Book excerpt: Together in one volume, THE NOCTUARY and its sequel THE NOCTUARY: PANDEMONIUM THE NOCTUARY Simon Ryan is Hell’s new scribe…the safety of our souls will depend on his every word. Struggling writer Simon Ryan’s life has gone to Hell. Shadows are pouring into his reality and his words are not his own anymore. He has been chosen to become a scribe for some of the worst creatures of the Underworld–the ones whose sole purpose is to torment human souls–The Dark Muses. As Simon writes he falls deeper into the abyss and before long he has no sense of what is real. With the help of another scribe, old and mutilated, Simon comes to discover that his writing can mould people and places–that he can write things out of existence. To become a scribe he has to pass a test and the Muses offer him a chance to rewrite his horrible past. All Simon has to decide is how the story ends. THE NOCTUARY: PANDEMONIUM Psychiatrist Dr. Desmond Carter had always believed that his former patient, author Simon Ryan, was dead. But, when a bloodstained manuscript penned by Ryan arrives at his office, Desmond begins to doubt everything he thought he had known—not just about the troubled author's past, but his own sanity. Desmond seeks the truth. Instead, he discovers the wellspring of madness. In Pandemonium, the sequel to his acclaimed 2011 novella The Noctuary, Greg Chapman drags you deeper into the nightmarish reality of the Dark Muses—creatures forged from the very darkness in our own souls. The words contained within will drive you mad… and damn you to Hell.