FICTION, TOLD SLOWLY
Novels published in installments, one chapter at a time. Read for free. Stay if the story keeps you.
FICTION, TOLD SLOWLYNovels published in installments, one chapter at a time. Read for free. Stay if the story keeps you.
So how did I get here? Truthfully? I never expected to.
All my life I’ve loved being creative and trying new things — I’m sure plenty of people can relate. Over the years I’ve dabbled in art, music, embroidery, even a brief and questionable stint at woodworking. Many of those remain constant staples in my life. But one thing kept calling for me to do something about it: the stories. The worlds and characters I was always building in my head, and the themes that hold them up. For the longest time actually telling those stories felt unreachable.
Now I aim to tell them.
So thank you for stopping by. I hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as I enjoyed creating them.
N. G. Riley is an author of gothic fiction, drawn to old churches, strange folklore, complicated souls, and the uncomfortable places where faith and darkness meet. Annora: A Confession is her debut novel.
As a wife and mother living in the United States, she spends her best days laughing with her little family, and she is forever grateful for her Owen, whom she loves with all her soul.
She taught herself to do this by doing it, and expects to spend the rest of her life still learning.
I make these stories with whatever tools help me tell them, AI included. I’d rather say so plainly than have anyone feel misled. If it isn’t for you, I understand.
He was sent to destroy her kind. Neither of them was prepared for the rest.
Father Edmund Clarke is a Custodian — a priest whose duties extend beyond the parish register and into work no bishop will own. When two women vanish from Wolcombe without blood or blame, he has one lead: the woman at the edge of the wood, whom whispers follow like shadow.
She should be his quarry. Instead, she keeps turning up.
Annora has survived centuries by avoiding men like him. Yet here she is — entangled in his hunt, haunting his pews, circling a truth she has not confessed and cannot outrun.
Bound by an uneasy bargain, priest and vampire uncover a rot older than either of them guessed. One that reaches into the very walls of Saint Audric’s, where something has been feeding far longer than anyone will admit.
But the nearer Edmund draws to the truth, the more his alliance becomes its own damnation. Beneath her cruelty lies something she has spent centuries burying. Beneath his vows lies a want no prayer is strong enough to silence.
To save his parish, Edmund must decide whether a monster may still possess a soul.
To save Annora, he may have to forfeit his own.
Annora: A Confession is a dark, sharply drawn Gothic novel set in 1930s England — part murder mystery, part spiritual reckoning, told as one priest’s unflinching account of the year that tested everything he believed.
Begin ReadingWant to say hello, share a thought on a chapter, or tell me about a dream you had? I’d love to hear from you.
It’s a bit early to be announcing a second novel when Annora hasn’t even finished her confession. But rest assured, more is coming — in due time.
Original stand alone pieces
I do not wish to be merely cherished.
Held within thy arms awhile, then parted,
That separation wedge itself between our forms.
Nor would I be among the many things thy hands must carry;
For even the dearest treasure must, in time, be laid aside.
No—it is not enough.
I crave to dwell beneath thy skin,
To become the crimson tide of thee;
The quiet strength that moves through thy veins,
The warmth thy heart beats t’ward.
And thou—
Be the flesh that closes over me,
The ribs that take me in and will not let me spill,
The warm and darkened walls through which I move
That keep me as the body keeps its pulse;
Not carried, nor set aside,
But held within the one place nothing can reach.
Let me sink into thee.
Let me be so woven through thy being
That no blade could ever find the seam.
Not thine, nor mine,
But only this:
One blood,
One life.
One flesh,
Eternal.
Nothing.
Then a pull.
Fingers curl—awareness.
Darkness blinks—grey.
In my bed I shall remain.
A ribbon, chosen first,
proves not the color after all.
The yellow, too bright,
overwhelms the whole of the outfit.
No—not now.
A song, then.
No—not this one.
Too melancholic, this song;
it asks for feeling laid too bare,
and begs the heart to answer it.
The least beloved dress within the drawer.
The book, still unopened, upon the shelf.
Not discarded—
only unadmired.
Perhaps, one day, it shall find its use.
Perhaps, one day, I shall be needed still…
Or perhaps not.
Is it best to sit and wait,
Watching flowers bloom, then fall?
Snow drifts soft in quiet state
Idly contemplating all.
But better is to rise and do.
To sow the seeds, to tend, to strive—
Waiting paired with purpose true
Keeps the souls and dreams alive.
