Necessary Dilemma
Ghost of Kotoama follows a genetically altered warrior as a mysterious killer resembling his lost love draws him into a sprawling interplanetary conflict involving political intrigue, covert operations, ancient traditions, and brutal warfare. What is the most challenging aspect of writing a series?
For me, the most challenging part of writing a series is creating an ending that carries the same weight and complexity as the first book. When Wolf of Vanaheim ended, I think a lot of readers weren’t sure whether they liked or agreed with Baldur’s decision. They understood why he made it, but it landed in that morally complicated space of whether the ends justify the means.
So when I began writing Ghost of Kotoama, I knew that if I couldn’t reach that same kind of horrifying but necessary dilemma, the ending wouldn’t land the way Wolf of Vanaheim did. After several variations (and a few emotionally exhausted readers), I think the final scene in the hangar ultimately found its way into that same uncomfortable territory.
Why was dark humor important to the novel?
Having worked in stressful, sad, and sometimes violent environments, I learned how important dark humor can be. The expression, “If I didn’t laugh, I’d probably cry,” is completely true. Sometimes, being able to find humor in the worst situations is what carries us through them.
Baldur and his team spend a lot of the story simply trying to survive whatever comes next, and that humor becomes part of how they cope. If they ever actually slowed down long enough to process everything they’ve done and experienced, I’m not sure there’s enough therapy in the world to save them from themselves.
How did you develop the cultural identity of Kotoama?
I knew Kotoama was going to be the central location for Ghost of Kotoama before I had even finished the first book. The fusion of old feudal Japanese culture with advanced science fiction was irresistible to me. I drew inspiration from films like The Last Samurai, particularly the idea of tradition colliding with progress, and then placed that conflict inside a totalitarian society. I really enjoyed imagining the Akuma within that world and asking what it would take for a people to preserve their heritage, traditions, and identity when the society around them is actively trying to reshape or erase those things.
Does the ending point toward a larger conflict or a different phase of Baldur’s journey?
Definitely. The third book is going to see some of the relationships Baldur has built throughout the series finally begin to pay off as Vanaheim’s struggle continues.
From the beginning, I knew I wanted to start smaller, focusing primarily on Vanaheim, and then expand the story into new worlds with each book. I’ve already written about half of the first draft of book three, and there are some serious surprises ahead for fans of the series.
Leptis Magna will obviously play a major role, but there will also be new and unexpected environments to explore. I’m excited for readers to see where Baldur’s journey goes next.
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But the cost of victory was still being paid.
Five years after the war, Baldur still carries scars no one else can see. The fighting may be over, but peace feels fragile, shaped by political ambition, buried truths, and the ghosts of those who never made it home. When prisoners connected to the Red Sky conspiracy begin turning up brutally murdered, Baldur and his team are sent to investigate.
The killings point toward something impossible.
A figure tied to Kotoama. A distant empire known for its rigid order, political isolation, and carefully controlled image. As Baldur follows the trail deeper into Kotoaman affairs, he uncovers secrets capable of destabilizing governments and reigniting wars that never truly ended. Revolutions are already brewing in the shadows, powerful nations are maneuvering toward conflict, and the truth behind the murders may force Baldur to confront someone he believed was lost forever.
But Baldur carries dangers of his own.
Haunted by the atrocities of war and struggling against the monstrous changes spreading through his body, he finds himself drifting further from the man he once was. Every act of violence becomes easier. Every compromise feels more justified. And as the galaxy edges closer to another conflict, Baldur must decide whether he can still protect the people he loves without becoming the very thing they fear.
Ghost of Kotoama is the second installment in the Wolf of Vanaheim, a dark science-fiction epic about war, loyalty, political corruption, and the cost of surviving long after the fighting ends.
Romance in Unexpected Places
Remember, It’s Just in Your Head follows a university student navigating grief, anxiety, identity, guilt, and the difficult journey toward choosing to live after the suicide of his close friend. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I am someone who never really acknowledged the mental health of others around me when I was growing up. I realised as I grew older that it’s important to be conscious of everyone who is around you, because their presence can be very beneficial to recovery when you feel low.
Life can take a major turn without any warning, so Reuben personifies how unpredictable these scenarios can be.
Guilt comes because of reflection on decisions that have had consequences that could’ve been avoided. The struggle is that you can’t change the past, and that in itself is a feeling you have to overcome.
How did you balance the novel’s darker themes with its moments of humor, friendship, romance, and hope?
All our emotional responses are built upon interwoven experiences; ruminating on darker themes would make the story too morbid. Reuben as a character’s life still needed to progress even if he was faced with such profound, depressing challenges.
I made Reuben an intuitive character who explored himself as a person and worked out how to tackle his vulnerability by seeking support when he realised he needed it. Humour is a way of relieving stress and anxiety, connecting with people to find positives out of awkward or uncomfortable situations. The story explores this by expanding upon the various personalities you come across in day-to-day life.
Finding romance in unexpected places helps Reuben develop as a character; he learns about his sexuality by exposing himself to people who can relate to it themselves. Nathan is a fundamental character in that plot arc and shows that there are people out there who are going or have gone through similar experiences.
How did you approach writing Reuben’s memories of Ava without reducing her character to her death?
Reuben reflects on several occasions throughout the story when he is faced with objects or situations that give him nostalgia.
Ava has a relationship with him that has lasted many years, and this is depicted by how well they know each other. This is shown in how much they open up to each other and how they promise to be there for each other when they’re struggling. They share sanctuary spaces around town that Reuben feels connected to and comfortable escaping from the harsh community that he is exposed to.
Ava is represented both in life and in death by her Polaroid Camera and how she insists that Reuben takes pictures of “the good stuff.” She shows him how to find beauty in the ordinary and turn something plain into something special.
The story explores art in various forms to show how much someone can connect with their natural passion. Reuben knows by the end of the story that whether Ava is alive or dead is irrelevant to how influential she has been in supporting him mentally in his acceptance of himself.
What did you want readers to understand about queer love within a story that is also centered on grief?
That LGBT+ people are not alone when they’re nervous about coming out. That mental health is a journey that encompasses acceptance regardless of how long it takes.
Sexuality and gender are not something that should define you, in the same way that anxiety shouldn’t. Just be true to yourself and take your time with the hurdles that you come across.
If you love someone, you should make it count, whether they’re the same or opposite sex. Missing opportunities is not something you’d want to dwell on in the future or regret.
Grief is not something that you should have to endure all through life; it shouldn’t trap you. However, all things that are close to our heart take time to heal.
Make sure you value yourself and everything around you because life is never guaranteed to be stable. Make things as easy as possible for yourself to achieve the happiest well-being.
Reuben never chose to be gay, but he learns this from finding solace. Any reader who can relate to this needs to know that life is always about focusing on the “good stuff.”
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Haunted by what might happen and burdened by his secret, Reuben is trying his hardest to cope. With him sharing sanctuary spaces with his close friend Ava around town, the two have places to relieve stress, where no one can find them.
When Ava’s own pain proves deeper than anyone knew, Reuben is left with grief, guilt, and the impossible question of whether he got caught up in his own spirals too much to notice. Remember, It’s Just In Your Head is a tender contemporary novel about friendship, loss, self-forgiveness, and making sure that anxiety isn’t something that defines you.
“Photography isn’t about capturing perfect moments. It’s about finding beauty in the ordinary, and turning something so plain into something special.”
Lessons Learned
That Will Never Do! is a memoir of medical innovation and personal growth, chronicling your journey in urology and pioneering efforts to develop less invasive surgical techniques that transformed patient care. Why was this an important book for you to write?
Coming to the end of a truly fortunate career, I wanted to pass along some of the many things I had learned in hopes that it might be of help to those to follow. Some lessons learned the hard way, which, when explained to others, might save them a similar lengthy/painful learning curve. Then again, I also wanted to acknowledge those who made all the difference in my life and provided me with the privilege to proceed and succeed. Clearly Carol, but also a host of mentors and colleagues who never failed to encourage and support.
How did your mother’s optimism influence your approach to challenges?
There is nothing better in this world than optimism, in my opinion. There is a silver lining somewhere to almost all events, save the loss of a loved one. Roz’s optimism was something special though – regardless of what you wanted to do or your particular aspiration, she had the ability to convince you they would be realized, not maybe, but absolutely. I have yet to meet anyone in my life who had that ability and belief in an individual to realize their dreams. Armed with that kind of support, you understood, in Churchill’s words, that failure is not final and that indeed, there would be another day, and success would be on its horizon.
You openly discuss shortcomings in the preparation for early innovations. What did those experiences teach you?
This is where it is so important to bring in a collaborative group, so you don’t get too far ahead of yourself. Certainly, with the laparoscopic nephrectomy, we needed someone to step out of the enthusiasm and view it at a distance. I think if one person had just said, perhaps you ought to first try this in a cadaver, it would have changed a lot; we would have learned how to perhaps deal with the colon such that our first case, instead of being over 6 hours, may have only been 3 hours. But I think we were so blinded by the success with the porcine kidney, we did not take time to step back and think about how much more complex the anatomy and surrounding tissues of the human kidney might be.
How would you like your legacy as a physician, innovator, and mentor to be remembered?
The people who have done the endourology fellowship are truly my legacy – as they are physicians, innovators, and mentors in their own right. I am so thankful that the vast majority of the fellows have proceeded into an academic setting where they could become both innovators and mentors. Through them, the 5 H’s of honesty, hard work, humility, humor, and heart are passed on to the next generation of surgeons, much to the benefit of the people they treat and to the progress of the specialty.
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Clayman traces the roots of that drive to a childhood shaped by discipline, persistence, and the difficult pursuit of parental approval, then follows it through a career at the forefront of modern urology, recounting the people, setbacks, discoveries, and unlikely ideas behind some of the field’s most important advances. Along the way, he reflects on the values that sustained him: hard work, honesty, humility, humor, and heart.
Part memoir, part chronicle of surgical innovation, That Will Never Do! is an engaging account of how character, curiosity, and collaboration can lead to discovery and reshaped the practice of surgery.
Strength of Evidence
The Father Wound in Women explores how paternal wounds shape women’s lives and how those patterns can be transformed. Why was this an important book for you to write?
I didn’t start this as a researcher — I started it as a man trying to understand a woman I loved, whose patterns of love and withdrawal made no sense to me until I went looking for the science behind them. I found literature that explained almost everything, but almost no book made it accessible to the people actually living inside it. When I looked for something to read on the subject myself, what existed either spoke only to the woman, leaving the partner out of the room entirely, or stayed at the level of pop-psychology generalizations without the research to back it up. I wanted something that could sit between two people — something a woman could read to understand what she might be subconsciously bringing to a relationship, and something a partner could read to understand what he’s actually looking at, without either feeling talked down to or diagnosed from a distance.
How did you balance psychological research with accessible, practical language?
I read for several years before I wrote a word — clinical literature on trauma and personality, longitudinal studies on childhood adversity, decades of attachment research — but I’m not a clinician, and I never wanted the book to sound like one. Every chapter has a “Recognize” section that translates the research into plain, observable behavior rather than diagnostic checklists, because I wanted readers to see themselves in the patterns, not to self-diagnose from them. I was also careful to say, throughout, where the evidence is strong, where it’s genuinely contested, and where I’m offering my own synthesis rather than settled science — the bibliography is tiered by strength of evidence for exactly that reason. And a clinical reviewer went through the manuscript in draft specifically to catch anywhere the research had been overstated or misread.
How can someone tell whether they are genuinely changing rather than simply understanding their patterns intellectually?
This is the trap I most wanted the book to name, because it’s so easy to fall into: you can spend years fluent in your own diagnosis — able to narrate your attachment style and your wounds in expert detail — and change nothing, because the naming itself starts to feel like the progress. Recognition is the precondition for healing, not the healing. The honest test isn’t how well you can explain yourself; it’s whether the explanation changes what you actually do the next time you’re triggered. I put it plainly in the book: visible movement matters more than stated potential. If the insight isn’t showing up as different behavior under pressure — not just different vocabulary — it hasn’t done its job yet.
What do you want partners to understand about women carrying paternal wounds?
Two things, mainly. First, what can look like irrational or dramatic behavior almost always has a comprehensible origin that predates the relationship by decades — it’s not a verdict on him, even when it’s aimed at him. Understanding that doesn’t mean absorbing everything without boundaries; it means telling the difference between a partner who is struggling and a partner who is harming, which I try to give people a real standard for: hard asks you to be patient; harmful asks you to disappear. Second, the most useful question isn’t “which label fits her” — it’s whether, in her calmer moments, she can genuinely see your perspective and take responsibility for what the pattern costs you. That capacity for mutuality, even amid real struggle, is the thing worth watching for.
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Why This Book, Why Now
There is no shortage of books on “daddy issues.” Most do one of two things: they reassure women that none of it is their fault, or they vilify women as manipulators. Both are dishonest, and readers can feel it.
This book takes a third path. It treats the reader — woman or man — as an adult who can handle the truth: that a real wound can produce real harm, that being a victim of one’s childhood and a source of damage in one’s relationships are not mutually exclusive, and that healing begins exactly where blame ends and accountability starts.
It is direct and unflinching, but never cruel. It is grounded in evidence, and it says plainly when the evidence is thin.
Based on Personal Experience
Troutfishing on the Tees follows a vain and vulnerable man whose faith in career, cricket, and Tony Blair unravels as deindustrialization and institutional decline expose the brutal realities of New Labor Britain. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
A lot of the book is based on real life. You could say that I’m the man who put the semi into semi-autobiographical!
A particular inspiration was my unexpected (by everyone but me) redundancy from the once mighty chemical giant, ICI, in the 2000s.
I can thank my brother (and co-author) Patrick for the inciting incident. Around ten years later, we were sitting in a pub car park in North Wales when he challenged me to write a sitcom. So, with his help, I did.
Tony Blair exists in the novel partly as a political figure and partly as a projection of Steve’s hopes and fantasies. What interested you about using that imagined
Again, this is based on personal experience. I was a constituent of Tony’s between 1999 and 2001 and actually wrote to him once, voicing my concerns (in true Steve Hemmings style) about safety in the Millennium Dome. I got a very generic letter in return, but I wondered what it would be like if he still read and responded to constituents’ letters.
Funnily enough, I had a similar experience more recently with Keir Starmer, my most recent constituency MP!
The book is packed with cricket, popular music, workplace language and Teesside detail. How important was it to you that the novel function as a kind of social record of the North East around 2000?
I think it’s a cool period in which to set the novel. Back in 2014, when I first started writing, it was a bit twixt and between. Now people are nostalgic for the general vibe around then, with clamshell mobile phones, car CD players, in-person dating, new Labour even!
In the North East, in particular, there were much better prospects of long-term employment, working with one private sector employer, although these were fading rapidly.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?
The book forms the first part of a Teesside Trilogy.
I have been working on books 2 and 3 simultaneously.
Book 2 should be out early next year.
Watch this space!
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Supernatural Event
Out of the Thicket follows the people of Yana who, for over a decade, have had all their twelve-year-old boys vanish on the same night each year; only this year, two boys decide to run, trying to escape their fate. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
One evening, an image popped into my mind unbidden: a man and a woman sitting on the ground facing one another, with a boy between them. I thought, “That’s a strange idea. Maybe I can make a story out of that.” I had to ask, “Who are these people, and why are they sitting like that?” From there, I came up with the ritual surrounding the supernatural event called the Seizing that serves as the backdrop for my story.
What interested you about exploring faith through characters who do not always agree about what they believe or how belief should guide them?
I wanted to write a book that showed the struggle of faith. Jacob, the patriarch from the Bible, is a very important character to me. He wrestled with God and was blessed for it. I wanted to depict people who wrestled with doubt, beliefs, religion, prayer, and God’s silence. I think many books addressing faith make life too clean and easy. I wanted to mirror what faith looks like in the real world through my fantasy.
Yana has developed traditions, sayings, prejudices, religious practices, and rituals around its history. How did you approach creating a culture shaped by generations of fear and loss?
I had a lot of fun creating the world of Out of the Thicket. My starting point was the biblical world of the Old Testament, a place guided by sacred texts, complicated by corrupt religious leaders, and visited by mysterious prophets. A land where miracles happen. But I didn’t want it to read like Bible fan fiction or historical fiction, so I made up new cities, backstories, rituals, and proverbs. I hope the result is a story that arrives in a world that already feels lived in.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?
I’m working on a dystopian, three-volume southern gothic tale about truth. Like Out of the Thicket, it contains some elements of magical realism. I’m taking my time with it and have no idea when it will be published.
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One mother, Ramia, refuses to participate in the ritual, which infuriates Hannah, revealing that her motives have more to do with issues surrounding her own son’s untimely death. When Ramia’s son, Hazaq, and his best friend, Bear, try to escape The Seizing by running away, Yana is thrown into a maelstrom of intrigue and doubt.
Featuring a cast of fiercely independent female leads, heartwarming childhood friendships, complex villains, sage prophets, and dubious religious leaders who are caught in an entertaining plot full of twists,
Out of the Thicket is a story about the sacrificial nature of love.
The Dictionary of Missing Time
The Dictionary of Missing Time, by Susan Eileen, is a memoir of addiction, family, relationships, mental health, and recovery organized through a clever personal lexicon. Each chapter takes its title from an expression Eileen has coined or adopted, such as “A Reverse Kafka,” “Memory Burn,” “Irish Goodbye,” and “Confident Humility,” then uses that phrase as an entry point into a particular period of her life. The dictionary framework gives shape to a story that ranges from a financially strained childhood in Ohio through marriage, motherhood, teaching, substance abuse, difficult relationships, legal trouble, and sobriety. Early in the book, Eileen describes her life as “a series of rambunctious events,” an apt description of a memoir that moves through painful and comic experiences with considerable energy.
Eileen’s voice is the book’s defining strength. She writes with candor about behavior that could easily be softened in retrospect, including drinking, pill abuse, financial instability, people-pleasing, damaged relationships, and the ways addiction consumed both her time and her attention. Her humor gives the book accessibility without erasing the seriousness of what she describes. The invented expressions are often funny, but they also function as compact explanations for recurring patterns of behavior. As the memoir progresses, these terms become a way for Eileen to name experiences she once struggled to understand. That approach is particularly effective because language itself becomes part of the recovery process: defining an experience allows her to examine it, connect it to the past, and decide what role it should have in her future.
The book also succeeds in presenting sobriety as a continuing process of self-examination. Eileen traces improvements in her work habits, finances, home life, boundaries, relationships, and ability to tolerate difficult emotions, while also examining transfer addiction and the patterns she carried from childhood and marriage into later relationships. Some of the memoir’s most thoughtful passages concern time, particularly the years and mental energy absorbed by addiction. Her observation that “Time can never be retrieved” gives the title its deeper significance. Recovery, in this telling, involves recognizing that lost time while becoming more deliberate about the time that remains. The result is a narrative concerned as much with identity, habits, and emotional maturity as with abstinence itself.
By the end, The Dictionary of Missing Time has become a record of reconstruction. Eileen arrives at a life built around simplicity, creative work, family, healthier boundaries, volunteering, and a more measured sense of self. Her idea of “confident humility,” defined as keeping one’s ego in proper proportion, neatly captures the balance she spends much of the book trying to establish. The closing sentiment, “I’ve built a life I don’t need a vacation from,” gives the memoir an especially fitting conclusion because it measures recovery through ordinary contentment. Eileen has created a personal recovery memoir with an unusual organizing principle, a conversational voice, and a clear interest in how people can use language, reflection, and self-knowledge to make sense of a complicated life.
Pages: 268 | ASIN : B0CTN1NJWW
My Love Of History
The Chronicles of Rekule follows an ancient Olympian whose discovery of a mysterious crystal awakens elemental powers and pulls him into forbidden love, prophecy, and a struggle to master his own impulses. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
When I was a child, around 12 years old, I was riding my bike downhill on a gravel road. I took the curve too sharp and wiped out- skidding down the gravel hill, and stopping just as I reached the edge of the road, holding my bike in one hand, and stopping myself with the other hand. I limped back to my house with a nasty bloody raspberry on my knee and a nasty gash in my hand. A couple days later, I realized I still had a rock in the palm of my hand. I plucked it out. It was a crazy feeling and I was blown away by how big the rock was that I hadn’t even known about, just that there was an odd pressure that shouldn’t be there. It was the sharp pain that made me dig and find it.
That memory has stayed with me, and it was what sparked the idea for the story several years later.
Rekule’s powers seem to magnify his emotional strengths and weaknesses as much as his physical abilities. How did you develop that connection between magic, personality, and temptation?
Great question. I wanted to show the power the crystal had over its wielder. How it pulled out their desire and pushed them to extremes. Almost a price to pay for using it, because it changed who you were for better or worse.
How did you decide which mythological figures, such as Thanatos, Uranus, Atlas, and Prometheus, to reinvent for this story?
I wanted to write a book that takes place in the present day. That book turned out to be the fourth book in this series. Once I started outlining the book, I realized that I wanted to understand how and why these crystals and people came to be. I started looking back to the past due to my love of history and Greek mythology. Everything fell into place from there.
As The Chronicles of Rekule continues, what aspects of this hidden ancient civilization and the origins of Greek mythology are you most excited for readers to discover?
In book two — The Fall of Labruula — we will get to meet Zeus, Hades, Cronus, Rhea, and Poseidon, along with others you already know. I do not want to give away any spoilers, but there will be giants in book two.
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