Author Archives: Literary-Titan
Mythic Engine
Triunitae: Patefactum Origins follows a fallen celestial presence who winds up in a murdered Roman’s body and is sent to recover three fragments of the divine daughter, who has been shattered into three women and hidden across the kingdom. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I wanted the story to begin with a fracture disguised as a mission. On the surface, Triunitae presents a fallen celestial figure sent into stolen flesh to recover three fragments and restore a divine whole. That gave me the mythic engine. But what interested me more was the deeper machinery under that engine: love turning into judgment, judgment turning into ruin, and a sacred quest slowly revealing itself as a move in a much larger design. Vis Ocula’s choice sets the original catastrophe in motion, Flavus shatters her into three women, and Postumus sends Our Luminous One into Orbis Silentio under the language of rescue. That combination let me build a story that begins as a heroic recovery narrative and gradually exposes itself as a story about manipulation, consequence, and the rearranging of power across realms.
The idea of a divine being split into three human forms is striking. Are these fragments incomplete versions of divinity, or expressions of something that cannot exist whole in a mortal world?
They are both fragment and revelation. They are incomplete in the literal sense, because each woman carries only a part of Vis Ocula. But they are also expressions of what divinity becomes once it passes through suffering, embodiment, and time. That mattered most to me. I did not want the three women to feel like lesser copies of a goddess waiting to be corrected. I wanted them to feel like living embodiments of a broken totality, each carrying a force, temperament, and wound that reveals something essential about the whole. In that sense, the fragmentation is not just loss. It is exposure. It shows what divine wholeness looks like after it has been broken by grief and forced to live in a harsher world.
The book feels deeply invested in divine judgment and its consequences. What questions about power or faith were you most interested in exploring?
I was most interested in the moment power begins calling itself order. In this world, judgment rarely arrives wearing its true face. It comes clothed in duty, faith, hierarchy, righteousness, and sacred structure. Triunitae let me explore that through gods, realm masters, and old loyalties, where nearly every authority claims principle while serving a private agenda. Involuntarius deepens that question by showing what happens when those same impulses harden into human institutions, rituals, ranks, and systems of control. One of the core ideas running beneath both books is that faith can be a genuine search for meaning, but it can also be engineered, organized, and weaponized. I wanted to explore how power sanctifies itself, how belief can become machinery, and how entire worlds can be shaped by people who insist they are serving something higher while really serving themselves.
As an origin story, this feels like the beginning of something much larger. How will the scope evolve from here?
It expands by shifting from confusion into revelation, and from myth into inheritance. Involuntarius is a deliberately disorienting novel. The reader is meant to get lost inside the characters, the titles, the rituals, the loyalties, and the hidden architecture of that world. Triunitae steps in as the clarifying hinge. It begins with a cosmic fracture, but it does not remain a sealed legend. What first appears to be a rescue mission gradually reveals a broader political function. Our Luminous One enters Orbis Silentio believing he has been sent to recover the fragments and restore Vis Ocula, yet the journey really stirs the board, exposes the private allegiances of each realm and its masters, and sets larger forces into motion. From there, the scope carries forward into the human world, where the Aurum Pugio, Rome in 313 AJD, Sexta and Luc, and the early movement toward Congregatio turn divine history into human consequence. That was important to me. I wanted Triunitae to be the book that sets things straight, the hinge in the larger saga where the ancient wound stops feeling distant and begins to explain the hidden machinery behind Involuntarius while opening the path into Congregatio.
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You chart your course. You claim your victories. You blame your failures.
You call it will.
Before Terranis learned to measure time, Summa Gaudium stood whole. When Order fractured and Structure faltered, the rupture did not announce itself to you. It simply rearranged the board.
A Goddess descended into flesh. A man died believing his life mattered. A child born of divinity learned resentment.
The realms split.
Follow Our Luminous One, an Aeternum stripped of radiance, forced into stolen flesh, cast into Orbis Silentio with a single command. Find the three fragments and restore Vis Ocula.
He believes this is a hero’s quest.
He does not see the board.
Just like you.
Every choice feels personal. Every loss feels earned. Every victory feels deserved.
But pawns move forward thinking they advance themselves.
Triunitae: Patefactum Origins reveals the fracture before the war.
Sometimes the captain doesn’t know he was always the cargo.
The Structure of Society
Tyrants of Gravity follows the people of Earth who have survived the first alien attack and are now preparing for future attacks, while trying to survive the aftermath of the first war. Is this story more about survival—or about what survives?
The first book in the series, Gravity of Sol-3, is more about what or who survives. The alien sentinels sought to prevent humans from acquiring black hole energy technology that could threaten the dominant galactic worlds. The aliens also tried to prevent the evolution of man’s telepathic communication, deploying eugenic attacks to exterminate neurodiverse members of the population. If the aliens could have blocked these two elements of human civilization — one technological, the other biological — then humankind would survive but stagnate.
The aliens, Tyrants of Gravity, return in the second book to eradicate the human threat now that Earth has obtained both capabilities. Humans use black hole energy to power spacecraft, and human telepathy establishes contact with alien life. The alien antagonists plan to strike our world with relativistic kinetic energy weapons—releasing more destructive energy than a million nuclear weapons. In Tyrants of Gravity, the stakes are the survival of the human race.
Your battle planning and tech feel tactile and grounded. What research or frameworks shaped that realism?
This aspect of the stories came easily to me, as I have a background in science and engineering and have designed military weapon guidance systems and commercial computing systems. I used my experience with those systems, the teams of developers, and with government and military organizations. I also ensured the story’s events obey the laws of physics as closely as possible: I have a spreadsheet titled, Physics, for each story, and this is just as important as my detailed outlines of story structure and character arcs. The realism introduces natural constraints and obstacles that the characters must overcome.
The alien forces are not just antagonists—they react, adapt, and escalate. How did you approach their psychology?
The aliens rely on machine intelligence, MI, to operate their spaceships and their society. I extrapolated beyond our current AI technology to imagine systems that threaten their organic creators. The alien life forms, the organics, still manage to exert diminishing influence over the alien MI. I gave the MI characteristics of human political organizations, along with many of the weaknesses and faults humans exhibit today. The aliens must grapple with MI and organic conflicts as they pursue the greater objective of suppressing and destroying the human threat. The alien organics and MIs are flawed characters.
As a sequel, this book expands both scale and theme. How do you see the larger arc unfolding?
The first two books of the series focus on Earth and the first contacts with alien antagonists. These books are close together in time and result in the breakout survival and advancement of the human race, making Earth’s inhabitants viable contenders in the galaxy. The worldbuilding of the first two books was a straightforward extrapolation of present-day Earth. Future books will explore how humans exploit their new capabilities to travel to the stars and interact with the alien species that first watched over and then assaulted Earth. Human neurodivergence and telepathy progress and dramatically affect the structure of society.
I have two works in progress that transit across space and time and feature significantly more worldbuilding for the alien settings, cultures, and technologies of Luyten-B and Proxima-B. Humans travel to the home world of the Luyten, Cap, to find the captain’s world subjugated by Centauri masters. Human military and diplomatic missions journey to the Centauri fleet station on Proxima-B to confront the alien civilizations from a position of strength, but grapple with the unintended consequences of their missile and cyberattacks on the Centauris.
Author Links: GoodReads | BlueSky | Website | Amazon
Humans mount a frantic defense.
The aliens launch planet killers.
Earth’s civilization and billions of human lives are at stake.
Two autistic boys, Robby and Luca, search for their lost parent–lost in the dystopia created by the alien attacks. The rogue alien officer, Cap, is thrilled by the boys’ emerging telepathy mutation and helps them in their quest.
Scott Anderson, Robby’s physicist brother, joins the Space Force weapons development team to defend against the approaching alien fleet. But man’s technology, which harnesses the energy of primordial black holes, is primitive compared to the Centauri fleet’s weapons.
Rise in Courage
In Aimed & Ready, you emphasize that the seasons of delay, silence, loss, and backward movement can actually be forms of divine preparation. Why was this an important book for you to write?
I wrote this book to address a need I kept seeing in people’s lives. Many Christians know how to celebrate seasons of success, blessing, and prosperity, but often lack a framework for navigating hardship, uncertainty, delay, and disappointment. Over the past six months, this burden grew strongly in my heart, and I felt compelled to put into words the hope and perspective people need during difficult seasons.
The core message of the book is that when life doesn’t make sense, there is still purpose, hope, and destiny available when we choose to trust God and surrender our struggles to Him. Rather than seeing trials as endings, I want readers to recognize that something beautiful may be forming just beyond the present challenge.
I also wanted to provide prophetic encouragement by exploring the emotions people experience in seasons of stretching, waiting, discomfort, and shaking. The book not only acknowledges those feelings but also offers insight into why we experience them and how we can respond in faith.
One of the key metaphors I use is that of an archer pulling back an arrow. The Archer’s aim is never careless. Although the pressure of being pulled back can feel intense, it is actually preparation for forward movement. In the same way, I believe God often uses seasons of tension to position us for growth, blessing, and His greater purpose.
Ultimately, the book challenges readers to rise in courage, break limiting mindsets, and step confidently into God’s calling. I want people to understand that their trials can transform them and become a powerful testimony of God’s faithfulness.
When did the bow-and-arrow metaphor first come to you, and why did it feel central?
The book really began with one simple thought: your pullback is a setup for your comeback. That idea immediately gave me the picture of an archer with a bow fully drawn back. What feels like strain is often actually alignment, and what looks like a setback may be God positioning you for greater impact.
In a world where many people feel like targets, I wanted to remind readers that God didn’t create them to be victims of circumstance—He crafted them to be the arrow. Sometimes the pullback isn’t the end of the story; it’s the beginning of something greater. That’s why the bow-and-arrow metaphor felt so powerful and fitting for this message.
A major theme in the book is surrender. In God’s Kingdom, surrender is never defeat. In His hands, surrender becomes strength, stability, and precision. It allows your life to go farther than human effort alone ever could. Many people think surrender means losing control or identity, but I believe the opposite is true—it places your life in the hands of Someone who knows you completely and sees further than you can see.
Just as an archer never draws back an arrow without intention, God never allows seasons of waiting, silence, or tension without purpose. He sees the obstacles, opportunities, and timing that we often cannot. Sometimes what feels like delay is really a divine reset to align our trajectory with His greater vision.
Ultimately, the message of the book is that every arrow finds its meaning when it yields to the Archer. When we surrender to God, our lives can move with greater clarity, purpose, and precision toward the calling He has set before us. This book, along with its devotional workbook, is designed to help readers grow stronger in the tension, realign with Heaven’s purpose, and step confidently into their God-given destiny.
How can readers tell the difference between spiritual stillness and spiritual distance?
One of the key messages I wanted to communicate is that trust in God must always be the foundation of faith. There are seasons when God can feel distant, but often that sense of distance comes because something is clouding our perspective, or because the answer we’re looking for is not yet visible. It doesn’t mean God has moved away.
I also talk about stillness, because stillness is not the absence of God. I describe it as a holy hush—an intentional choice to silence the noise around us so we can hear, see, and discern what God is doing in that moment. Rather than being empty, stillness can become a place of deep intimacy with Him.
When people feel distance from God, they often assume He is far away or hard to reach. But that is never His heart. God desires closeness and a relationship with His people. Scripture asks, What can separate us from the love of God? and the answer is clear: nothing.
So any feeling of separation is not a truth we should accept, but often a perception shaped by fear, disappointment, or misunderstanding. The reality is that God remains near, loving, and fully present—even in the quiet seasons. My hope is that readers come to see silence not as abandonment, but as an invitation into deeper trust and intimacy with Him.
How do you respond to readers who feel that their pain has no visible outcome?
One of the important truths I explore in the book is that while difficult seasons can feel confusing and unclear, we must be careful not to let that drift into fatalism or hopelessness. Just because we cannot see the outcome doesn’t mean there is no purpose or direction. Often, it simply means the perspective belongs to Someone greater than us. As I say in the book, the archer sees what the arrow cannot yet perceive.
That perspective changes how we view our battles. What looks like an obstacle may actually be the very thing God uses to launch us into what He has already prepared. Your Goliath may not be there to destroy you—it may be the catapult into your next season of purpose and victory. That’s why I encourage readers not to be afraid, but to trust God completely, because true breakthrough happens when His power is behind what He has placed in your hand.
My prayer is that this book would saturate people with faith and hope, bring their hearts into alignment with God, and strengthen their confidence in His purpose. If someone is in a season of waiting, stretching, or feeling hidden, I believe this message can be a real lifeline. It is designed to help readers rest again, realign with God’s perspective, and trust His heart in a fresh way.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Nico Smit | Amazon
With prophetic insight and pastoral clarity, Nico Smit reframes seasons of tension, delay, and apparent retreat-not as disqualification, but as divine preparation. Drawing from a powerful vision of a bow drawn tight and an arrow held under pressure, ‘Aimed & Ready’ reveals a profound truth: what feels like strain is often alignment, and what looks like setback may be God positioning you for greater impact.
This powerful cutting-edge prophetic book speaks to those who feel buried, forgotten, or off-track, reminding them that God does not waste His arrows. The pullback is not punishment-it is precision. The pressure is not abandonment-it is proof of purpose.
With prophetic revelation, biblical insight, and hope-filled exhortation, these pages restore faith for the waiting, courage for the weary, and vision for those standing between promise and fulfillment.
You are not retreating. You are being aligned, sharpened, and prepared. ‘Aimed & Ready’ will restore your perspective and strengthen your faith.
Will you let God aim you?
If your answer is yes, your comeback has already begun.
FOREWORD by Stacey Campbell
This book also has a Devotional Workbook available on Amazon.
Professional Endorsements by: Gary Heyes, Ryan Laubscher, Chelsea Hagen, Elaine Tavolacci, Joshua Sawiris, Ada Boland and Melvain Donyes
Costly Words
The Walking Wounded traces the lives of two boys whose childhood bond follows them into adulthood, where—now police officers—they find themselves working a murder investigation tied to the haunting disappearance of two missing children. What first drew you to this story—was it the investigation, the characters, or the themes of trauma?
This book started life as a stage musical way back in 1992/93. I stopped writing for a very long time. The basic story of trauma and its effects has always been there. The romance of our leading men was added in recent years, after consultation with a movie producer.
Phil and Li’s relationship unfolds slowly and carries a lot of history. Why did you choose that long-burn dynamic?
I was trying to drive home the concept of toxic masculinity and the fear that goes along with self-acceptance for LGBTIQ+ people. ‘I’m gay’ can still be very costly words.
The novel questions whether justice is ever “enough.” How do you define justice in this story, and how do institutional failures shape the narrative?
It was always about system failure. People need to take responsibility for their abusive actions. Current conditions prove that justice remains beyond reach.
Despite its darkness, the book leaves room for connection and care. Why was that important?
Many of the characters live with abuse. It affects them all in different ways. Phil hides it under a cover of denial, and Davina uses it to remain strong while she helps Levi and Noah through it. Ian/Iceman has been destroyed by his past and believes the world owes him a favour. His dark anger boils below the surface.
Four stories, four outcomes.
The fact that there can be healing is an important concept for any abuse survivor who may pick up my book. The fact that Noah makes it through the darkness to adulthood and fatherhood, despite the losses along the way, is important.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
The Walking Wounded is a gripping narrative that intricately weaves together the journeys of four characters, resulting in a deeply engaging reading experience. Immerse yourself in the gripping and dark tale of two seasoned detectives as they navigate the twisted maze of a child prostitution ring, entangled with the powerful and influential members of Newcastle society. The atmosphere is charged with tension as they step off into the mystery surrounding two separate homicides, apparently connected to two missing boys. Each step adds to the growing urgency, as the faint scent of desperation lingers in the air. Their determined hearts beat in sync as they manoeuvre through the complex maze of deceit, the pulsating rhythm propelling them forward. In their determined pursuit to locate the two missing boys, their hands quiver with a blend of eagerness and anxiety, their touch inadvertently tracing the sharp contours of their own haunting memories. With each body discovered, the truth shines brighter, piercing through the shadows like a beacon of hope.
Boost Mental Health
Healthy Relationships presents a thoughtful and approachable exploration of what helps relationships thrive, walking readers through the core ingredients of healthy connection, communication, boundaries, empathy, responsibility, and self-awareness. Why was this an important book for you to write?
Mental health is an important subject for me especially because I work as an inpatient psychiatric nurse. We all could use more help with our journey to stable mental well-being, including myself. I learn things from every Nurse Dorothea® book I write. We plan to produce about 80 Nurse Dorothea® books (currently there are 15 as of April 2026), so it was time to cover this topic.
Relationships are complex, and I appreciate that you covered friendships, family ties, romantic partnerships, and online relationships. How did you approach writing about such a diverse topic, but still presenting meaningful information without being overwhelming?
I practice the skill of synthesis of reading a lot of research-based information and combining it all to create a thorough product. The Nurse Dorothea® books are much harder for me to write than the Nurse Florence® series since I am combining information from many different source documents.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
There were many, but one important one discussed by Harvard Health was how a variety of relationships can help boost mental health.
What is the next book in the Nurse Dorothea series that you are working on?
One of the next books to be published is Schizophrenia. We need to play our part to destigmatize mental illness just as Dorothea Dix did in the 1800s.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Essay Contest | YouTube | Dow Creative Enterprises® | Nurse Florence Project | LinkedIn | Amazon
If society wants something we have never had, we’re going to have to do something that has never been done.
Finding Home
The Diaries of a Teenage Pilgrim: The Early Journey is a coming-of-age memoir about finding your spiritual identity under pressure, when your family moves from rural Wisconsin to Israel. What do you remember most vividly about the moment you learned you were moving to Israel?
I already had a firm foundation in the faith before we moved. I was baptized at nine years old and had a charismatic experience of speaking in the “tongues of Canaan” at that age as well. Being a pastor’s kid was not always simple, and there were seasons of struggling on a tight budget where I could not always afford what my peers had. During my tweens, my heart was not as close to the Lord as it once was, but in my thirteenth year, I experienced a spiritual revival and a growing sense that He was preparing me for a great adventure with Him.
In some ways, the move did make my faith more fragile, but that fragility drew me closer to God. Fragility can do one of two things: it can ruin you, or it can cause you to lean on the Good Shepherd. I chose the latter, and it was in that leaning that my love for bridal poetry was born.
Readers who want to follow that thread further will find it woven throughout my next memoir. There, I hope to continue the journey, sharing my experiences in the Israeli-Lebanese borderlands. The story builds toward the Israeli withdrawal from the buffer zone in 2000, when my father’s work in South Lebanon was brought to a close. The story does not end there. The series is intended to continue well into my adult years, as there is much more of the journey still to share.
How did moving across cultures affect your understanding of faith? Did your beliefs feel stronger, more fragile, or simply different during that time?
When I was thirteen, and my parents said, “We’re going home” to Israel, I thought, but I am already home. However, home for me was Spooner, Wisconsin: the smell of pancakes with real maple syrup, mom’s piano filling the rooms, Dad home and not deployed, and hours of rollerskating on a Friday night. That was my definition of home, but it would keep changing.
Then the whole story flipped. I would spend years as a Third Culture Kid searching for home, crossing oceans, borders, and the wreckage of my own expectations.
A romantasy reader knows this, even if she has never opened a Bible. She knows what it is to be hunted by a love that will not be reasoned out of finding you. She knows the moment the Beloved crosses every border and descends into every darkness, not because you were worthy, but because you were wanted. She has felt the shock of being seen by someone who walks straight past every wall you built and finds the thing you buried deepest. He found me a displaced teenager with fifteen moves under her skin, and He said, “You are not a stranger to me. You are lovely, and you are mine.” Now, suddenly, it did not matter where I was. He was where I was. Home was not a place I was trying to reach; rather, Home was the One who had already reached me.
One day, I will go home to Him: into that final consummation that Revelation calls a wedding. However, in the meantime, in the liminal wilderness years, His Holy Spirit had already taken up residence in me.
He did not call me “stranger.” He called me “lovely.”
Yes, home can be a place. But at its deepest, truest, most unshakeable sense, home is a Person who chose you before you knew His name, who crossed every wilderness, who makes displacement holy ground and wandering a romance.
Here is what I know now that I did not know at thirteen, about to embark on a lifelong pursuit of finding home. He did not just come to bring me home. He placed the road inside me.
There is a song by Petra that resounds in my head:
There is a road inside of you, inside of me, there is one too — no stumbling pilgrim in the dark, the road to Zion’s in your heart.
If you could speak to your teenage self, what would you tell her?
Writing this book was itself a way of speaking to her. Going through my journals, I awakened memories I had long since forgotten, some of them buried for good reason. One that surfaced was a fight scene involving the entire boys’ hockey team, a memory I had blocked out for years. Writing it was harder for me than even the car accident scene, because embedded in it was a deep shame I had carried silently. Shame in the lies that had been spoken about me, and shame in having fought back, because I believed we were called to be peacemakers.
However, writing as a pilgrimage changes you. It makes you look again at what really happened. As I sat with that scene, I started to view it differently. It was the turning point of the whole journey. That was the moment I stopped looking for an earthly hero to save me and began leaning on my Heavenly One. God saw me in that very moment. He knew my name. He was not leaving me to walk alone as a stranger in a strange land.
So what would I tell her? I would tell her not to be ashamed of who she was and not to carry false guilt. I would tell her to be brave, to believe, and not to be afraid of becoming what her Beloved Heavenly King had destined her to be.
Author Links: GoodReads | The Diaries of a Teenage Pilgrim | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Lydia takes you on a journey to Jerusalem, living in a Jewish neighborhood, attending an Arab school in East Jerusalem, then moving to the Israeli-Lebanese border. She joins a hockey team and a speed skating team. Rockets fly overhead while her father works in South Lebanon with Christian radio. As the only believer in Jesus among her friends, she grapples with how to live set apart for God. But as tensions build, she runs away to the Ozarks to live with her Grandma and experience a normal American high school life. During that time, she comes face to face with her dreams and the deeper calling placed on her life. She has a destiny set before her, but will she choose the comfort of familiar ground, or will she return to the Galilean Hills where Someone was waiting for her?
This is the raw testimony of a girl and how she began to see how heaven and hell fought over her. As one who has moved between many places, she discovers a single constant: the mystical presence of God. He opens to her the language of the Song of Songs and reveals that He wants her for a Bride, drawing her into deeper intimacy through poetry and Divine love. This is the true story of a teenager who begins her journey and slowly finds the Lover of her soul. This is the early journey. Part two is coming, as the mountains of spices await Lydia’s return.
Lydia wrote in her diary as a teenager. She wrote this book as an adult who never forgot what it cost. For readers thirteen and beyond. Her story and poetry speak to anyone who has ever felt like a stranger at any age: anyone walking this journey of life and searching for meaning and purpose, Third Culture Kids navigating between worlds, ministry families facing cross-cultural moves, men and women wrestling with questions of belonging, seniors who want to reignite their passion for God, and teens grappling with confusion about identity and vision.
Between the Holy Land and the Ozarks, one reluctant pilgrim discovers you cannot outrun a love written before there was time.
Private Survival
To Say Goodbye Again is an emotionally candid poetry collection that turns grief, memory, love, labor, and trauma into language strong enough to bear what silence could not. What inspired you to write and publish this collection?
Writing To Say Goodbye Again wasn’t something I planned—it was something I needed. After years on the road as a truck driver, hauling freight across the continent, I carried a lot more than cargo. Grief, memories of family, lost love, the weight of hard work, and old wounds that never quite healed—they all rode shotgun with me. When I finally retired and had time to sit still, those things started demanding to be spoken. Poetry became the way, I could carry what silence couldn’t hold anymore.
I also wanted to prove to myself that I could start a project like this and finish it. I needed to leave behind something for my children to remember me by—something more than just the constant reminders to be responsible, the harping on obligations and discipline. I wanted them to know they had a father who was a dreamer, a goal setter, and who lived for humanity rather than just himself.
Publishing it was about turning private survival into something shared. If one person reads it and feels less alone in their own mess of love, loss, or regret, then it was worth laying it all bare. It’s my way of saying: here’s what the road, the years, and the heart taught me. Take what you need.
How did the structure of the book evolve as you moved from grief and family memory toward “Princess”?
It started as fragments—short pieces about saying goodbye to people and dogs and old versions of myself. The early poems circle grief and family the way you circle a wound that won’t close. I didn’t force an order at first; I just let the memories come out as they needed to.
The strange thing about the final chapter is that I was sidestepping around the idea of adding “Princess” at all. I was more focused on creating a poetry collection that was uniquely universal. I wanted the book to find readers who needed the roller coaster of emotions—that way I was certain to provide something for everyone. “Springtime,” which is a popular piece, was going to be the last chapter.
Ironically, it was during that same week I first started seriously entertaining the thought of publishing the work that the trauma of my childhood came to a head. It was a serious week of hell. I felt that at this point in my life, if I didn’t face all the toxic emotions I carried with intelligence and in a reasonable way, I would rot and die with it inside me—and my family would continue to wonder why I was so sad and withdrawn.
After a week of dealing with it head-on, I finally made the decision to incorporate “Princess.” What I felt, however, was that if I was going to write that piece, I wanted to convey a message to the reader without vitriol and without sounding like a victim seeking sympathy. It needed to be written with wisdom and to lead the reader calmly through the storm. Nothing is learned if we shock the reader and force them to close the book. My desire was to meet people where they were, and that doesn’t work if we chase them away.
Once “Princess” was in there, the whole collection felt heavier, truer. The structure evolved naturally from protection to reckoning. It had to end where the deepest silence had lived, because only then could the goodbye feel complete.
In what ways do work, masculinity, and self-acceptance connect for you across these poems?
For a guy who spent decades behind the wheel, work wasn’t just a job—it was how I proved I could carry weight, provide, and keep moving no matter what. Masculinity, in my experience, often meant swallowing the pain, staying steady for the people counting on you, and finding dignity in dirty hands and long hours. A lot of these poems wrestle with that: the pride in the labor, the loneliness of the cab at 3 a.m., the way it shapes a man.
Though we write for others, the truth is we are often writing for ourselves first. Reflecting on the years as a father, husband, and coworker—all of that was so deeply stitched into me that there was no way my poetry was going to be anything but lived truths. I was always known over the years as a straight shooter. It wasn’t always favorable, but those who knew me understood that they were getting someone who wears his heart on his sleeve and will never be anything but me.
So, my writing reflects all those incredible and heartbreaking experiences.
Self-acceptance came later, after the miles and the losses. It meant admitting I didn’t have to be unbreakable. That it’s okay to feel the grief, the regret, the softness I used to hide. The poems connect those threads—work as both armor and teacher, masculinity as both strength and limitation, and finally, the hard-won peace of letting myself be human. Vulnerable but still standing. That’s the real haul.
What do you hope readers carry with them after finishing To Say Goodbye Again?
I hope they carry the permission to feel it all—the grief, the love, the anger, the tenderness—without shame. Life breaks us in places, but those cracks are where the light gets in and where we learn to speak truthfully.
More than anything, I want readers to walk away knowing they’re not alone in their goodbyes, whether to people, to old selves, or to the versions of life that didn’t work out. There’s resilience in naming the hurt, and there’s renewal on the other side of it.
I also want those who seek my work to trust that I am not self-serving. I may not know exactly what they are going through, but I will be there for them if they need me. Whatever they read, they will know that I had them in mind and not just myself.
If this book leaves them with a little more courage to say what needs saying—or to finally say goodbye again—then I’ve done what I set out to do.
Shadows, Roads and Redemption the Memoir and full story scheduled for a 2026 mid-summer release.
Author Links: GoodReads | Jac Winters | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
“In the ache of saying goodbye, grief arrives as our uninvited guest. We
can let it consume us, or we can let it forge us—carrying us forward,
transformed, into whatever comes next.” —Jac Winters.
Jac Winters shares his deeply personal journey through childhood trauma, 48
years of enforced silence that held the pain in check, and the long-overdue road to healing that finally began in 2017 with a single, powerful poem that cracked open the past.
In To Say Goodbye Again, retired truck driver and poet Jac Winters lays bare his life through vivid, heartfelt verses born from the shadows of loss, grief, abuse, and hard-won resilience.
What began as a private act of turning endured evil into something good has grown into a quiet lifeline for other survivors burdened by silence, violence, or marginalization. These poems speak straight to the heart of anyone who’s carried their story alone for too long—offering connection, validation, and the gentle reminder that healing is possible, one brave, determined step at a time.
This book of poetry is a hand reaching out from one survivor’s road to yours, saying you’re not alone, your voice matters, and it’s never too late to say goodbye to the weight you’ve carried.
Unwavering Devotion
A Time for Us is a heartfelt historical romance that follows two love stories across 1947 New York and 1987 North Carolina, asking whether a bond powerful enough to survive prejudice and loss can also survive death. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The inspiration for A Time for Us began with a real moment in my life. In 1987, I was working the breakfast shift at a fast-food restaurant in Clayton, North Carolina; a married mother of two, living a very routine life where I saw the same faces every day.
Then one morning, a new face appeared. There was an instant, unexplainable familiarity between us. We found ourselves stealing glances, both trying to place where we might know each other from. When he came through my line, we realized we were strangers, but neither of us could shake the feeling that we weren’t.
He was in town temporarily, and for the next several weeks, he came in every day, always choosing my line. Our conversations were light and innocent, but there was an undeniable connection neither of us could explain.
On his last day, he brought me two dozen yellow roses to thank me for making his time in town special. I told him I couldn’t take them home, but I accepted them anyway. Before he left, he looked at me and said, almost in disbelief, “I still feel like I know you… maybe from another lifetime.” I laughed it off at the time, but that moment stayed with me.
I never saw him again. But I kept one of those roses, pressed inside a book of poetry that I still have. And over the years, I found myself wondering… what if that feeling meant something more?
That question became the seed for A Time for Us. The story itself is fiction, but that moment… that unexplainable connection was very real.
How did you approach writing the 1947 romance so that its tenderness and danger would feel equally present?
I’ve always been drawn to historical documentaries, especially those centered around organized crime. That’s where the element of danger in their story was born. The tenderness, though, came from a much more personal place. It was shaped by my imagination and reflects the kind of love I believe in and would want for myself (minus the “forbidden” complications, of course).
What I love most about Mario and Jeannette is that they choose each other again and again, under every circumstance. Even when tragedy should have driven them apart, they hold on tighter. There’s something incredibly powerful about that kind of unwavering devotion.
What drew you to write a love story that is so openly sincere and emotionally heightened rather than restrained?
I write the way I live my life now: from my heart. And I think that’s exactly why it took me over 30 years to finish and publish A Time for Us. For a long time, I lived with a quiet fear of what people might think of me, of my choices, of my voice.
If I had published this story decades ago, it would have been very different. More restrained. More concerned with being palatable… telling a neat, tidy story that didn’t push too far or risk offending anyone.
But the version I ultimately wrote is the one I was always meant to tell. It’s raw. It’s real. It leans fully into emotion without apology. And if that sincerity feels a little too much for some… well, I’m finally at a place where I’m okay with that.
What do you hope readers carry with them after finishing A Time for Us, the romance, the idea of fate, or something else entirely?
More than anything, I hope readers walk away believing in the power of love, not just the idea of it, but the kind of love that endures. The kind that isn’t conditional or convenient, but steady, selfless, and deeply rooted.
Life is going to bring obstacles; we all know that. But when you have real love in your life… not the transactional kind we sometimes settle for, but the kind that says, “I’m here, no matter what”, it gives you the strength to face anything.
If readers close this book feeling like that kind of love is possible… and worth holding onto… then I’ve done what I set out to do.
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In A Time for Us, readers are drawn into the life of Deborah, an African-American woman whose dreams reveal a connection to a previous existence. These dreams lead her to Pauli, a Caucasian man whose presence stirs a deep sense of familiarity within her. As Deborah explores the concept of reincarnation, she uncovers the tumultuous love story of Jeannette, an African-American seamstress from Harlem, and Mario, an Italian man entangled in the dangerous world of organized crime in 1940s New York City.
Deborah’s journey is fraught with peril as she risks everything to uncover the hidden truths surrounding Jeannette and Mario’s lives. Each revelation pulls her deeper into a historical landscape marked by racial tensions and societal constraints, where love defies the boundaries of time and circumstance. The intensity of Jeannette and Mario’s love story resonates with Deborah, forcing her to confront her own feelings and the commitments she has in her current life.
As she navigates the complexities of her dreams and the realities of her present, Deborah finds herself in a profound struggle between the haunting allure of a past love and the fragile ties of her current existence. A Time for Us is a compelling exploration of love’s endurance across time, challenging readers to reflect on the choices that shape their lives and the legacies of love that linger long after the moments have passed.
