were expected to die within a few short years from a wide range of flaws and genetic defects. One of the flash clones, however, shared a certain trait with the original. Luck. The only survivor of the Spartan Clones, John grows up to follow the same path as his original. First a marine, then an ODST, he survives the Great War, racking up a huge number of accomplishments overshadowed only by the Spartan he was meant to replace. Now accepted into the Spartan IV program, is the Galaxy prepared for a clone of humanity's greatest warrior that will rise to rival the first?

Mass Effect:

Aria T'Loak, CEO and pirate queen of Omega, has carved out an empire of her own from the lawless Terminus. Her brutal, but fair rule draws the loyalty of everyone from hardened mercenaries to lone exiles from Citadel space. Over the span of two centuries, Omega becomes the center of her own private kingdom that grows to encompass forty systems. With her own established governments and fleets of ships, she brings her own version of order to the chaotic frontier. Even the Citadel Council, on their high and mighty Prothean station, are forced to recognize her rule of the Terminus. Her priorities change when an exploratory ship, looking for eezo deposits and other raw materials, stumbles upon a garden world, one inhabited by a pre spaceflight species. The Batarian crew watches in fascination as Operation Barbarossa is launched on Earth. This unknown species strikes an almost perfect balance between intelligence and savagery, so much so that when Aria hears of them, she makes a fateful decision. Aria herself leads a fleet to Earth, with the intent of uplifting this violent and graceful species. The only question that remains, as she gazes down upon three million Germans invading the Soviet Union, is which human civilization to choose.

Mass Effect:

In orbit over Earth, Shepard chooses the one course of action that the Intelligence did not expect. Refusing all of the given options, she throws the strongest biotic warp her body can generate, toward the control conduits. The attack unleashes the full power of the Crucible into the Citadel, overloading the Intelligence. For a brief moment, the Reapers are set free. With the chains of their servitude to the Intelligence broken, they go silent as the weight of what has happened hits them. Harbinger, the first and oldest Reaper, created from the harvest of the Leviathans, tries to explain to Shepard what she had just done. Before it can finish, a dead man's protocol in the Intelligence activates, and the Citadel fires an unimaginably powerful burst of energy. Time itself is torn open. Shepard wakes up in the past, to the sound of Miranda's voice at the conclusion of the Lazarus Project. But she is not alone. Harbinger has also been freed, and explains the Cycles were the Intelligence's solution to the question posed by the Leviathans. The Reapers were simply slaves bound to its will in implementing the harvests. Harbinger, now wishing to free its fellow Reapers from slavery to the Intelligence, joins Shepard's quest to destroy the Collectors and break the Cycle for a second time.

Code Geass/Mass Effect Crossover:

There is no Zero Requiem. Lelouch acquires the power and immortality of Code as a result of killing his father on the Sword of Akasha. As the immortal leader of a world spanning empire, Lelouch drives humanity forward in massive strides. Two centuries later, they discover their first mass relay in the same system as the colony of Shanxi. The actions of an overzealous Turian commander sparks a galactic war between the Citadel Council and a species forged in the fire of endless conflict. Outnumbered by thousands of worlds, Lelouch vi Britannia is forced into a galactic scale analog of his rise to power. Can the Holy Britannian Empire stand against the seemingly impossible odds of fighting a whole galaxy worth of intelligent species? Can the Immortal Emperor conquer the stars? What of the Reapers, watching from deep in dark space?

Halo/Mass Effect Crossover:

2570. The Great War had ended, the Covenant broken, and their remnants destroyed one by one. The galaxy began to settle into a new age of peace. Every known species had suffered near apocalyptic losses from decades of total war. The Humans proved to be the most resilient and adaptable, coming out of the fire technologically ahead, but a mere shadow of what they once were. 639 human worlds had been burned by the Covenant, and over 65% of their population killed in the Prophets' holy war. For Thel 'Vadam, it weighed heavily on his soul. They were now allies, and he had done much to help the humans, some would go as far as to say he prevented their extinction. As one of the Covenant's most successful battlefield commanders, he had burned dozens of worlds and billions of humans, all for a lie. A long range patrol craft discovers what appears to be a naturally occurring stable wormhole, and a probe is sent through. Readings indicate that it leads back in time, fifty years into the past. Before the war. Thel gathers a fleet of volunteers, totaling sixty warships, and travels through it with the intent of stopping the Prophets before they could bring both civilizations to ruin. Something goes terribly wrong, and the wormhole loses stability. His fleet returns to normal space near Luna, just in time to witness a very different human fleet open fire on the strange monsters known as Reapers. Armed with a fleet packed with superior Sangheili and UNSC technology, can he save Earth from burning once again?

Halo/Mass Effect Crossover:

Operation UPPERCUT proceeds as planned over Reach. Due to a technical failure, Jorge-052 has to stay behind and manually activate the slipspace drive in the Ardent Prayer's hangar. Although it has the intended effect of neutralizing the Long Night of Solace, the "slipspace bomb" does not actually destroy anything. The Ardent Prayer, along with about a third of the supercarrier, are forced intact into slipspace. The field collapses ten hours later, effectively behaving as if a blind jump had occurred. With a bit of cosmic luck, Operation UPPERCUT delivers two functional slipspace drives, one human and one Covenant, to the stranded Spirit of Fire. The crew, led by Anders, attempts to modify the Savannah's repurposed SF drive to replace the one they themselves used as a bomb. After stripping the wreckage of useful Covenant technology, and docking the intact corvette to their ship, Captain Cutter orders a test jump to deep space. The strain of trying to get the much larger ship through slipspace proves too much for the repurposed frigate drive, and they are forced back to normal space in an unknown system. Cutter and his crew arrive just in time to encounter a Systems Alliance exploration ship discovering the planet Terra Nova. After a mind warping first contact encounter, they discover that they have been stranded even worse than before; in an alternate universe where the year is 2150 and the UNSC does not exist. With no viable, or even theoretically accurate way home, they join the Systems Alliance. With sudden access to both human and alien technology centuries beyond their state of the art, plans to construct a military fleet undergo substantial revision. At the insistence of the UNSC humans, which have achieved an almost religious reverence for their advanced knowledge, Covenant technology is reverse engineered and integrated at an amazing pace. By 2157, hostile Turian first contact is met with energy shielded warships firing AI directed plasma torpedoes. Will the Council stop the conflict from escalating, or is total war against a vast alien empire an unavoidable destiny?

Halo/Mass Effect Crossover:

2600, the dawn of a new century. The last remnants of the Covenant had been reduced, by the combined effort of the UNSC and Sangheili, to memories of a darker past. Peace was to be the future, shaped and paid for by 75 years of unparalleled galactic warfare. Tens of billions and hundreds of worlds burned in the most devastating conflicts known for a hundred millenia. The galaxy could finally look forward to a brighter future, united in cooperation. Then the first of the black ships came. Within a year, the horrors of the Covenant onslaught became memories of a better time, where there was such a thing as hope. The Reapers, having found their sector of space that was devoid of the mass relays, overwhelmed the war weary civilizations of the Orion Arm with unimaginable speed and violence. Faced with extinction, ONI and Vadam secretly evacuated their people to a planet sized Forerunner shield world. Three million humans and a third as many Sangheili made it to the installation, run by 031 Exuberant Witness. The Flood was deliberately released as a delaying tactic. Billions died as galaxy consuming monsters of flesh and metal fought for control. As the shield world was sealed off, teams of volunteer Spartan IV's set out with one final mission: Light the remaining Halo rings to destroy the organically based Reapers. The refugees on the shield world went into stasis, oblivious to events transpiring outside, as they waited for the storm to pass. Calculations suggested that it would take nearly fifty thousand years for the Halo array to cleanse the galaxy and starve out the Flood. Unknown to those inside the shield, the Spartans had failed. The rings never fired, and the Flood were eventually suppressed over a ten thousand year war with the Reapers. 031 ends the stasis when an Asari ship lands on the shield world. Little do they know that it is nearly harvest time once again.

Code Geass/ Epic Multi Crossover

After Zero Requiem, Lelouch awakens to an audience with God. He expresses that his greatest wish is a chance to relive his life and avoid the horrible mistakes made the first time. As a result he is given a series of near impossible challenges to complete. With victory in all ten scenarios, he will be granted his ultimate wish. Lelouch is sent to many different universes and tasked with altering their histories. Some examples below:

1. Lelouch is sent to the Warcraft Universe and as a prince of Lordaeron, must find a way to defeat both the Scourge and Burning Legion to preserve the Human kingdom.

2. Lelouch finds himself in the Halo Universe near the start of the Human Covenant war. As a leader of the UNSC, he must overcome the vastly superior Covenant and win the war outright in Humanity's favor.

3. In the Mass Effect Universe, Lelouch must break the Cycle and overcome the incredible power of the Reapers without the Crucible.

4. The Eleventh Challenge, as his own wish, Lelouch returns to the day of the Battle of Shinjuku. Using his knowledge of the past, and of overcoming unimaginable challenges across ten separate universes, Lelouch must prevent Ragnarok, and conquer Britannia.