Introduction

Millhaven is an unusual place, now offering the fourth in its Fierce Tales anthology series: Lost Worlds. It features tales from fresh talent, newly popular authors who will treat you to highly visual, emotional and electrifying adventures of longer-than-typical short story length. Technically short stories, these near-novella adventures will tear you from the ordinary and whisk you along deeper literary complexity and treks extraordinaire!

You will be unable to resist the insidiously contagious–perhaps intelligent–chiller encountered in “Cold Inside…”, an emotionally impactful experience by award-winning storyteller Sergio Palumbo. Novelist J. Conrad Matthews reveals “The Savage Badlands” in a rip-roaring account of an alternate conquest of America, based on Teddy Roosevelt’s lost diary. We dare you to enter Dan Gallagher’s cryptozoological-mystical tales with nonfiction accompaniments:  “Monster in the Sand” in Poe’s unreliable narrator style, and its paired literary thriller “Six Birds and a Cat”. Equally powerful and visual is Screenwriter Charlie Boyles’ “Mountain of the Ancients”, which places you among prehistoric-to-recent animals & humans who, for a time, welcomed an alien addiction!

Yes, the world of Millhaven is a place where the extraordinary is the norm, a super-natural place of mystery and wonder. It can be a beautiful, awe-inspiring place. But it can also be a dark place, filled with monsters, champions, spirits and all things shadowy. These take many forms, from gruesome creatures to fantastic heroes and people just like you. Meet heroes and villains from every walk of life. The Fierce Tales series will act as your guide through the world of Millhaven, both the hidden and the horrific. New worlds will open before you in all their dangerous splendor. Yes, it’s a wondrous and fascinating place, but do keep your head about you… if possible!

Welcome to Fierce Tales: Lost Worlds. Here, Millhaven offers longer, more in-depth stories than are found in most anthologies. These works are from up-and-coming, yet award-winning authors. Some are thought-provoking, evocative of what it means to be human; not to be speed-read. Some are treats for the senses. But all are gripping—perhaps frightening—adventures in worlds lost to modern science, lost in obscuring mystery, lost where we vainly reassure ourselves is unreality… upon awakening.

Dan Gallagher’s “Monster in the Sand” and “Six Birds and a Cat” differ profoundly from each other, yet connect through a medical discovery… and through attachment to evil or virtue. Each has unsettling nonfiction accompaniments and (likely) extant cryptids. Yet the former reveals a monster in descent, while the latter is a quest for family unity, asking whether a discovery can be an intercession.

“Cold Inside…” by Italy’s Sergio Palumbo is a masterpiece of Victorian era adventure. But what is discovered is not from that era at all; neither from the known world. Heroine Blythe Tretheway and a crew of intrepid and colorful explorers search for the secret to missing expeditions. There is more than resolute adventure in her leader’s heart. Join her to unearth—shockingly reveal—the cold, hard… unblinking truth.

“Mountains of the Ancients” by screenwriter Charlie Boyles is highly visual quest, set near WWII’s end. Belle Raven tenaciously searches for her presumed-crashed husband John and his bomber crew. From prehistoric times to now, something alien addicts humans and beasts, despite breathtaking danger! None return—or desire rescue—from the fog-shrouded “Eden” except, perhaps, those bound by deepest loyalty.

Teddy Roosevelt was larger-than-life and an adventurer before and after his presidency. Novelist and short story writer  J. Conrad Matthews captures the essence of this genuine American hero in “The Savage Badlands”. The account of discovery, war and valor spans years… and a second dimension of reality revealed from manuscript entries that could have been Roosevelt’s own cowboy days!

Enter now a realm of reality that many deny… yet some have lived.