Shawn Michel De Montaigne: 23 books

Love and hate, loss and betrayal, inspiration and perspiration. God and nature. Poetry that isn't saturated or diluted or made safe for general consumption. Read and be enlightened, enraged, enraptured, or educed. What you won't be is neutral.

Queen Walmar Seburbia is determined to kill six heroes she has foreseen can destroy her. Three are in one universe; three are in another. Her weapon is a powerful Vortex Cannon, and her ammunition is none other than the Muse itself, who goes by the name Zappee. She has weaponized Zappee, filling the...

The Imaginariverse, the source of all imagination in the Multiverse, has been taken over by an evil queen named Walmar Seburbia. Her plan? To destroy six potential heroes in two different universes who could thwart her intention to rule forever. She traps the Conductor of Dreams, the spark...

The search for one's calling takes great patience and courage. Choosing that calling, once it becomes apparent, takes even more. Pursuing a calling is a deadly enterprise, for it will inevitably claim one's life. It allows for no other choice. Rejected and abused by her parents, Elizabeth...

Looking past the end of one’s nose is very difficult. The rules are set up to punish those who do. In every moment, the chance to choose. If I never hear the cries, or see the suffering, did they really happen? If I turn my back, does the sun ever really set? If I live in that infinitely circumscribed realm forever, have I really lived at all?

The city comes and goes slowly and haltingly. The trolley seems in no particular hurry: it’s like a great earthworm creeping over saturated soil, stopping to inspect morsels of rotting food. The stops aren’t identical, but they may as well be. The people aren’t identical, either. But they, too,...

"The unexamined life is not worth living." So said Socrates, or so the legend goes. Well, he was right. In these short essays, I look at the big L, Life. Since no one lives in a vacuum, there is much inside these pages for everyone, from health and happiness to pursuing one's...

Obituaries and funerals are always the same. It does not matter if the deceased was a great man or a monster; those eulogizing him will proclaim the same thing: that he was an awesome guy, a loving father, and a valued member of the community. Few people question any of it, especially surviving relatives....

She got up and found a book of matches, came back and sat. She examined the wick, which was partially buried in the wax, and then pried it free with her thumb. She thought of the handsome dark man: the mysterious vendor who had told her that lovely, sad story of a candle that would light only for...