With A Chilling Touch of Authenticity
An Imprint of Evil and Other Hauntings is a collection of ten horror stories centered around cursed objects, hungry gods, and terrible choices. What draws you to the horror genre?
As a kid, I grew up reading EC horror comics and watching TV programs like ‘The Twilight Zone’ and ‘The Night Gallery.’ In my early teen years I started reading classics like Dracula and Frankenstein. I was just drawn in by such stories that slowly create a feeling of unease in the reader. Although supernatural in nature, they echo with a chilling touch of authenticity. And that’s what makes them so frightening.
Many of the stories begin with familiar situations before slowly turning sinister. Why do you think ordinary settings make horror more effective?
It’s the creeping uncertainty about what is real or true in ordinary situations that brings about the more subtle feeling of dread or fear, an unsettling feeling that lingers with the reader well after the story has been read.
Horror can easily become overly graphic or overly abstract, but your stories stay focused and concise. Was restraint an intentional stylistic choice?
Yes. I wanted the stories to build up slowly, with subtle hints along the way that not is all what it seems to be. These are stories that lean on the classic atmosphere of the Victorian-era spinechiller stories. Stories that were meant to be read out-loud by candle light on dark winter nights.
Which story in the collection was the most enjoyable or unsettling for you to write?
Enjoyable – would be ‘The Barn’. It’s my first folk horror story and I actually felt sorry placing the main character in such a desperate situation!
Unsettling – would be ‘Charles Linkwood’. It was difficult to read about the horrors experienced by WWI soldiers while doing my research for the story, and how many returned home as broken lads suffering from ‘shell shock’ (PTSD). I tried to capture some of that horror in my story.
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First Steps From Africa
Andrew Colman’s First Steps From Africa: Sunda & Sahul Book One is a prehistoric adventure built around two twelve-season-old twins, Sahul and Sunda, as their tribe moves through a harsh, changing world in search of food, water, and safety. Set roughly 85,000 years ago, the book mixes survival story, family drama, and early human history in a way that feels aimed at curious young readers. The danger is immediate, with jackals, crocodiles, cave lions, hunger, cold, and drought pressing in on the tribe, but the heart of the story is the twins learning what kind of people they’re becoming.
Sahul is one of the book’s strongest parts because she’s observant, practical, and always thinking a few steps ahead. Her line, “No rain, no grass; no grass, no game,” sums up the book’s whole world in a simple, memorable way. Sunda, meanwhile, is eager to prove himself as a hunter, and his bravery often comes from instinct and action. Together, the twins give the story a good balance: Sahul plans, Sunda acts, and both of them grow through real pressure.
The book is also a story about community. The tribe survives because people share knowledge, watch over children, carry food, learn from strangers, and pass stories from one generation to the next. Waru and Azetta’s arrival adds warmth and variety, especially as their skills and language slowly become part of the tribe’s life. Colman does a nice job showing that survival isn’t just about strength. It’s also about listening, adapting, and accepting help.
What makes the book stand out is how it treats prehistoric life as both dangerous and thoughtful. The characters don’t feel like museum figures. They worry about age, family, fairness, weather, and whether they’ll be ready for adulthood. The book’s educational side is clear, especially in the details about tools, food, hunting, climate, and migration, but it’s usually carried through action rather than lecture. By the end, the line “It is important for us to know that our ancestors survived all this” feels like the book’s quiet message.
First Steps From Africa is a sincere and accessible adventure about young people facing a world that keeps changing around them. It gives readers a sense of how much courage and imagination early humans may have needed just to keep going. For readers who like survival stories with history woven through them, this book offers a grounded and thoughtful start.
Pages: 140 | ASIN : B0GTNB1YRQ
Sitting by the Windowsill of Life With a Spiritual Friend
Sitting by the Windowsill of Life With a Spiritual Friend is a meditative work of creative nonfiction that imagines George Harrison as a spiritual companion speaking across the veil, offering comfort, correction, tenderness, and occasional impatience to the reader. The book moves through 166 short reflections on love, grief, aging, humility, nature, creativity, forgiveness, and spiritual awakening, often returning to the same radiant center: we are here to love, to shed what no longer serves us, to listen more closely, and to live with greater reverence. Britwell frames life through candles, gardens, music, rainstorms, autumn leaves, old friendships, and the quiet ache of loss, making the book feel less like a conventional tribute and more like a long conversation beside a window, where the earthly and eternal keep touching hands.
What I liked most was the sincerity of the book. It’s not coy about its beliefs, and I appreciated that. Britwell writes from a place of open-hearted devotion, and the best passages have the feeling of someone speaking softly after learning things the hard way. I felt that especially in the reflections on grief, where death is treated not as an ending but as a painful separation held inside a larger mercy. The idea that the one who has passed is “closer in spirit than we were in life” could easily have felt sentimental, but in context it lands with real emotional weight because the book has already spent so much time building its vocabulary of presence: flickering candles, wind in trees, butterfly kisses, summer sounds at an open window. I also liked the repeated insistence on simple, embodied living. When the book turns from music to gardening, imagining hands that once strummed a guitar now tending soil, the image feels quietly profound. Creation doesn’t disappear; it changes instruments.
The writing is strongest when it slows down and trusts its images. A rainy day becomes a small sanctuary for journaling and introspection. Autumn leaves become a way to think about shedding old selves. Relationships become squares in a tapestry, and the comparison to a child’s beloved blanket gives the passage a tender, almost aching clarity. Words like light, love, soul, God, and awakening appear so frequently that they can blur together, especially across the longer middle stretches. Still, there’s an earnest rhythm here that I found disarming. It feels like a mantra, or like someone returning again and again to the only truths they believe will hold.
Its ideas are simple in the way deep things often are: live gently, forgive where you can, step away from ego, care for the Earth, stop worshiping noise, and don’t forget that love is the one thing worth carrying. The closing reflections, especially the image of setting out in an old car with beat-up suitcases and no real certainty except the decision to keep going, gave the book a fitting sense of motion. I’d recommend Sitting by the Windowsill of Life With a Spiritual Friend to readers drawn to spiritual reflection, George Harrison’s contemplative legacy, grief writing, and gentle books that feel like companionship during a season of change.
Pages: 247 | ASIN : B0H4BWTGJY
Hold On for Dear Life
Hold On for Dear Life, by Annelise Osborne, is a startup novel about three MIT friends who turn a crypto idea into a company, then have to live with everything that success brings. Charlie is the technical visionary, Jack is the builder who keeps the system honest, and Nik is the magnetic operator who knows how to make people believe. Their company, Advantage, begins with a real ideal: to make financial systems faster, fairer, and easier for ordinary people to use. One of the book’s cleanest lines comes from Jack, who says, “The complexity has to be invisible.” That idea runs through the whole story, not just as product philosophy, but as a measure of what the characters are trying to do with their own lives.
What makes the book engaging is how closely it ties technology to people. The crypto world here isn’t just charts, tokens, conferences, and hype. It’s late nights in Williamsburg, awkward co-founder dinners, Telegram chaos, security audits, jealousy, ambition, and the strange intimacy of building something with people who know you too well. Osborne is especially good at showing how a company’s culture forms in small moments, like who stays late, who notices risk, who gets credit, and who quietly carries the weight no one else can see.
The novel also has a strong sense of momentum. The early chapters capture the rush of 2017 crypto idealism, when every meetup feels like a doorway, and every new user feels like proof. As Advantage grows, the story widens into a sharp look at visibility and its cost. Public attention becomes capital, then pressure, then danger. After the stakes rise, Jack’s explanation lands with chilling simplicity: “Because people are watching.” It’s a line that reframes the whole book, turning success from something shiny into something exposed.
The strongest character work belongs to the trio at the center. Charlie’s belief in systems, Jack’s discipline, and Nik’s hunger for recognition each feel tied to something deeper than plot mechanics. Their mistakes make sense because they grow naturally out of their gifts. Nik’s recklessness comes from the same drive that helps Advantage get noticed. Jack’s control is what saves the company, but it also keeps her feelings boxed away. Charlie’s idealism gives the story its heart, especially when the book shifts from trading infrastructure to a stablecoin built around real-world access and remittances.
By the end, Hold On for Dear Life becomes a story about what founders hold onto after the hype burns off. It’s about rebuilding with more humility, choosing steadiness over spectacle, and learning that contribution can matter more than winning the loudest room. The final part, centered on USDA and the promise of cheaper cross-border payments, gives the novel a satisfying sense of purpose. This is a thoughtful and relatable book about innovation, friendship, and the personal cost of trying to build something that actually works.
Pages: 415 | ASIN : B0GX3B63RM
A Warrior’s Destiny
A Warrior’s Destiny, by Denna Holm, is a paranormal romance with strong science fiction and fantasy elements, following Jada and Bryce as they try to repair a bond damaged by grief, fear, and years of silence. Jada is Bryce’s fated mate, but their beginning was shaped by violence and loss, and when Bryce falls into a dangerous coma, she is pulled back into his life and into a wider conflict involving shifters, vampires, fae, Djinn, alien worlds, and old powers that are not finished causing harm. At its heart, though, this is a story about two people trying to find their way back to each other.
What stood out to me most was how much of the book is built around emotional recovery rather than just romance. Jada is not simply stubborn or reluctant for the sake of drama. She is frightened, guilty, and deeply unsettled by what she has seen and what she has become. I appreciated that Denna Holm lets that discomfort sit on the page. It makes the fated-mate idea feel less like an easy shortcut and more like a problem the characters have to grow into. Bryce, too, carries pain in a quieter way. His devotion is clear, but the book does not pretend devotion fixes everything overnight. That gave the romance a heavier, more reflective feel than I expected.
The writing is direct and fast-moving, with a lot of dialogue and a steady stream of supernatural complications. Sometimes the world can feel somewhat crowded, with vampires, shifters, fae, Djinn, portals, councils, and past conflicts all pushing into the story at once. There is energy in that abundance. The book has the feel of a long-running series where every side character has history, every threat connects to something larger, and every quiet scene is sitting beside a much bigger storm. I also liked the author’s choice to make Jada’s inner struggle with her wolf part of the emotional plot. Her growth isn’t just about accepting Bryce. It’s about accepting herself.
I would recommend A Warrior’s Destiny to readers who enjoy paranormal romance that leans into series lore, fated mates, protective heroes, wounded heroines, and high-stakes supernatural conflict. It is best suited for readers who like their romance wrapped in action, alien-world politics, and fantasy danger rather than kept in a simple contemporary frame. For fans of immersive paranormal romance worlds, this book offers a passionate, dramatic, and sincere entry.
Pages: 363 | ASIN : B0GX322HVZ
Hope and a Greater Compassion
In The Momma Puzzle. you share the childhood memories, stories from relatives, and letters that shape your experiences over decades of trying to understand your mother who died by suicide when you were a young girl. What inspired you to share your story with readers?
Ever since my mother died, I knew that I wanted to write a book about her. But I was warned as a child never to talk about her suicide. Through the weight of that secrecy and taboo and repression, I sensed there was an important story there to tell.
I wanted to tell Momma’s story in a way that would allow readers to see her as a human being, not merely as a terrible person, or a bad mother, or some kind of monster.
As a writer, and as her daughter, I was also embarking on a journey, through the process of writing the book, to discover as much as I could about who she had been and why she had to die in the way that she did.
How did your understanding of your mother change as you moved through letters, photographs, and medical records?
Since this is a memoir, the characters are, or were, real people. But for the purposes of writing the book and telling a story, these real people become created characters. I try to stay as close to the truth as possible, though, and use the process of writing to get even closer to the truth—even to create truth along with meaning, which gets at the value of art.
The character of Momma first appears as a young woman in the 1950s—the fresh, young, enthusiastic, adventurous college student who departs for a job in Saigon as a foreign service secretary. Through letters home to her best friend, and to my future father, Momma keenly observes life and politics in Vietnam; later she’s a newlywed, soon with one child, then two (the younger of whom was me); then comes her downward spiral toward suicide.
The character of the narrator (based on myself) is at first full of questions about Momma, and by the end reaches some understanding of who Momma had been, that her struggles were set in motion long before the narrator (I) was conceived.
Did writing the memoir change any of your relationships with surviving family members?
My relationships with my surviving family members have either improved or are stable/ unchanged since writing my memoir.
What is one thing you hope readers take away from your memoir?
I hope readers will take away hope and a greater compassion for people who die by suicide.
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Imperfect Reflections of Reality
In Quant, a grieving son trying to face the realities of his mother’s dementia returns to her home and finds himself pulled into the case of a suspicious death and small-town secrets. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
In many ways, this is a very personal story for me. I grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan, Canada, near a small town very much like the one portrayed in the book. For several decades, a notable change has been occurring in Saskatchewan, particularly in farming communities. The province’s rural population has decreased significantly. Many young people migrate to larger cities seeking adventure and opportunities, and those who wish to stay find it increasingly challenging. Rising input costs and the corporatization of farming threaten to obliterate small family farm operations and their communities. I understand and accept changing times, modernization, and progress. Still, there is a cost, and a loss of a way of life. Nostalgia and blurry, sweet memories create a yearning and mourning within me and a desire to reflect that disappearing world in my work, and perhaps suggest a hopeful future.
The novel treats dementia with both realism and tenderness. How important was it to portray Kay as more than simply a tragic figure?
Like Russell’s mother, Kay, my own mother suffered from dementia in her final years. As anyone who has gone through it knows, it is a cruel disease, not only for the sufferer, but for the caretakers who share in what can be a long, drawn-out period of mounting loss. That being said, as with most things in life, dementia isn’t simply black or white, good or evil, ease or disease. There are spaces in between where resilience, strength, and familiarity exist. If you remain open to them, those moments can bring joy, hope, and comfort. With this book, I hope I’ve communicated some of that.
The novel explores how family secrets evolve over time rather than disappear. What fascinates you about buried histories?
I find history of any kind – whether it’s in a book or home movies – fascinating. They are honest, blemished, imperfect reflections of reality, and very important. I don’t know if history is so much buried as simply obscured by time. Often, all it takes is someone with keen interest and motivation to reveal it. Without that someone, history can become altered or fade away and remain unknown forever. Family secrets are different. You are correct. They don’t disappear, they evolve. Especially the kind that are truly and intentionally buried for one reason or another. These kinds of secrets rarely vanish forever. Sometimes they germinate like a seed, awaiting the right mixture of soil, water, and sun to reveal themselves. Other times (and considerably more interesting for mystery writers like me), they’re like a disease or bit of rot that festers and grows until they can’t remain hidden any longer. It just takes someone like Russell Quant to show everyone what was there all along.
Where will the next Russell Quant Mystery take readers?
I’ve been asked whether QUANT is a return to the series or a one-time reunion. My answer is that it is neither. I’m someone who never says never, but for now there is no immediate plan to have a follow-up 10th book. When I write a series, my goal is that every book in the series adds something to the collection, progresses the story, presents something new and interesting, and moves our characters along on their personal journeys. When I feel that is no longer the case, I end the series. It wasn’t until I came to realize it had been almost 15 years since we’d last visited the world of Russell Quant that I became excited about returning to the series. When we started the series, Russell was a young man in his thirties, struggling to open a PI agency in a small prairie city. Today, he’s a man in his fifties. I loved the idea of finding out who he is today. Where is he in his career, marriage, and relationships? Whereas QUANT is a reunion of Russell and his friends and family, is it a one-time reunion? Who knows? Wouldn’t it be interesting to revisit them in another 15 years, when Russell is a 70-year-old man? That’s the kind of thing I find fascinating. Throw in a good mystery, and hopefully it all makes for a rip-roaring good read.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
Nimble, Restless Intellects
World of Worlds follows young travelers, reporters, climbers, drifters, and idealists across continents and political upheaval as adventure becomes a reckoning with danger, history, and the self. What drew you to the period between 1968 and 1981 as the backdrop for these stories?
WORLD OF WORLDS is a collection of action and adventure stories during a time of transition, upheaval, exploration, and self-discovery. These tales are the product of culture shock. Or more precisely, reverse culture shock. Whatever it was by the mid-1970s, my life on the road at an end but not quite willing to give it up, I decided to try my hand at literature by recreating in fictional form the characters, complexities, landscapes, situations, tastes, smells, psychologies, dramas, insights, pleasures, and terrors I had seen in the worlds I had traveled. The main time focus is from 1968, that hinge year, to 1974. That was the moment of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the Vietnam War, when Apartheid firmly gripped South Africa and wars of national liberation swirled around it, and African dictatorships sprouted like poisonous weeds, and political killing became the norm.
Many of the characters are young, restless, and morally tested. What interested you about writing people at that stage of life?
Only young people should contemplate making the journeys described in the stories. The characters – overwhelmingly young – are Americans, mostly, but there also are Australians, Brits, and Africans. An alienated, energetic, and rebellious bunch, they have been on the move for months on end. They often are challenged by the situations they encounter. That is due partly to their limited experience and judgment. Also, they are alone in foreign spaces, where everything is new and strange. To overcome their problems and to succeed, they need courage, quick thinking, energy, curiosity, and empathy in much higher doses than if they had simply stayed at home. The characters create their own predicaments and manage their own escapes. Or sometimes not.
The stories balance adventure with reflection and consequence. How did you approach that balance?
The characters in WORLD OF WORLDS have nimble, restless intellects. They think a lot. But they face fearful stress often of their own making: an engagement going up in smoke; an illusory friendship unmasked; ideals nearly betrayed; a journalist chasing a perilous story; a conniving financial fugitive near broke in central Africa; an Englishman begging in India; a hitchhiker surrounded by violent hatred in South Africa; an overworked reporter about to burn his bridges; a mountain climber escaping from himself; two travelers in a leaky canoe on the Congo River. Consequence and responsibility come from personal choice; they can be frighteningly unpredictable.
What do you hope readers take away from the collection’s encounters with political unrest, culture shock, and personal ambition?
It’s usually a good idea to be aware of what the locals are thinking when one is abroad. It can save you a lot of trouble. The triad of political unrest, culture shock, and personal ambition were constants among travelers in underdeveloped parts of the world in the 1960s and 1970s, though. They were particularly prominent in Africa amid the instability and aftershocks that followed the end of colonialism. Is that moment behind us? The characters make unlikely role models. As one reviewer of WORLD OF WORLDS remarked, “What lingers most powerfully is the remarkable fortitude of these central characters. Seen from a contemporary perspective, they feel almost otherworldly—resilient figures thrust into remote corners of the globe, often facing misfortune or profound uncertainty. One cannot help but wonder if, placed in similar predicaments today, would modern travelers possess the same grit and resourcefulness?”
Author Links: GoodReads | Website | Amazon
The characters, Americans mostly-tough, rebellious youth, far from home, on bad roads, usually broke-test cultural and racial limits in strange, alluring, but pitiless surroundings, exposed to relentless existential and physical pressures that threaten their moral underpinnings and their very survival.
WORLD OF WORLDS readers prize Vietnam-era historical fiction, post-colonial Africa travel stories, character-driven 1970s political thrillers, coming-of-age adventure. They want moral seriousness alongside the action. Anyone who has traveled the world’s back roads-foreigners abroad, children of expats, tourists, students of post-independence Africa, Africans, Europeans, Americans, Australians-will recognize the authenticity immediately.
The author is an accomplished novelist, journalist, and diplomat. But above all, he was there.
