Built on Unconditional Love
The Devil Inside follows a father and daughter pulled into a haunting tied to H.H. Holmes, where ledgers, mirrors, and breathing pages reveal that evil survives through memory and the stories that keep rewriting it. What inspired you to reimagine H.H. Holmes?
H.H. Holmes has always fascinated me because he’s one of history’s most infamous serial killers, but most books about him simply retell the crimes we already know. I wanted to explore something different. I started asking myself, What if Holmes never really disappeared? What if death wasn’t the end for him? What if he found a way to rebuild his Murder Castle and continue his work through memory, obsession, and the people drawn to him? That “what if” became the foundation of the novel. Rather than writing another historical thriller, I wanted to blend real history with supernatural horror and create a story where Holmes becomes something far more terrifying than a man. You could say I wanted to bring him back to life.
The novel uses recurring images of ink, ledgers, gold script, ash, and breathing architecture. How did those motifs develop as you wrote the story?
Those images grew naturally as I explored the idea that evil leaves traces behind. Holmes wasn’t just collecting victims in my version of the story. He was preserving them. The ledgers became a way of recording souls, the ink represented memory refusing to fade, and the gold script symbolized temptation because it always appeared beautiful before revealing something horrific. Even the house itself became a living participant in the story. I wanted the building to feel as though it remembered every victim and every secret, almost as if the walls were breathing alongside the people trapped inside. Those recurring images helped tie the supernatural elements together while reinforcing the idea that some horrors never truly disappear because they simply wait to be remembered. As I continued writing, those motifs took on a life of their own and became another way of showing that the past is never truly gone. It lingers, waiting for someone to uncover it.
Julie and Frank’s relationship gives the horror a strong emotional center. How important was that father-daughter bond to the novel’s structure?
For me, it was the heart of the novel. Horror is always more powerful when readers genuinely care about the people facing it. Frank approaches everything as a scientist who believes there must be a logical explanation, while Julie is forced to experience things that defy reason. Their relationship creates a balance between skepticism and belief, but more importantly, it’s built on unconditional love. No matter how frightening the haunting becomes, Frank never stops trying to protect his daughter. That emotional bond gives the story its humanity and raises the stakes because the battle isn’t just about surviving evil. It’s about a father refusing to lose his child to it.
What do you hope readers are still thinking about after they turn the final page of The Devil Inside?
I hope readers walk away wondering where evil really comes from. Is it something we create, something we inherit, or something that survives because we continue telling its story? The Devil Inside asks whether monsters die with their bodies or whether they continue to exist through memory, fear, and obsession. More than anything, I hope readers are left questioning the things we choose to remember and the things we desperately try to forget because sometimes those are the stories that refuse to stay buried.
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What begins as a haunting becomes something far more disturbing: a legacy of obsession born in the shadow of Chicago’s Murder Castle, where a killer learned to turn flesh into data and memory into machinery. As the past reasserts itself through hidden ledgers, buried tunnels, and recorded breaths, Julie is drawn into a design that refuses to end.
To break the cycle, she must descend into places where light cannot reach, where history does not stay buried and the Devil is no longer a man, but an idea that survives through memory, ritual, and inheritance.
The Devil Inside Me is a gothic, slow-burn psychological horror novel that blends possession, historical evil, and emotional dread. Elegant, unsettling, and relentless, it explores temptation, redemption, and the terrifying cost of remembering what was never meant to survive.
A Community of Colorful, Creative Folks
The Utterly Unacceptable Atrocity of Isabelle Marsden follows a former event planner who retreats to Kansas and discovers, through art and friendship, that healing may require becoming gloriously unacceptable. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
NSP: Everywhere I’ve lived, I’ve found–and eventually been absorbed into–a community of colorful, creative folks who have encouraged me to explore and develop sides of myself I didn’t even know I had. Their encouragement has been instrumental in helping me heal from grief and physical setbacks. I wanted to see how my protagonist, Belle, would react if placed in a similar community.
How did you approach creating characters like Reba, Mae, Ezra, and Wallace so they felt emotionally essential to Belle’s journey?
NSP: I’m glad you thought so. I had to think about how to answer this question because I didn’t do anything intentionally with that aim in mind. I just thought Belle connected with those three characters, and they connected with her, in very sincere ways that conveyed care and support.
Lawrence, Kansas feels both grounded and faintly enchanted in the story. What drew you to this setting, and how did it shape the novel’s atmosphere?
NSP: I lived in Lawrence for six years while attending graduate school. I found a rich and diverse community both inside and outside the university, including a few people on whom I based some of the book’s characters. It was also there that I learned about Lucas, grassroots art, and the people who create it. And yes, Lawrence did feel both grounded and faintly enchanted in my experience there.
Humor plays a big role in a story that also deals with trauma, humiliation, and grief. How did you balance the novel’s off-kilter comedy with its more serious emotional undercurrent?
NSP: I grew up in a family that used humor to cope with stressful situations–not in a way that discounted the seriousness, but in off-kilter ways that gave us a break and a chance to smile and laugh together. That impulse still comes naturally to me.
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All Isabelle Marsden wants when she moves from Chicago to Kansas is a place to retreat, reassess, and regain control of her life after an ugly #MeToo experience. But after a chance encounter with a free-spirited artist who carries a wallaby in a baby sling and makes assemblages from roadkill, she’s drawn into a community of eccentrics who soon have her lobbying to rescue their Summer Solstice parade, conducting surveillance at a roadside zoo, and visiting an outsider artist’s strange, yet intriguing, sculpture garden.
Inspired by that wild creation, Belle starts her own peculiar assemblage, convinced it’s the key to repairing her fractured life. As she uncovers her hidden creativity—and madness—her project lands her in trouble with her landlady, the city zoning department, and even the police. Ultimately, her only way through is to rely on help from her found family of oddball characters—and on her newly redefined self.
The Genre Holder
Ex-Mas Song follows a man who survives a suicide attempt and wakes to face his failures, toxic attachment, fractured family life, and desperate need for recovery. At what point did you know this would become a Christmas story?
This project began as a dare from my then second wife to write a meta-fiction story like the film Adaptation, directed by Spike Jonze and written by Charlie Kaufman (portrayed by Nicolas Cage in the movie), who writes about his problems scripting a non-fiction book into a metaphysical meta-mess of a comedy. My first thought was, “Well, what would I write about?” The answer became what was going on around me during Christmas. That became the starting point, but I spun my wheels on it until I came up with an idea for a structure: mimic A Christmas Carol. Since mental health, suicide ideation, addiction, and recovery play such a prominent role in my life’s history and experience, that became the idea, and A Christmas Carol became the genre holder, so to speak. “Cont;nue” became a subtheme for the book.
Faith is central to the novel, but the journey feels more like wrestling than preaching. Was that balance important to you?
My faith became the cornerstone that made my redemption possible. However, after it happens, it’s no longer about me, but about helping others. After I began to let God reshape my life, I began to serve others more. In order to serve, you have to talk to people and listen to their stories. The opportunity came to help lead a faith-based twelve-step program, which is about “walking the talk”, yielding oneself for service, or living out the Serenity Prayer. The Lord’s Prayer and the Serenity Prayer are my cornerstones to sobriety and sanity. There is no use in preaching those prayers. One must live them out for them to be of any use. Words are meaningless without being connected to action and the motives of the heart. When the right words match the right motives, miracles can happen!
The psychiatric ward is portrayed with both pain and humanity. How important was it to avoid stereotypes?
There were no stereotypes since most of it was based on first-hand experience; Grandpa’s Ghost, Boz, and the Merry Prankster were meta-add-ins from A Christmas Carol (Boz) structure. The closest literary experience that I have come across regarding a psychiatric ward would be One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey (the Merry Prankster), which I read after my own experience. I would like to add that some reviewers and readers have mixed reactions to Blair (which can translate to “battlefield”). Your review was very sympathetic. Hint: she represents the PAST, and as we all know, the Past Doesn’t Change: it’s a Dead End. The Serenity Prayer helps me to deal with the past and to focus on the here and now as I head toward the future.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
I have two ongoing concerns. The older and longer project is a Mark Twain meets Jules Verne steam balloon adventure. A grandfather tinkerer makes a balloon for one last adventure, only to discover his granddaughter has stowed away, and shenanigans ensue. I am about three-fourths done with a draft, but since I revise as I go along, I doubt this will be finished and published in 2027.
The other ongoing project is my latest serial on Substack. Breaking Grin’s Law is a Gothic mystery, an alchemical comedy with an ensemble cast. Set in 1803 Heidelberg, Germany, two orphaned brothers, Sebastian and Karl Grin, work at a rare book store and attend University during the night, and solve bizarre occult mysteries at night. The serial comes out at the end of every month, covering the brothers’ adventure in the form of a principle that is experienced or discovered. I am halfway done with this project. The latest installment is June’s “Send in the Golem,” which is available here.
Once the serial is complete, it will form the next installment of the 13 short story collection, which I hope to publish sometime in 2027, so to speak. “Cont;nue” became a subtheme for the book.
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Truly Stranger Than Fiction
The Price of Deception follows a small-town murder investigation and a young woman’s disappearance as they uncover buried identities, family trauma, religious control, and the painful past one mother tried to escape. What inspired the murder and disappearance as the central mystery of the story?
When I considered writing a sequel to The Price of Revenge, fans agreed that Pepper Johns’ story screamed to be told. In Revenge, Pepper Johns, an important but peripheral character, is a quirky young woman with an over-the-top personality, numerous facial piercings, and a warm heart. The only thing we know about Pepper’s childhood is that she shared a broken-down mobile home with her mother, Anita Johns, a bitter, anti-social woman with a fondness for truck drivers—and a lifestyle that made her a prime candidate for murder. Pepper’s difficult relationship with her mother initially makes Pepper the prime suspect—until they discover she’d been kidnapped.
With that as my baseline, the fun began. One of the things I most enjoy about being a writer is creating problems and then solving them. Determining who murdered Anita Johns and why was an evolution. Creating Anita’s backstory led me to uncover a dark world where, in the name of religion, women are treated as chattel and brainwashed into accepting their fate. Sometimes truth is truly stranger than fiction, and I leaned heavily on the real-world Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) in creating the world Anita escaped from.
Pepper feels like a character shaped by survival, love, and second chances. What was most important to you in developing her story?
I have a tendency to write stories about women who, when faced with overwhelming difficulties, find the will and strength to survive—and move on. Pepper is one of those characters. She has some innate toughness, honed by her difficult childhood. Knowing there are people who care about her bolsters her resolve when self-doubt creeps in. I try to create believable protagonists, not superwomen, and I believe in hopeful, emotionally satisfying endings. As a reader, that’s what I look for when I escape into a book.
The book moves between perspectives to reveal different parts of Anita’s past and the world of New Zion. How did you decide which characters needed a voice?
There are three main voices:
Cassie Deahl: Since The Price of Revenge, the initial book in the series, was Cassie Deahl’s story, the sequels, including The Price of Deception, will always include Cassie in a supporting role. I see Cassie and her adopted hometown of Jamestown, Colorado, as the center from which other stories evolve. I’m currently writing The Price of Secrets, which will take a similar approach.
Police Chief Donnie Smith: Since there is a murder to solve, it was important that Donnie Smith, the local chief of police who has also been a strong presence in Pepper’s life, have his own voice.
Pepper Johns: And of most importance, this is Pepper’s story, and she needed to be the one to tell it.
What do you hope readers take away from the novel beyond the mystery itself?
My primary purpose is to provide readers with an entertaining, thrilling, edge-of-the-seat story with an emotionally satisfying ending—an opportunity to step away from life’s problems for a little while.
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After a woman is found stabbed to death in her run-down trailer, her 21-year-old daughter, Pepper, is nowhere to be found.
Police Chief Donnie Smith is stunned by the mountain of circumstantial evidence pointing to Pepper as her mother’s killer. The young woman he first met as a frightened child ten years earlier couldn’t be capable of such a heinous crime. Or could she? He’d witnessed firsthand their embattled relationship.
When truck stop security footage supports Pepper’s innocence by showing a rough-looking man dragging her from her car, Smith’s focus shifts. Teamed with the FBI, he’s determined to rescue the young woman he’s come to regard as a daughter. But first, they have to find her.
Meanwhile, as Pepper navigates her frightening new reality in a remote cult compound hundreds of miles from home, she comes to understand the bizarre past her mother had shielded her from and grieves for the bitter, godless woman she had never understood.
Can Pepper escape? Will she be rescued? Or will a future in an isolated compound of polygamous zealots be her fate?
This thrilling sequel to The Price of Revenge will keep you turning the pages to find out.
Real, Raw, and Funny
The Red Widow centers around a journalist whose addictions and secrets turn an already collapsing marriage into a transcontinental snare of murder and intelligence leaks. Why was the world of a struggling newspaper the right setting for this story?
Because it was an environment I knew and loved. I spent 37 years in the newspaper business. I know that world inside and out. The business was dying, and I wanted to chronicle that decline in a creative way.
The story moves through murder, cover-ups, intelligence leaks, and criminal networks. How did you approach managing such a wide-ranging plot?
I just made it up as I went along. No formula involved. If the chapter worked, I kept it. If not, into the digital trash bin it went.
Which scene or character moment was the most enjoyable to write?
The scene in the newspaper where the editors had a huge fight over the validity of the Red Widow’s story. I loved writing that chapter. It was real, raw, and funny in its own way.
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The narrative takes place over 15 years, starting in the days just prior to 9/11/01. On center stage at the start is an unhappy reporting couple stationed in Sydney, Australia for the mythical New York Herald. The duo-Angela and Rafer Flanagan-is known to their editors in New York City as the ‘Tandem Couple From Hell.’ Their loathing for each other (and occasional lust) knows few limits. Her correspondent career is ascendant, his is on the rocks after winning a Pulitzer Prize early in his foreign reporting career. His drug of choice is alcohol, hers is cocaine.
The Flanagans are in New York area on home leave when the terrorists strike the World Trade Center. Rafer is supposed to be in an interview at the top of the north tower when the first plane hits at 8:46 on that nightmarish morning. He isn’t there–and that’s how the mystery begins.
The narrative bounces from America to Australia and back again-from steamy Washington D.C. to even steamier Darwin at the very top of the Aussie west coast. The chase is on for the Red Widow (Angela). In hot pursuit are reporters, editors, mobsters, gang members, local cops, federal cops and a takeover tycoon poised to pounce on the carcass of the Herald.
The climax plays out near Darwin where the fearsome salt-water crocodiles rule the waterways and mudflats.
Entertaining. Educational. Authentic. The Red Widow is all three.
Eclipse: The Silence of Heaven
Eclipse: The Silence of Heaven, by Richard Blackthorn, is a dark fantasy novel with strong gothic horror and religious horror elements. Set in 536 AD, when the sun has dimmed and Sanctum Eterna begins to collapse under hunger, fear, and faith, the story follows Veyne, a scarred warrior known as the Holy Avenger, as he faces Seraphine, Kharion, Malcrius, and a city that has mistaken silence for divine judgment. It is a grim, blood-soaked story about belief, power, ruin, and what people become when Heaven does not answer.
I was pulled in by the book’s atmosphere. Blackthorn writes like someone who wants every stone, bell, relic, and wound to feel cursed. The book is heavy, no question. It does not tiptoe. The prose leans into ash, frost, blood, cracked icons, dead light, and sacred spaces turned rotten. Sometimes that intensity works beautifully, especially when the city itself feels alive and afraid. I admired the commitment. This is not a novel trying to be gentle or tidy. It wants to drag the reader through a ruined cathedral and make them look up.
The book is not simply asking whether God is gone. It’s asking what people do with that absence. Malcrius turns fear into control. Seraphine turns pain into doctrine. Veyne turns abandonment into endurance. That triangle gives the story more bite than its monsters alone could provide. I liked that the vampires and werewolf-like horror are not just creatures dropped into a historical setting. They feel tied to the book’s argument about corrupted worship, inherited violence, and the terrible comfort of certainty. It is bleak stuff. But it has purpose.
I would recommend Eclipse: The Silence of Heaven to readers who enjoy dark fantasy that is grand, grim, and theological in its concerns. Fans of gothic horror, apocalyptic fantasy, vampire lore, religious symbolism, and morally bruised heroes will find a lot to sink into here. For readers who appreciate a brooding genre novel that treats faith, monstrosity, and survival as tangled parts of the same wound, this one has a strong and memorable pull.
Pages: 233
If AI Ever Got Out Of Control
Crimson Light is a sprawling science fantasy that moves, bridging Earth and Arvalast, blending dystopian themes, spiritual warfare, and fantastical adventure. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
My writing is heavily influenced by books like The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia, both of which I loved growing up. Although subtle, Tolkien had a spiritual warfare component in his books, partially hidden behind otherworldly creatures like the Nazgul and Sauron. Characters including Gandalf and the elves acted much like angelic beings, working to help humankind against the forces of darkness. I was also influenced by authors like Ted Dekker, who created multi-world stories with a light-versus-darkness undertone, such as in The Circle Trilogy. From a dystopian standpoint, it’s in part due to working in tech and speculating on where things could go on the extreme end if AI ever got out of control.
Were there particular books, myths, or life experiences that influenced the creation of this saga?
Biblical stories about good and evil have heavily influenced my writing and worldview. And within this worldview, one complex question I’ve always wrestled with is how pain and evil can exist in a world governed by a purely good God. Elements of this question and trials of faith permeate The Song of Immaru, as the characters wrestle with navigating a universe governed in part by both light and darkness, and with how entities on both sides perceive their own motivations within this interplay.
Maddie’s grief over Gras adds considerable emotional depth to the story. Why was it important to explore loss so thoroughly?
The Song of Immaru has a lot of philosophical underpinnings, as well as a ton of crazy stuff happening with AI, UFOs, multi-worlds, and magical phials of light. But none of that is very meaningful without tangible real-world character struggles to anchor the story. Maddie, a key character in the book, has lost her husband and must now assume his leadership role in their Forest Fugitive community. She’s also trying to be a mother to her young daughter. As many people nowadays feel all too well, trying to juggle so much and basically hold the world on your shoulders is no easy task. So I wanted to explore that in greater depth.
Can we look forward to more installments in The Song of Immaru series soon? Where will it take readers?
Absolutely! I plan to write one more book after Crimson Light to complete the first arc of The Song of Immaru. The story will expand from there with another three-book arc, then conclude with one larger book that will pull everything together and dive even deeper into the philosophical questions permeating the series, all while staying fast-paced and exciting.
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The Warrior has returned to Arvalast. But Tarin is dismayed at the loss of the powers he once wielded. Without them, he can never lead the Forest Fugitives against the rising darkness lurking within the trees of the Great Northern Forest.
On Earth, Allen’s joy at marrying Liz is stripped away when he and his new wife must flee a sudden quarantine order by President Silverton. Its target? All those on the planet with illuminas. Should he accept the dangers Gil said lurked behind the glass and try to make a connection across worlds to Tarin? Or should he try to find Gil, who’s disappeared for some “other” more important mission?
As the darkness expands over both worlds and the iron grip of the Trinity Lattice tightens, Tarin and Allen must race to decipher the mystery of the illuminas. If they fail, the prophecy claiming who they are — what they are — may have been only a powerful lie told by the Great Enemy itself as it seeks to conquer all.
Crimson Light is Book Two of The Song of Immaru, a sweeping epic spanning sci-fi and fantasy genres, full of dystopian mystery, AI takeover, multiple worlds, UFOs, spiritual warfare, and good old-fashioned adventure.
Autocrat
Autocrat, by Jeff Nesbit, is a scalding political satire about Rex Vanner, a broke-but-blustering reality-TV mogul who runs for president as a bargaining stunt and discovers that grievance, spectacle, and shamelessness can become a governing philosophy. With the help of the coldly analytical Elias Thorne and a cast of zealots, billionaires, opportunists, and true believers, Rex turns public life into a ratings machine until the joke hardens into authoritarian rule.
I found the book both funny and queasy-making, which is exactly the pressure point it seems designed to hit. Nesbit writes in broad, acid colors: gold rooms, trembling aides, performative cruelty, political rallies that feel like bad comedy clubs with worse consequences. The satire isn’t subtle, but subtlety would almost feel dishonest here. The novel works because it understands the grotesque intimacy between entertainment and power, how a crowd can be trained to mistake humiliation for truth.
What I appreciated most was the way the book treats autocracy not as a lightning strike but as a series of small permissions. People laugh, excuse, profit, rationalize, and soon the machinery is moving on its own. Rex is ridiculous, but the people around him are often more frightening because they are less ridiculous. Elias, Jared Caine, and Julian Silk give the novel its colder edge; they see Rex not as a leader but as a door left unlocked. That makes the book feel less like a parody of one man and more like an autopsy of a culture willing to be entertained into submission.
This book is for readers of political satire, dystopian fiction, authoritarian thrillers, and near-future satire, especially those who like their comedy barbed and their warnings delivered with a grin full of broken glass. Readers who enjoyed Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here will recognize the same dread, though Nesbit’s version is louder, more media-drunk, and built for the age of screens. Autocrat is a brutal carnival mirror held up to democracy, and the most disturbing thing about it is how familiar the reflection looks.
Pages: 289 | ASIN : B0GX313SRZ
