Blog Archives
A Feedback Loop
The Fifth Anomaly follows an urban exploration team who are investigating an abandoned prison known for paranormal activity, where they discover their data and sense of time start to bend around the anomaly. What inspired Hillrose Penitentiary as the central setting?
That’s actually a funny topic. The entire story started from an approach of “Could I compose a good creepypasta.” Found footage, especially ghost hunters played a part in that, and penitentiaries carry a lot of weight in those circles. From the outside, it’s a set of walls containing dark things and keeping them from bleeding into the world. I just leaned into that containment failure.
The central idea that “observation changes the observer” drives the story. Where did that concept originate?
There’s not a lot in the horror space that scares me anymore, but one thing that has never ceased to unsettle me is the idea that “our assumptions about our world are inaccurate.” Look at the film Oculus for example. There’s something terrifying about “My mind tells me I’m biting into an apple, but it’s actually a lightbulb”. That extends into the premise of the book in the sense that “our world is not a closed system, it is a feedback loop.” Cosmic horror to me is basically anxiety codified into prose. Once you start thinking that way, everything looks fluid.
Do you see the book as horror told through technology, or horror about technology?
Horror told through technology. The horror comes from realizing how small we are and how little control we have over objective reality. Technology is just the lens. Discord logs, camera feeds, digital timestamps that stop making sense are just the artifacts we see through them. Yomi uses technology as a medium because she understands observation and documentation better than the humans do. The screens aren’t the threat; they’re just showing you what was always there.
What will the next book in that series be about, and when will it be published?
The next book, The Chuin Cascade: A Threshold Chronicle, has a complete first draft at 70,000 words. I’m currently doing a revision pass based on what I learned from editing Book 1. Cleaning up show-don’t-tell issues, tightening sentence structure, all the unglamorous craft work that makes the difference. Once that’s done, it goes to professional editing. I’m targeting late 2026 for release. The companion album, Threshold II: Catharsis, is already live on Spotify – the mythology was built first, so I could release the music ahead of the book.
Author Links: Facebook | Instagram | Website | Spotify
Until Hillrose Penitentiary.
What begins as another routine investigation becomes something else entirely when Marcus Chen’s team discovers a pattern. A pattern that repeats across decades, etched into the prison’s structure and buried in its records. As they document the anomaly, the pattern begins to replicate. In their footage. In their notes. In their perception of time itself.
Some patterns demand to be observed. And observation changes the observer.
The Fifth Anomaly is the first book in The Threshold Chronicles, a cosmic horror series exploring the boundaries between humanity and their place in objective reality. This edition features an integrated soundtrack experience. Scan QR codes at chapter endings to hear the music that accompanies each threshold.
For readers of American Gods, House of Leaves, and the New Weird.
The Fifth Anomaly: A Threshold Chronicle
The Fifth Anomaly follows a small urban exploration group that prides itself on debunking hauntings with cameras, notes, and skepticism, until they meet Hillrose Penitentiary, a prison with too many basements, missing records, and a pattern of investigations that always start in October and never quite finish. As Marcus, Riley, Sam, and Kevin descend through Hillrose, their footage, their chat logs, and even their sense of time start to bend around the anomaly. The story keeps zooming out, until we meet David, a writer who realizes he is somehow channeling their ordeal into the very book I am holding, and the act of publishing the story becomes part of the horror itself. It is a cosmic horror tale about patterns that want to be seen and a book that may not want to stay fictional.
I really liked how the book feels. The Discord transcripts, reports, chat logs, and more traditional scenes flow together in a way that reads fast and keeps the world grounded. The author even opens with a frank foreword about “just trying to finish a book,” which sets a scrappy, human tone that I found charming and disarming before the story gets weird. The writing leans into clear, conversational language, so even when the concepts get big, the sentences stay readable. Sometimes the momentum gets ahead of the polish. I could feel a bit of repetition and a few cumbersome transitions, especially when Kevin is info-dumping research or when the group re-states the pattern one more time. But I never felt lost. The scenes in Hillrose’s lower levels, the tallies on the walls, the long grind of “observation duty” all landed for me with a heavy, tired dread that fit the characters and the premise.
What I liked most was the book’s attitude toward observation and authorship. The core idea that “some patterns demand to be observed, and observation changes the observer” runs through everything: the Discord channel, the cameras, the tallies on concrete, the way David’s hands become a kind of meat keyboard for something else that wants the story finished and uploaded. I felt genuinely unsettled by the suggestion that my act of reading joins that pattern. The meta twist, where The Fifth Anomaly exists inside its own last chapter as a runaway book that writes and distributes itself, is clever and creepy. It also brushes up against real-world questions about AI, co-writing, and who is really in charge of the words. Riley’s arc in particular hit me harder than I expected. Her mix of competence, fear, and longing for a “normal” life gave the cosmic stuff a human anchor, so when the story asks her to pay the price for seeing too much, I felt that loss.
I would recommend The Fifth Anomaly to readers who enjoy cosmic horror with a tech-age vibe, people who liked House of Leaves, creepypasta, or “found footage” stories, and anyone curious about metafiction that plays with Discord chats, documents, and author notes as part of the scare. It is not for someone who wants neat answers, clean timelines, or a cozy ending. The book leaves some edges rough, both in prose and in lore, and it leans into existential dread more than jump scares. I closed the last page feeling spooked and impressed that a debut horror novel managed to make the simple act of opening an ebook feel like joining a very old, persistent experiment.
Pages: 469 | ASIN : B0G8LTJQR5
