Blog Archives
The Original Human Beings
Most novels that revolve around music treat performance like a spotlight and leave it at that. The Original Human Beings treats music like a tool you can use to pry open a sealed life. The cello is described not only as an instrument but as a surrogate voice, capable of “cries” and “whispers of pain and joy,” and the book keeps faith with that idea even when the plot lunges into danger. When a professor says human beings dance because we’re sad and happy, it’s not a cute line; it’s a thesis about embodiment, about refusing to go numb.
I loved the sections that show craft, not just talent: technique sharpening, fingers blistering, the social machinery of being “discovered.” The glamour arrives with a shadow attached, expectation, scrutiny, panic, until the book captures that brittle feeling of being pulled too tight, “like the strings of my cello,” ready to snap. It’s one of the more accurate depictions I’ve read of what acclaim can do to a nervous system.
Then the New York sequence: immigration memory colliding with the Statue of Liberty, grief and hope walking together, and the private terror of possibly failing in a place that pretends it’s neutral but isn’t. The book refuses the lazy “America saved her” arc; it keeps the cost on the page, including the kind of quiet hate that “wants you to disappear.”
By the time Never reaches Carnegie Hall, the triumph isn’t written as a fairytale. It’s written as a claim, late, battered, and absolutely intentional. When she tells a reporter, “Music is our humanity… Without art, we are merely flesh and blood,” the line feels like a blade made of sound. This is a novel for readers who believe art doesn’t just reflect life, it metabolizes it, turns the unbearable into something you can carry without collapsing.
If you loved a novel where music isn’t garnish but a force that rearranges lives, you might feel an echo of Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, with the key difference that here the instrument becomes a lifeline threaded through immigration, violence, and reinvention rather than an enclosed social experiment. In emotional voltage and the way childhood catastrophe ripples into adulthood, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is a good comparison, though The Original Human Beings is more overtly braided with myth and spiritual argument than Hosseini’s comparatively realist frame.
Pages: 356 | ASIN : B0G42BPC2T
Profound Human Elements at Stake
Talisman: Nexus follows a man known as the Talisman on a quest to rescue his sons as he faces the consequences of the cosmic bargain he made to bring back his wife. When you finished the first book in this series, did you know the direction you would take with Book 2?
No, because I never really do. As a pantster, I write very organically. Although I have a rough idea of where I’m going, I honestly didn’t have a clue with Talisman. I knew generally what I wanted to accomplish with Talisman: Subterfuge, but with Talisman: Nexus (and Talisman: Halcyon), they were the hardest novels I’ve ever written – I mean that – and they required a lot of extra push, imagination, stretching, and intentionality to get them done. In some ways, I feel like I had nowhere to go with the characters in Talisman: Nexus, given that they were all essentially trapped in The Refuge. The only one who could teleport out of there would be Liam. Ultimately, I did know that I wanted to have some kind of redemption, but I wasn’t sure what shape or tone that would take. I’m content and glad at how it all transpired, however.
Family is clearly the emotional core of the novel. How did Liam’s role as a father shape the way you wrote the stakes of the story?
Well, I’m a daddy of two boys, 10 and 6. If I were separated, or disconnected, or alienated from them, I would be disassembled. They are the title of one of my latest books: You are my whole Earth. They truly are. Where do you go if you don’t have an Earth? You drift. That’s what Liam’s doing…. Drifting, mindlessly and numbly fulfilling this Faustian bargain foisted upon him in the bleak hope that the Aeterium Axis will do what they said and restore his wife to him. It’s not founded on a false premise or fantastical thinking: they’ve proven that they’re mysterious and able to channel Janine’s voice to him. So he does have proof. Nonetheless, it’s pulled him away from his remaining family, his sons; it’s alienated him from his in-laws, his deceased wife’s parents, and it’s made him a vigilante on the run. All of that has taken a great toll on him, and he wants nothing more than to be connected with his boys.
When writing science fiction with dystopian elements, how do you keep the world grounded emotionally?
With humanity at its center. There have to be profound human elements at stake, and those stakes have to be great and weighty. I tried to do that with Nexus. I knew that Carson & Joseph had to be captured by The Zorander. What would happen to them after that, however, was anybody’s guess. I certainly didn’t know. Would I, as the writer of the story, allow them to be killed, plunging the already-vigilante Liam further into darkness and thirst for vendetta? I couldn’t do that because that’s what the Zorander is, and Liam is not the Zorander. He is very much human. I had to keep coming back to that loss, that dread, that pain of losing his wife eternally and now his sons temporarily. The stakes were real and profound, and, again, as a daddy, I would be disassembled if I were alienated from them or if I lost them.
Can you give us a glimpse inside the next book in the Talisman series? Where will it take readers?
Talisman: Halcyon is the most sci-fi of ANY sci-fi books I’ve ever written. It took me to Asimovian levels of creativity. James SA Corey stuff. I have always written in this universe, but suddenly I was hopping the multiverse with sorcerers, magic, intelligent and conversant aliens, superpowers, large ships with thrusters, strange planets and star systems, teleporting across worlds, I mean, I have NEVER written stuff of this gravity before. It truly stretched me as a writer, and I’m so grateful for that. Writers SHOULD be stretched at every turn, and the Talisman series stretched me in ways I never thought possible. You’ll see some crazy stuff happening in Talisman: Halcyon that will directly unite it with my Dissonance series, as well as with my other books, The Slide, The End, and The Phoenix Experiment. It’s truly turned into an Aaronverse, and I think that’s very cool. 😊
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
===
Talisman: Nexus opens in the bleak, icy expanse of Svalbard, where Liam “Foxy” Mayfield – known as The Talisman – stands at the crossroads of personal devastation and cosmic intrigue. His sons, Joseph and Carson, have been abducted by The Zorander, a former Talisman driven by vengeance, forcing Liam into a confrontation that is as much about family as it is about fate.
He is now gutted, having bargained with the alien Aeterium Axis to save one thousand lives in exchange for the resurrection of his wife, Janine… and his mission has become nothing short of a nightmare.
Within The Refuge, a clandestine Svalbard base, Liam’s allies and loved ones gather in anxious anticipation. The group is fractured by blame, particularly toward former President Vance Cardona, whose alliance with President Evelyn Lynch led to Liam’s exposure and vulnerability. Journalist Onyx Sleater, once obsessed with unmasking the vigilante she dubbed the “Dark Ghost,” is now fiercely protective of Liam.
Will Liam be able to save his sons? Will he triumph over The Zorander? What will the relationship dynamic be between Liam and his sons? And will Onyx Sleater have a much greater part to play that binds everyone together in an unexpected nexus?
The shift from personal quest for resurrection to universal battle for liberation approaches.
===
From the author of Talisman: Subterfuge comes its stunning sequel, Talisman: Nexus, balancing intimate family drama with escalating cosmic stakes. The pacing moves from tense, character-driven confrontations to high-stakes action and revelation. Aaron Ryan of the Dissonance alien invasion saga, THE END Christian Dystopian saga, Forecast, The Slide and The Phoenix Experiment delivers yet another explosive story in Talisman: Nexus. Read it and prepare for the final reckoning in Talisman: Halcyon!
Talisman: Nexus
Talisman: Nexus is a science fiction thriller with strong superhero and dystopian elements, and it picks up with Liam Mayfield, also known as the Talisman, in a place of raw crisis: his sons have been taken, his uneasy allies are trapped in hiding, and the cosmic bargain that promised him Janine’s return starts to look more poisonous than redemptive. What follows is not just a rescue story. It is a book about grief turning into rage, rage turning into clarity, and an enemy becoming something more complicated than a target. By the time the novel reaches its later revelations, Liam is no longer just fighting the Zorander. He is confronting the possibility that the Aeterium Axis themselves are the real architects of the suffering he has been living under, which shifts the whole series onto a bigger and stranger track.
What stayed with me most was the book’s emotional temperature. Author Aaron Ryan does not write this story at a cool distance. He writes like he wants you right up against the glass, feeling Liam’s panic, shame, fury, and exhaustion in real time. Sometimes that intensity really works. There are scenes that are very emotional, especially when Liam is on the edge of becoming the very thing he hates, or when the story pauses long enough to show how much loss still lives inside these characters. I also liked that the novel keeps circling back to family. Under all the powers, talismans, teleports, and cosmic stakes, this is still a story about a father trying not to lose himself while trying to get back to his children. That grounding matters. It gives the bigger mythology some weight.
I also found the author’s choices interesting in a more mixed way. Ryan leans hard into melodrama, repetition, and blunt emotional declaration. The novel sometimes prefers maximum feeling over subtlety. But I cannot say the book lacks conviction. The dual perspective work, especially with Onyx and Liam, gives the story a restless, personal momentum, and the later twist that forces Liam and the Zorander into a grim, almost tragic alignment is the kind of move that made me sit up and pay attention. That was the moment the book opened wider for me. It stopped being only a vengeance-and-rescue novel and became something more cosmic and morally tangled. Not cleaner. Better.
I’d recommend Talisman: Nexus most to readers who enjoy earnest, emotionally direct speculative fiction, especially people who like sci-fi thrillers that borrow some of the charge of superhero fiction and some of the ache of dystopian drama. If you want a story that is sincere, bruised, big-hearted, and unafraid to go all in on pain, power, faith, and fate, there is a lot here to appreciate. I think readers who already enjoy series-driven worldbuilding and characters who carry their trauma like a live wire will probably get the most out of it.
Pages: 247 | ASIN : B0GH2C6NGQ
The Original Human Beings
Timothy Dale White’s The Original Human Beings shifts between two gears: immediate survival and reflective, symbolic storytelling, without letting either one feel like an interruption. It begins in ash and refuse, childhood lived under the vocabulary of disposal, and keeps returning to a single, stubborn question: what counts as human when the world keeps voting no? The prose is unafraid of earnestness, but it’s an earnestness with teeth; it doesn’t merely petition your sympathy, it drags you across terrain where sympathy is insufficient.
What makes the novel stranger and better than a straightforward “overcoming” narrative is its second spine: Indigenous cosmology and the idea of identity as something older than paperwork, older than borders. The Nimiipuu creation story, with beings “walking out of the monster,” becomes more than local color; it’s a lens that recasts migration and historical violence as recurring species-level ordeals, not isolated tragedies. The book’s title starts to feel less like a label and more like a dare: remember who you were before you were taught to shrink.
The social conscience here is explicit, sometimes sermon-clear, but it’s also integrated into narrative pressure. There’s a fierce generosity in the argument that “our shared humanity” is a binding imperative and that love is not decor but a “survival strategy.” Even when the book edges toward manifesto, it keeps pulling back to the specific: the small humiliations of being stared at, the interior weather of panic, the stubborn mechanics of trust.
The novel occasionally overexplains, yet its ambition is difficult to dismiss: it braids myth, theology, immigration, and art into a single rope strong enough to haul a person out of the pit. By the time the story arrives at its later meditations on love and personhood, the grandness feels earned, not because life becomes tidy, but because the book insists that dignity can be constructed, plank by plank, even on scorched ground.
Pages: 356 | ASIN : B0G42BPC2T
The Original Human Beings: Sometimes, in the Darkest Moments, We Can See the Brightest Lights!
The Original Human Beings tells the life story of Never Morales, a Latina girl born in the Tegucigalpa garbage dump, who grows into a woman shaped by brutality, resilience, music, and a search for belonging. The novel follows her childhood in “Dante’s Inferno,” her encounters with dangerous men, her strange protector Loco Lucy, the death and revival prank of her mother, and the long journey that eventually leads her to the Nez Percé people and a deeper understanding of what it means to be human. Dr. Timothy Dale White blends raw memories with cultural history, weaving in philosophy and anthropology in a way that makes the story feel both personal and sweeping.
The writing swings between heartbreaking and strangely joyful, almost like the story breathes in pain and then exhales laughter. I kept feeling jolted by how quickly the author shifts from horror to humor. For example, the scene where Never’s mother fakes her own death to taunt her abuser left me shocked and then suddenly laughing through the tension. That moment hit me hard because it showed how joy can survive even when everything else is falling apart. The style feels bold, sometimes messy, sometimes poetic, but often intimate. I found myself pausing to absorb pieces of dialogue or reveling in small images.
I also felt a lot of admiration for how the book forces readers to sit with uncomfortable truths. The dump scenes are vivid and painful, and the children’s reality is harsh. Yet the story never sinks into hopelessness. Instead, it pushes toward questions about humanity, oppression, and identity. The inclusion of Indigenous philosophy and the Nez Percé worldview surprised me at first, yet it worked. It gave the story a bigger frame, like Never’s life was part of something older and wider. I appreciated that the book doesn’t pretend to have easy answers. It asks you to feel your way through the darkness instead and trust that something bright might show up.
I think this book would be perfect for readers who seek stories that blend emotional honesty with cultural depth. It suits people who want fiction that challenges them and surprises them, people who enjoy character-driven narratives, and anyone drawn to themes of survival, dignity, and identity. If you like stories that break your heart a little, this one is worth your time. Author Dr. Timothy Dale White has written a fierce and soulful novel that turns darkness into meaning.
Pages: 356 | ASIN : B0G42BPC2T
Writing Organically
The Guardian’s Legacy centers around a history teacher whose strange inheritance reveals a long-buried family secret and leads him on a journey through time. Where did the idea for this novel come from?
The spark came from a facsimile of a Greek coin—sent to me as a prompt for a short story that eventually found its way into a published collection. It took a few months for the idea to take root, but inspiration struck, fuelled by my love of ancient history, mythology, and the gripping twists of The Da Vinci Code, Steve Berry, and James Rollins. That tiny coin became the key to a much larger mystery, its origins entwined with lost languages and forgotten legends. From that seed, Nik and Iasos emerged—though if you ask them, they’ll insist they were the ones who found me first.
When you first sat down to write this story, did you know where you were going, or did the twists come as you were writing?
Great question! I originally outlined the story as a five-book series—though whether it reaches five depends on how book four unfolds. Did I know where it was going? Not entirely. I had a plan, but the characters had other ideas, steering the plot in unexpected directions and demanding more involvement. I do outline scenes, but they’re more guideposts than strict rules. Writing organically allows the story to stay fluid and responsive, which I love. Of course, that means keeping close track of details and plot threads to maintain continuity. It’s a dynamic process—part structure, part surprise—and that’s where the magic happens.
Were you able to relate to your characters while writing them?
The bond between Nik and his grandfather, Iasos, is deeply rooted—something I relate to through my own family. No matter the distance or age gap, that connection endures. For both Nik and Iasos, family heritage and tradition are central, and that thread runs through me as well. Nik’s role as a high school teacher draws from my own teaching experience, grounding his character in something personal. While Nik’s heritage is Greek and mine is Italian, our roots intertwine. My family hails from southern Italy, where Greek ancestry isn’t uncommon. I only recently learned from my mother that my grandmother called her grandfather “Papou”—the Greek word for grandfather. That small detail felt like a beautiful echo across generations.
Can you give us a glimpse inside book 2 of the Coin of Time series? Where will it take readers?
In Book 2: The Race for the Lost Coin, Nik is pushed to take matters into his own hands—stepping beyond the law to protect what matters most. Though he offers an olive branch to Detective Sauveterre, she remains a steadfast officer, bound by duty. As the stakes rise, Nik evolves into an unlikely hero, drawing on his skills as a guardian to safeguard the coin and rescue his grandfather. Along the way, he’s joined by a hacker, a librarian, and a taxi driver—each adding heart and grit to the journey. It’s fast-paced, full of twists, and packed with myth-infused suspense.
Coming 29 November 2025—get ready to dive into the adventure.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
A three-thousand-year old magical coin, the disappearance of an old man, fanatical neo-Nazis, and the hunt by Interpol, merge in this gripping story of an ancient cover up, and the transition of an ordinary man into the guardian of the most powerful coin on earth.
High school teacher Nik Zosimos, leads an uncomplicated life until he receives a cryptic phone message from his grandfather, Iasos. He hurries to his grandfather’s finding him relaxed and pleased to see him. A few beers later, Nik leaves his grandfather’s place, stupefied and astounded. Iasos has a secret, one that dates back to the time of Herakles.
But that was just a myth, wasn’t it?
If you like Dan Brown and Wilbur Smith books or enjoys action, fast-paced dramatic shows similar to National Treasure and The Librarians, then you’ll love The Guardian’s Legacy. Award-winning author of Historical Fantasy/Adventure, Luciana Cavallaro, pens a thrilling mystery. Click the BUY NOW button at the top and find out how Nik’s life changes.
The Guardian’s Legacy
Luciana Cavallaro’s The Guardian’s Legacy opens with an explosive chase through the forests of Slovakia and quickly spirals into a myth-soaked adventure that bridges modern Australia with the ancient world. The novel follows Nikolaos Zosimos, a history teacher whose quiet life takes a dramatic turn when his grandfather reveals a family secret, an ancient coin tied to the goddess Aphrodite, and a lineage of guardians sworn to protect it. What begins as a curious inheritance soon turns into a journey through history, myth, and time itself, weaving ancient Greece, lost knowledge, and family legacy into a single thread of destiny.
I was pulled in from the start. The writing has a cinematic feel, especially in the action scenes. Cavallaro writes with the rhythm of someone who loves myth but also respects the quiet spaces in between, the small human moments that make the big ones matter. The dialogue feels real, not forced, and the relationship between Nik and his grandfather has a tenderness that grounds the story. At times, the pacing slows during long explanations of history, but that’s also part of the charm. You feel like you’re being let in on a secret that’s been whispered through generations.
Emotionally, the book hit me harder than I expected. There’s something deeply moving about watching Nik wrestle with disbelief, responsibility, and faith in something unseen. The blend of myth and realism works better than I thought it would. The coin isn’t just an artifact; it’s a metaphor for memory and heritage, for how the past can live inside the present. Cavallaro’s descriptions are lush, sometimes even poetic, but she keeps her feet on the ground. When the story jumps between modern scenes and the ancient world, it feels seamless. If anything, I wanted even more of those mythic flashbacks.
The Guardian’s Legacy is a book for readers who love mythology but crave a human story at its core. It’s perfect for fans of historical fantasy, teachers who secretly dream of adventure, or anyone who still believes there’s magic hiding in the mundane. It’s thoughtful, heartfelt, and rich with imagination. I’d recommend it to anyone who likes a bit of mystery with their myths and doesn’t mind getting lost in the pull of time itself.
Pages: 152 | ASIN : B09DX41S11
Car Trouble
Car Trouble follows Jim Crack, a down-and-out young man whose misadventures across the freeways and backstreets of Southern California form a gritty, chaotic odyssey of personal implosion. What begins with his Volkswagen catching fire on the 5 Freeway spirals into a bleak but strangely comic day filled with existential spirals, weed smoke, porn, broken relationships, and failed attempts to find meaning in a world so dependent on cars, status, and surface-level happiness. Through vivid flashbacks and derailed digressions, Jim’s day of misfortune exposes a lifelong grappling with abandonment, identity, trauma, and a simmering, unshakeable rage toward the machinery of life, both mechanical and societal.
Reading this book was like crawling inside someone’s unfiltered stream of consciousness. Zorn’s writing is raw and intense, often hilarious, sometimes painful, and always fully immersed in Jim’s spiraling, disillusioned psyche. There were moments I laughed, like the pure absurdity of a landscaping crew rescuing Jim from a flaming car, only to feel a gut punch pages later as he sinks into total emotional paralysis on a crusty couch with nothing but a bong and old porn for comfort. Zorn captures the erratic rhythm of thought with a ferocity that reminded me of Bukowski meets Vonnegut, but with more exhaust fumes and burnt-out brake lights. The prose veers wildly. Sharp, punchy lines land like jabs to the ribs, then unravel into stoner-poetic rants or tragic internal monologues that drip with disillusionment.
But what really hit me hard was how real it all felt. Jim’s pain, his failures, the weird moments of tenderness or sudden clarity linger. This book doesn’t follow a clean arc. It doesn’t tie up neatly. That felt true to life. At times, I was frustrated by the sheer amount of dysfunction, the digressions, the lack of redemption. But maybe that’s the point. This isn’t a story about fixing things. It’s about someone living in the fallout of a life already shattered, trying, failing, and trying again in ways that are small, stupid, human. The way Zorn writes about cars as both literal death traps and symbols of modern isolation stuck with me after I closed the book.
I wouldn’t recommend Car Trouble to everyone. It’s harsh. It’s crude. It’s uncomfortable. But if you’ve ever been young, broke, high, angry, and unsure what you’re supposed to be doing with your life, this book will feel painfully familiar. It’s for readers who crave something raw and don’t mind wandering through the smog of existential burnout.
Pages: 273 | ASIN : B07CP4R132
