In Youth Truth, you reflect on the students you encountered as a school resource officer, the crises they faced, and the adults who reached out to them. Why was this an important book for you to write?
This book was never just a book for me—it was a responsibility.
As a School Resource Officer, I saw kids carrying far more than they should have to—those slipping through the cracks, those acting out because they didn’t have the words, and those who looked fine but were struggling in silence.
What stayed with me is this: it’s rarely the big interventions that change a life—it’s one adult, one moment, one question asked the right way.
But I also saw good parents, teachers, and mentors who cared deeply and still didn’t feel equipped to reach these kids. Conversations were being missed—not from a lack of care, but a lack of confidence and tools.
That’s why I wrote Youth Truth: Engaging in Conversations That Can Change Lives.
I wanted to bridge that gap—turn real, front-line experiences into something practical people can actually use when it matters most.
Because I’ve lived this truth: connection heals what correction can’t.
And too many moments are being missed—sometimes with consequences we can’t take back. This book is about helping more adults show up in those moments, because one brave, genuine conversation doesn’t just change a moment—it can change, or even save, a life.
Stories like Jon’s imagined meal or Jane’s struggle with addiction are deeply affecting. How did you choose which stories to tell?
Those stories stayed with me long after the moment passed—that was my first filter.
I chose stories that represented patterns I saw over and over again: youth feeling unseen, unheard, or carrying pain they didn’t know how to express. I also chose ones that reflected different kinds of struggle, so more readers could see a piece of someone they love—or themselves—in those pages.
And I was intentional about this: every story had to serve a purpose. Not just to move people emotionally, but to help them understand what’s really going on beneath the surface and how they can show up differently.
Because these aren’t just stories—they’re windows into moments where the right response could change everything.
Did you ever feel tension between letting stories speak for themselves and explaining their lessons?
Absolutely—there was a real tension there.
The stories are powerful on their own, and I never wanted to over-explain or take away from their truth. But I also knew that if I left them without guidance, some of the most important lessons could be missed—especially for adults who are already unsure how to navigate these moments.
So I was intentional about both: letting the stories be felt, and then giving just enough insight and practical takeaways to help readers actually use what they just experienced.
Because for me, this book wasn’t just about telling stories—it was about making sure those stories lead to action, better conversations, and real connection when it matters most.
What did you most want readers to understand about youth in crisis?
More than anything, I wanted readers to understand that youth in crisis aren’t trying to be difficult—they’re trying to be understood.
What looks like anger, withdrawal, or defiance is often pain, fear, or confusion they don’t have the words for yet. And too often, we respond to the behavior instead of the need underneath it.
If adults can pause, get curious, and lead with connection instead of correction, everything shifts.
Because at the core of it, most youth in crisis aren’t pushing people away—they’re quietly asking, “Will someone see me, hear me, and stay?”
Do you know what questions to ASK your kids, students, and the youth in your life to get them to talk with you? Wouldn’t it be great to have them actually respond and engage in conversation?
This gripping book delves into the raw, unfiltered world of today’s youth. Their lives are way more complex than most realize. It is a compelling and poignant exploration of the challenges faced by young souls, bringing to light the often overlooked and misunderstood battles they fight.
In Youth Truth, discover the essential guide to navigating the tough conversations that matter most to today’s youth. This compelling narrative empowers parents, educators, and mentors to approach sensitive topics with empathy and understanding, creating safe spaces where young voices feel valued and heard. From the haunting realities of suicide and bullying to the silent battles of eating disorders, this book unveils the raw struggles faced by a generation yearning for connection.
Written by a retired law enforcement officer and School Resource Officer, Youth Truth is more than just a collection of stories; it is a clarion call for compassionate dialogue. Learn the right questions to ask and how to engage meaningfully with the youth in your life. By fostering open conversations, you can profoundly impact their lives, helping them navigate their challenges with resilience and strength. Join the movement to bring understanding and compassion to the forefront of youth engagement.
Nurse Florence®, What Are Memory B Cells? follows three curious girls as they join Nurse Florence in the cafeteria to learn what memory B cells are and why they matter. What was the inspiration for your story?
The plan is to have 700+ books in the series (there are 264 as of April 2026), so we’ll need to cover every human physiology topic to get there. It was time to cover Memory B cells and the illustrator was motivated to do the topic.
Can you share a bit about your writing process? Do you have any rituals or routines when working on your books?
I actually have a ritual which is to listen to a Beethoven symphony as I write. It helps get me in the zone so that the words just flow through me.
Have you considered turning the Nurse Florence series into an interactive application for children to continue their learning about how the human body works?
The priority right now is to have the books in children’s hands to help promote community and family togetherness since these are family books to read together. Grandparents will find they will learn too.
What topic are you most excited to work on next in the series?
We are producing a third series titled Citizen George to help people have a conversation on civility and common decency as promoted by George Washington.
Sometimes it seems only a nurse can bring technical information down to an understanding that an ordinary person can grasp. The Nurse Florence(R) book series provides high quality medical information that even a child can grasp. By introducing young kids to correct terminology and science concepts at an early age, we can help increase our children’s health literacy level as well as help to prepare them for courses and jobs in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. We need more scientists so I hope that many children will enjoy this book series and consider a job involving science. Introducing Some Medical Words to Kids in Every Book(R) A Movement of Global Health Promotion and Literacy Dow Creative Enterprises(R) Help Civilization Reach Its Potential(R)
JP Pulcini’s I Am; Therefore I Think is a reflective and wide-ranging meditation on consciousness, identity, memory, mortality, and artificial intelligence, written less as a rigid thesis than as a guided walk through the author’s own questions. The book begins in the intimate territory of early memory and wonder, then moves through Descartes, Nagel, Chalmers, neuroscience, science fiction, simulation theory, transhumanism, and the ethics of AI, always returning to one central conviction: whatever machines may eventually imitate, human consciousness still seems bound up with lived experience, meaning, and the stubborn inwardness of a self. What gives the book its shape is that recurring movement from abstraction back to life itself, from Lascaux cave paintings to Blade Runner, from memory as data to memory as felt history, and finally to mortality as the force that gives existence its urgency.
Pulcini is at his best when he stops trying to sound like a referee in a philosophical debate and instead sounds like a person genuinely wrestling with what it means to be here at all. The early pages about childhood warmth and wonder have a quiet grace to them, and later, when he argues that AI can simulate intelligence but cannot inhabit it, the book finds its emotional center. I found myself especially taken by his insistence that memory isn’t just stored content but something saturated with feeling, authorship, and private texture. His beach-sand comparison, modest as it is, works because it makes the larger claim tangible. That same gift shows up in his reading of Blade Runner against The Matrix, where he argues that consciousness is not just perception manipulated from the outside, but meaning shaped from within. Those are the moments when the book stops being merely thoughtful and becomes affecting.
There are stretches where the synthesis of philosophy, pop culture, theology, futurism, and personal reflection feels genuinely rich. This isn’t a cold, academic book. It wants to keep the mystery intact while still thinking hard around its edges. The writing is often plainspoken rather than dazzling, yet it has a steadiness that suits the material, and when Pulcini turns to mortality, grief, and the danger of pursuing technological perfection at the cost of human presence, the book gathers real moral weight.
This is a thoughtful and deeply felt book. It reminds me that our most urgent questions about AI are still, underneath it all, questions about the soul of human life: what we remember, what we love, what we lose, what we fear, and why any of it matters. Its final mood is not triumphalist or apocalyptic, but tenderly cautionary, asking us to carry our tools forward without surrendering the fragile, mortal selves that made those tools in the first place. I’d recommend it to readers who enjoy philosophy written for thoughtful generalists, especially people drawn to books that live somewhere between cultural criticism, existential reflection, and accessible writing about AI.
The Chimera Snare: Reflections opens as Von awakens in a void between realities, questioned by the sentient Order Ananael and pushed into a brutal excavation of memory. From there, the novel braids cosmic stakes with intimate damage: Benson’s obsession with lineage and power, Athelisa’s slow devastation inside a poisoned marriage, Aelis’s violation and survival, and the younger generation, Kumiko and Navaryn especially, living in the aftershock of choices made long before they understood them. What begins as a search through memory gradually reveals a wider crisis involving fractured realms, the Spectral Blight, and a love strong enough to matter at the scale of worlds.
What stayed with me most was the book’s willingness to be ugly in the honest sense. This isn’t darkness used as décor. The cruelty here has inheritance; it moves through bloodlines, institutions, marriages, and training halls, and the novel keeps asking what power costs the people forced to carry it. I was especially struck by how the story refuses to flatten its pain into mere plot fuel. Athelisa’s grief, Aelis’s trauma, Kumiko’s damaged upbringing, Navaryn’s instability, and Von’s yearning to remember all feel like different temperatures of the same wound. There is a real ache to the book, and at its best, it has that rare quality of feeling fevered and mournful at once.
I also admired the sheer conviction of the prose. S & E Black don’t write in a pared-down register; they go for lush, baroque intensity, and often they pull it off. The atmosphere has a velvety, candlelit menace, and even the book’s quieter scenes carry a metallic aftertaste. The density of names, lore, and emotional voltage can make the reading experience feel overwhelming, but some readers will find it immersive.
I would hand this to readers who like dark fantasy, epic fantasy, gothic fantasy, romantic fantasy, and body horror with a strong trauma-and-memory core. It should appeal to people who want fantasy that is sensuous, severe, and emotionally high-stakes rather than breezy or gamelike. In spirit, it feels less like a standard quest fantasy and more like a darker cousin to Sarah J. Maas by way of gothic melodrama and generational ruin.
Recipient of the Literary Titan’s Book Award for fiction. Anchorage Box Racer is the story of Tayen Stormrider, an arrogant, yet gifted, sixteen-year-old race car driver. He sees fans as a distraction and mountains beneath him. He is humbled when he ends up blinded and living in a homeless camp in Anchorage, Alaska, where he settles into a life of alcoholism and failure. A chance meeting with a humble police officer moves him back into the world of racing and a potential future in NASCAR.
The Winter Verdict is a fast-moving legal thriller that knows exactly how to use its setting. It opens with Tom Berte, a small-town lawyer and dedicated skier, taking an early morning run at Castle Ridge before getting brutally attacked on the mountain. From there, author Dan Buzzetta builds the book around a mix of local politics, legal maneuvering, family anxiety, and a widening conspiracy that turns a quiet resort town into the center of something much bigger. What I liked most is that the novel never forgets its core identity. Even when the stakes keep expanding, it still feels rooted in one man trying to protect his family, his town, and the life he rebuilt for himself.
Castle Ridge isn’t just a backdrop with pretty snow. It gives the book its texture, its rhythm, and a lot of its personality. Buzzetta clearly enjoys writing winter landscapes and ski culture, and that comes through right away in lines like “miles of groomed corduroy awaited Tom on his favorite morning commute.” That sentence captures something the book does well all the way through. It makes the mountain feel vivid and authentic. The routines of the resort, the local businesses, the town leadership, and the weather itself all shape the story in ways that feel tangible.
Tom is the reason the whole thing holds together. He’s not written as a superhero in a suit. He’s capable, stubborn, smart, bruised, and a little weary, which makes him good company for a long novel. His marriage to Brooke and his love for their daughter give the story emotional weight without turning it sentimental. I also liked how the supporting cast helps define the book’s world. Faith McReynolds, Constable Ozzie, Brooke, and the people around the resort make Castle Ridge feel like a real community under pressure. The legal side of the story works for the same reason. It’s not there just to decorate the plot. It’s part of how Tom thinks, how he solves problems, and how the book keeps its feet on the ground even when the danger escalates.
What kind of thriller is this, then? It’s a snowy, high-stakes, very earnest page-turner that blends courtroom instincts with conspiracy plotting and action set pieces. It likes momentum, cliffhangers, secret agendas, and big reveals. But it also likes competence. A lot of the pleasure comes from watching Tom read people, follow paper trails, test theories, and keep going when things get personal. Once the attack happens, everything tightens, and the novel keeps pressing forward with real urgency.
The Winter Verdict is an entertaining and confident thriller with a strong sense of place and a lead character who’s easy to stick with. It delivers danger, mystery, legal tension, and family stakes in a way that feels genuinely readable rather than mechanical. I came away thinking this book understands its lane and drives it hard: it wants to give you a smart, dramatic, winter-set suspense story with heart, and it does. If you like thrillers that pair local texture with larger intrigue, this one has plenty to offer.
Only Breath & Shadow is a work of historical fiction that follows Christian Drewe, a blind and war-scarred English veteran living in Vienna as Austria slides toward Nazi control. Around him, friends, performers, Jewish families, and refugees are pushed closer and closer to danger, while the novel threads in real historical figures and the rescue mission of Gil and Eleanor Kraus. What I liked most is that this isn’t just a story about political collapse. It’s a story about moral vision, about who sees clearly when the world decides not to.
What I admired first was the way author Andrew Tweeddale writes Christian’s world through sound, smell, touch, and memory rather than sight. That choice could have felt like a device, but here it becomes the book’s pulse. Vienna comes across in church bells, bakery yeast, diesel, cigarettes, café chatter, and the scrape of shoes on floors, and that gives the novel a lived-in texture that feels grounded rather than showy. I also liked how the prose can move from intimate to public in a few lines, shifting from Christian’s private grief to a room full of casual prejudice. That contrast is fantastic, and I think it makes the rising danger feel less like a sudden storm and more like poison slowly getting into the pipes.
I also found myself respecting the author’s larger choices, even when they made the book heavier to sit with. Tweeddale blends invented characters with real history, including Paul O’Montis and the Kraus rescue mission, and he clearly wants the novel to do more than entertain. He wants it to remember. Sometimes that gives the book a deliberate, almost old-fashioned seriousness, but I think that seriousness suits the material. The novel keeps returning to the idea that blindness isn’t the worst human failure. Indifference is. That lands with force, especially as Christian moves from wounded detachment toward action, love, and sacrifice. By the end, the book feels less like a tale of one damaged man and more like a reckoning with what decency costs when history turns brutal.
I would most strongly recommend Only Breath & Shadow to readers who like historical fiction with a conscience, especially novels that blend private lives with real moral pressure. People who respond to stories about wartime trauma, Jewish history, resistance, refugees, and the cultural life of Europe in the 1930s will find a lot here. It also feels like a good fit for readers who appreciate fiction that is patient, reflective, and emotionally direct rather than slick.
Inner Space Aliens follows a tetrachromatic fifteen-year-old who decodes a message in the auroras about a hidden shapeshifting army beneath Iceland that is set to destroy the Earth, leaving him to lead an alliance to stop them. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
My mom, Ieda, loved Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth and visited the cave in Iceland that sparked his inspiration for that story. She loved the character of the Icelandic guide and wanted to write a story of what became of him. The teenagers in the trilogy began their adventure when the retired guide, their grandfather, went missing, and they went to the cave to search for him. Their portal adventure took them to another planet, where they met the old Norse gods. Ieda blended Norse mythology with the science fiction adventure, pulling in all the elements she loved. As for my contribution, I am obsessed with the northern lights and loved the opportunity to incorporate them into the story as a language.
What drew you to Icelandic folklore and the Huldufólk in particular?
My mom was Icelandic, and her heritage traces back to the settlement days there in 879. All of my early writing was inspired by Icelandic folklore, and even now, every book has a bit of Icelandic culture in it. The mythology around the Huldufólk has always been one of my favorites.
The idea of inheriting power, resentment, and responsibility runs throughout the book. Why were these important themes for you to explore?
Since my mother wrote the original manuscript and I came to it later, providing editing and rewrites, I can’t say for certain why these themes were important to her. I think inheriting power, and both the resentment and responsibility that come with it, are experiences many people can identify with on some level. Whether that power is an athletic skill or mathematical prowess, there is often pressure to pursue the gift. I think perhaps she was drawn to exploring the ways those forces shape our lives, especially as teenagers. I felt those themes added real depth to the story, and I’m glad I could help bring her vision to readers.
The ending suggests the conflict isn’t over. What can readers expect in the future?
The next book continues the adventure of the teenage trio, and is set entirely in Iceland and features the Huldufólkprominently. There’s a new threat, and a new portal, with lots of exciting action. The final installment highlights Kalli as the hero, forced to step up when he discovers a shocking secret about his past. Again working with his friends, Erik and Finna, the three rescue Earth from certain destruction.
A note from the author:
Hey there, friends! I wanted to share a little behind-the-scenes story about how this series came to be. Back in 2016, my amazing mom, Íeda Jónasdóttir Herman, published The Silver Arrow. She always dreamed it would be the start of an adventure series, and she even started writing Book 2, Inner Space Aliens, right after the first one came out. Mom had big plans: Erik would be the hero in the second book, and Kalli would step into the spotlight for the third, War of the Griddons. She was so excited, she even had all three covers designed in 2018! By 2019, Mom finished the first draft of Book 2 and had a summary ready for Book 3. We spent hours chatting about the story; what was awesome, what needed tweaking, and ideas for cool new twists. Sadly, she passed away in October 2019 before she could finish the series, and she left me all her stories-in-progress. It took me a long time to be able to read her words again, and even longer to start working on her edits. In our stories, Finna’s weapon is the Silver Arrow, and Erik’s is his javelin. But I wanted Erik to have a special ability—something that would match Finna’s mind-connection with Orealis. That’s how Erik’s unique gift of tetrachromacy and the secret aurora language came to life! Mom and I had talked about it, but she never got to finish that part, so I took it from our notes and made it real. I also added a few things that help connect this book to the final one, War of the Griddons. For that last story, all I had was Mom’s summary and our talks, so I had to write it from scratch. I hope I’ve honored her vision and brought her stories to life in a way she would love. I can’t wait for you to join me and Mom in these next two adventures!
When ominous auroras warn of coordinated earthquakes, a tetrachromatic fifteen-year-old ambassador must decode Óðin’s messages and rally his twin and friend to stop a shapeshifting army before the world fractures into ruin.Erik thought being an interstellar ambassador would mean interviews and weird fan mail. He didn’t expect to read red auroras warning of war. He didn’t expect a three-eyed giant to pick a fight in his backyard caves. He definitely didn’t expect to be the one making life-or-death calls. With Finna’s arrows, Kalli’s rallying voice, and a runaway sculptor who knows more than he should, Erik faces shapeshifters, subterranean armies, and the maddeningly pretty green lights of an angry sky. The Meridian Loki built is still singing — and it’s tuning the whole planet into a weapon. If they don’t stop it, Earth will fall.
