Blog Archives
Daily Sacrifices
The Debt of Free Men follows a young Basque soldier through Napoleon’s final campaigns as romantic ideas about warfare give way to its physical reality. Why did you choose a young Basque seminarian as the character through whom readers experience these events?
I’ve had a lifelong fascination with Napoleon as a historical figure, so when I decided to write my own novel set during this era, weaving in my Basque heritage felt like a natural choice. The seminary aspect comes from a deeply personal place as well—it was directly inspired by stories my father told me about growing up in the Basque Country. Placing a seminarian on the front lines allowed me to explore a profound internal friction.
What parts of Jean-Pierre’s identity remain intact despite everything he experiences during the campaigns, and how does his religious background influence the way he thinks about killing, duty, and responsibility?
Even when forced through the crucible of war, Jean-Pierre’s faith and his deep commitment to his loved ones and friends remain the bedrock of who he is. That isn’t to say his faith goes untested—he questions it repeatedly as he witnesses the horrors of war. Balancing the strict moral tenets against the violent demands of military duty creates a heavy psychological burden. Ultimately, it is his loyalty to the people he loves that acts as his anchor. While his religious framework forces him to wrestle with the gravity of killing and responsibility, his devotion to his brothers-in-arms and family gives him the strength to endure and, eventually, reconcile the choices he made.
What interested you about contrasting an enormous historical victory with the personal costs experienced by the people who helped achieve it?
As a history enthusiast, I’ve always been drawn to grand strategy, sweeping troop movements, and the high-level politics that shape empires. But as a former infantryman, my connection to history is rooted in the ground level. I know what it means to be the person living through the mud, noise, and confusion of the moment. History textbooks often celebrate victories in broad, triumphant strokes, but those grand outcomes are paid for in the daily sacrifices of individual soldiers. I wanted to tell the story from the dust-level perspective—where victory isn’t measured in lost territory or glory, but in the human cost borne by those who fought.
When readers finish The Debt of Free Men, what do you hope stays with them about freedom, sacrifice, loyalty, and the ordinary people who carry the consequences of history?
While I certainly had my own intentions and emotional goals while writing, I believe that once a book is in a reader’s hands, the experience belongs to them. We all view things through the lens of our own lived experiences, values, and perspectives. Two people can read the exact same ending and walk away with entirely different emotional truths. My hope is simply that the story prompts readers to look past the grand monuments of history and reflect on the quiet, ordinary people who actually carried its weight—whatever that reflection ultimately means to each individual reader.
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But first he must take the leap from boy to man as he seeks adventure and glory. He must risk his father’s wrath as his desires lead him away from the seminary where he has spent the past two years.
He may soon come to regret what he has wished for. A soldier’s life is not what he imagined, but now he is caught in the current of history, and he has no choice but to be swept along. Little does he, or anyone else, know how his actions will be the stone that ever so slightly changes the world and the course of history.
Backstories
And the Walls Came Tumbling Down follows American and German families across two world wars as their children inherit dreams, prejudices, loyalties, and choices that eventually place them on opposite sides of an altered World War II. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Several.
First, not all Germans were Nazis, just as not all Japanese Americans were loyal to Japan. (See my novel The Two Terrors of Tulelake)
Second, I wanted to explore the backstories, the local stories, of those who fought on both sides of that conflict.
Third, how would the war have changed if certain key historical events had failed?
What interested you about exploring not simply whether history could have happened differently, but what those changes might have cost?
I wanted to examine what those changes might have cost, both physically and mentally, to individuals, groups of people, and nations. My own family had several veterans of World War II, and they were not comfortable in sharing their stories. The History Channel‘s World War II with Tom Hanks had two interesting questions from survivors and participants alike: “Who could do such a thing?” “How can one people do this to another people?” I wanted to share with a younger generation the horrors of concentration camps. Also, the 1846 translation of Eugène Sue’s novel Memoirs of Matilda included a famous quote — “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” This quote served as a connection to the second book in the trilogy, The Spies From Camp X.
What did you want to explore about humanity’s relationship with increasingly powerful weapons?
Someone can always create a bigger gun, a faster bullet, or a higher platform from which to destroy mankind. J. Robert Oppenheimer once said, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
Albert Einstein once said, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
T.S. Elliott wrote, “This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.” I ask, “Where will it end?”
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Two families, one American and one German, collide across World War I, the Great Depression, and a radically altered World War II, shaped by hatred, sacrifice, and forces that feel uncomfortably divine. As twin brothers choose opposing paths within Nazi Germany and a Texas farm boy takes to the skies, history veers off course. D-Day collapses in disaster. Britain faces annihilation. Volunteer pilots launch desperate missions, and a single flight toward Berlin carries the weight of ending the war at an unimaginable cost. Biblical echoes of Jericho haunt every turning point, raising unsettling questions about destiny, justice, and intervention.
Blending military history, family saga, and psychological tension, this gripping alternative history challenges readers to ask what if history changed, and what the cost of that change would be.
Ingrained Preconceptions
When Songs of Children Filled the Air follows six lives on a collision course in an America consumed by post-9/11 fear, where one frightened teenager’s choice could either deepen the cycle of violence or interrupt it. What inspired you to imagine this particular alternate path for America after September 11?
I have honestly been surprised, pleasantly, that the fallout from 9/11 wasn’t more severe. Watching the towers fall, I expected something closer to the alternate history I created. Twenty-five years later, I wonder how we have grown, if we have grown, beyond learned and ingrained divisiveness. Beyond the high-level political and social impacts, I wanted to focus on the individual level and how the choices we make as a people are felt by the actual people.
How did you balance making Allison’s fear understandable while also showing how easily it hardens into prejudice?
When I write, I reach deep into myself and try to understand the human condition. Even the best of us are not immune to the societal “norms” surrounding us. I believe Allison’s blend of emotions and mixed reactions are completely human. It’s what she does with them that counts.
What research shaped your portrayal of Farid as both a Muslim American and an NYPD officer during a period of escalating distrust?
I have friends from Muslim backgrounds, some from countries of extremely limited freedoms. Being from Brooklyn myself, but not in New York on 9/11, I could relate to his situation. I have seen division between adjacent neighborhoods segregated by race and religion, and had friends involved in attacks for nothing more than walking down a street where they “didn’t belong.” I tried to make Farid somewhat sympathetic to the hatred he received, realizing that not everyone who is motivated by such powerfully ingrained preconceptions is themselves “evil.”
What do you hope readers take from the 2026 epilogue about the power and limits of individual acts of compassion?
Some readers might come away from Songs of Children feeling they are not powerless. We do not simply have to accept the world as it is, but even small acts can have impactful results. While these will not change the world, they can change a life, even if the only life affected is our own.
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On September 11, 2001, Allison’s husband dies in the North Tower. She survives only because a sleepless night made her late to her own office in the same complex. That accident of timing is the first of many that will bind her to a cable installer named Jake and a Muslim NYPD officer named Farid, as an America unrecognizable to any of them takes shape around them.
In this alternate history, the government’s response to the attacks does not stop at Afghanistan. It reaches into American cities, rounds up Muslim citizens into detainment camps, and eventually drops a nuclear bomb on a city called Bayt-al-Salam. Allison, Jake, and Farid form an unlikely household of survivors, hiding in a cemetery mansion and trying to protect two children from a country that has turned on itself.
A sixteen-year-old jihadist named Musa, smuggled from a training camp into the United States against his will, is moving toward them. He does not want to die. He does not want to kill. But the men who sent him are counting on him to do both.
Songs of Children opens at the moment of detonation and then steps back a full year to show how ordinary people on every side of an impossible conflict arrive at a single atrium in Philadelphia where one girl’s handwritten note may be the only thing that matters.
Order your copy today to experience this year that could have been.
Infinity Dreams
C.P. Schaefer’s Infinity Dreams is a science-fiction thriller built around a wonderfully provocative idea: what if the experience of a life flashing before death were actually a doorway through time? In 2048, FBI investigator Henry Bowman and bioethics official Selene Finley discover that scientist Marcus Emery has learned to follow dying people into their memories and beyond. His strange, hovering orb turns the afterlife into something measurable, navigable, and dangerously open to interference. What begins as an investigation into a bombing soon grows into a sprawling conflict involving altered presidents, future agents, nuclear terrorism, and rival factions fighting over humanity’s timeline. It’s an ambitious blend of metaphysical speculation, political drama, and military adventure.
The opening sections are the book’s strongest. The burned euthanasia center, Emery’s laboratory inside an abandoned prison, and the nighttime experiments among the ruins of Chaco Canyon give the story an eerie identity of its own. Schaefer also creates an appealing ensemble. Henry’s cynicism hides old grief, Selene’s moral certainty is repeatedly tested, and Michael Porter brings both scientific curiosity and a welcome streak of vulnerability. Chief provides the group with warmth and perspective, while Lyra gradually becomes the novel’s driving force. Her transformation from disciplined guardian to vengeance-fueled warrior gives the later chapters a darker edge. The characters’ campfire conversations, meals, romances, and teasing help the story remain personable even when governments and entire cities hang in the balance.
This book reminded me of Michael Crichton’s Timeline. Both novels turn a complicated scientific premise into an accessible adventure, and both are more interested in the consequences of using time travel than in presenting a perfectly airtight theory. Crichton approaches the subject as an engineering problem and lets historical immersion carry much of the excitement. Schaefer connects it to consciousness, spirituality, and the fear of death, then widens the story into a war over competing futures. His scope is considerably broader, sometimes thrillingly so. That breadth also produces long stretches of explanation, repeated debates, and action sequences that follow similar patterns. The dialogue tends to state motives and themes directly, while Soren Webb’s almost effortless political authority can make her feel more symbolic than human. Still, the book moves with the earnest energy of someone determined to chase a huge idea wherever it leads.
What I liked most was the novel’s uneasy treatment of moral compromise. Nearly every major character begins by claiming to protect life or history, yet many eventually accept killing, torture, secrecy, and coercion in the name of a better future. Schaefer doesn’t always interrogate those choices as deeply as the premise allows, but the accumulating violence gives the ending a bitter force. Victory keeps slipping into catastrophe, powerful inventions survive attempts to erase them, and history behaves less like a line than a recurring temptation. The final glimpse of the third millennium brings the story back to curiosity, the quality that created both its wonders and disasters. Infinity Dreams is a big, sincere, idea-packed thriller that will appeal most to readers who enjoy speculative science, geopolitical stakes, and stories willing to ask whether humanity could ever possess godlike power without reaching for it again.
Pages: 420 | ASIN : B0HGMNJBN9
A Red Age
A Red Age by Sage Osterberg and Ulysses Kittilson is a sprawling piece of military science fiction, dystopian fiction, dark fantasy, and dinosaur fiction that treats its dinosaur civilization as a fully developed political and cultural world. The foreword makes that ambition explicit, presenting the novel as an attempt to expand what dinosaur stories can do, and the book follows through with governments, religions, propaganda, ancient histories, military bureaucracies, mass media, technology, class divisions, and generations of resentment. The opening assault on Juliobriga establishes the tone immediately: this is a violent, profane, frequently funny war story in which soldiers joke their way through sewage, gunfire, terrible decisions, and gruesome deaths. From there the story expands into a much larger conflict between the Coalition and the Alliance, with political leaders, soldiers, spies, royals, civilians, and prisoners all getting caught in the same machinery of war.
One of the strongest parts of this dystopian novel is its willingness to let the world feel messy. The Coalition and Alliance each have ideologies, grievances, heroes, monsters, competent people, fools, opportunists, and characters who genuinely believe they’re protecting civilization. Cartassius, in particular, gives the political side of the story some weight. His concern that victory achieved through atrocities will simply plant the seeds of the next war gets at one of the book’s central ideas: civilizations can become trapped inside the stories they tell about their enemies. Zamma approaches the same problem from another direction, questioning the endless cycle of violence while surrounded by a royal culture that treats warfare as inheritance. Meanwhile, characters such as Kuyucak, Thalsos, Botilda, Asgremis, Zorphax, Hassa, Akragos, Izmit, and others broaden the novel into something closer to an ensemble war epic. There’s a lot happening, but that density suits a world where political intrigue, religion, espionage, family loyalty, military ambition, and personal survival are constantly colliding.
The book’s personality comes from how readily it mixes horror with absurdity. Horrific combat can sit beside bureaucratic incompetence, vulgar arguments, terrible advertising, propaganda broadcasts, religious references, and jokes that arrive at the least dignified possible moment. That combination gives this dark sci-fi novel a distinctly satirical streak. Even when the stakes reach an almost apocalyptic scale, everyday stupidity keeps intruding. The effect is especially sharp near the climax, when the Nemesis weapon transforms military victory into catastrophe. A single strike wipes out a fleet and then produces consequences far beyond the triumphant moment its users imagined, turning soldiers from both armies into equally terrified creatures running from the resulting destruction. That sequence captures the novel’s larger view of war beautifully: technology, nationalism, faith, revenge, and ambition can dress violence in grand language, but eventually the violence becomes bigger than everyone who thought they controlled it.
By the end, A Red Age feels like the opening movement of a much larger dinosaur science fiction saga, and its cliffhanger embraces that serialized quality. Kuyucak’s final blood-pit sequence folds together several of the novel’s recurring interests: spectacle, propaganda, captivity, exhaustion, violence as entertainment, and the strange possibility of finding agency inside brutality. That sequence turns the gladiatorial spectacle into something unexpectedly bleak, giving Kuyucak’s storyline a darker emotional edge before the novel closes on a chaotic final note and the promise of Part 2: A Poisoned Sky. It’s a fitting ending for a book that keeps escalating its world while maintaining a rough, conversational sense of humor. Readers drawn to military science fiction, dystopian fantasy, and dinosaur fiction will find a strange and remarkably committed world here, one where prehistoric bodies carry rifles, argue about politics, worship gods, watch trashy entertainment, make catastrophic choices, and inherit the same old problems of power and violence.
Pages: 518 | ASIN : B0FVRXDNJ8
Stormfront Rising
Stormfront Rising is a big, rowdy fantasy adventure built around danger, discovery, and the kind of companionship that’s forged when everyone is wet, wounded, outnumbered, and still cracking jokes. Jason N. Long opens with a ship caught in an unnatural storm, purple lightning crawling across the sky, and a kraken turning disaster into outright catastrophe. From there, the novel keeps widening its horizon, drawing readers into a world of rival empires, elemental dragons, dangerous magic, strange oceans, and cities with histories that feel much larger than the characters passing through them. The maps, faction guide, and detailed systems of measurement reinforce the sense that this is a fully imagined place.
The book’s real engine, though, is its band of survivors. Leo, Zoe, Thorn, Ben, Toby, and the wider cast have distinct voices, skills, and emotional burdens, and their relationships give the story its warmth. Leo’s practical instincts, Zoe’s dangerous confidence, Thorn’s enormous personality, and Ben’s anxious intelligence create a lively rhythm that carries through the quieter stretches as well as the fights. Their banter can be filthy, affectionate, cruel, and unexpectedly tender, often within the same conversation. That mix makes them feel less like a polished heroic fellowship and more like people who’ve learned to love one another while standing knee-deep in trouble.
Long approaches fantasy with a tinkerer’s enthusiasm. Weapons have mechanisms, magic has consequences, cultures have customs, and politics shape nearly every choice. The story blends seafaring adventure, military fantasy, dark comedy, cosmic speculation, and dragon mythology into something proudly excessive and deeply personal. Its action is physical and graphic, but the violence has weight because the characters carry their losses forward. Even the jokes often sit beside grief, fear, or loyalty, which gives the novel an emotional texture beneath all the blood, monsters, and spectacle. The author’s acknowledgement of his “three-body problem” and “quantum queries” hints at the scientific curiosity running beneath the fantasy framework.
By the time its many conflicts converge, Stormfront Rising feels like the opening movement of a saga that has been living in its author’s imagination for years. It’s ambitious, unruly, funny, violent, and sincere, with a world large enough to reward readers who enjoy learning names, factions, histories, and rules as they travel. Most importantly, it understands that epic fantasy works best when the fate of nations is tied to people we’d willingly follow into a storm.
Pages: 471 | ASIN : B0GXFGQ2BM
The Collective
A Symbol of Time follows a dying alien civilization as it flees its poisoned homeworld and undertakes a perilous generational voyage to Earth, where survival may demand remaking an entire planet. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I’ve always been uneasy with neat explanations for events that occurred before recorded human history. The idea that dinosaurs vanished because of a single catastrophic event is a tidy answer to a question that can only ever be fully answered in the deep past. It is a narrative we impose on incomplete evidence. Pairing that unease with my fascination with the possibility of an intelligent past on Mars became the foundation for A Symbol of Time.
The book follows an entire society as it wrestles with extinction. What interested you about telling a collective story rather than focusing on one protagonist?
Extinction is never experienced by a single person. I wanted to show how responsibility gets diluted when it’s shared, and how even well-intentioned individuals can participate in outcomes but the their contributions die with them. It’s the collective that has the greatest impact.
The novel raises difficult questions about survival at any cost. Was there a moment where you personally struggled with the choices your characters made?
Yes, especially when the choices stopped feeling dramatic and started feeling practical. The hardest moments might, on one hand, have seemed like acts of cruelty and indefensible, but on the other, were decisions that seemed reasonable in the circumstances. Those are the ones that bothered me, because they’re the kinds of choices people actually make under pressure.
What question from the book still lingers with you personally?
Whether a civilisation has the right to preserve itself if doing so fundamentally alters or harms another world. Whilst this is probably a question the human race will never get to answer, it was interesting to ponder. Who gets to decide what “necessary” means, and who lives with the consequences decades later. I don’t think the novel answers that question, and I don’t think it should.
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Their home is cold and dying, choked by the toxins of their own progress. Now, an advanced alien species looks toward the Third Planet—Earth—with hope and fear. They see a fertile paradise, but one that is hostile, hot, and dominated by massive, predatory reptiles.
The choice is stark: die in the heat, or remake this new world in their own image.
As they descend to alter the climate and purge the planet of its prehistoric masters, they set in motion a chain of events that will echo through geological time. A Symbol of Time weaves palaeontology and astronomy into a chilling tale of survival. As the new masters of Earth terraform the planet, the question remains: does high intelligence inevitably carry the seeds of its own destruction?
Strength of Character
Jigsaw: The Face of the Joker follows a team of Temporal Guardians racing through time to save a single 1927 film whose failure could unravel a century of history, culture, and humanity itself. What inspired you to center the plot around The Man Who Laughs?
I have always, since the time my father introduced me to Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, been a fan of Universal Horror Movies. What made me center on The Man Who Laughs is that the movie both set the cinematic scope for Universal classics like Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Mummy, but also provided, through Jack Pierce’s makeup for the Conrad Veidt character, the inspiration for Batman’s The Joker. When coming up with the story, I thought The Man Who Laughs would be a wonderful fork in the temporal roads to center on. I also wanted to pay homage to Paul Leni, an acclaimed director who died before his time and who may have directed Dracula with Veidt in the lead role had he not died prematurely from an infection.
The dynamic between Noah and Francesca feels particularly alive. Were any of their interactions drawn from real-life experiences or relationships?
Yes. I based it on some of the interactions between my wife, Gwyn, and myself.
Did you have a favorite scene to write, maybe one that brought together your love of film, history, and sci-fi in a satisfying way?
I like the scene where Francesca and later she and Noah dealt with Norman Kerry, the actor who tried to harass the women on set. It showed their strength of character and why they are indeed the heroes of the story. I also like the interplay between Paul Kohner and Noah and Josh, as well as the interactions between Mary Philbin and Francesca and Tori. It brought history alive.
The book has a sharp, cinematic style. Did you imagine it visually as you wrote, and has there been any interest in adapting it for the screen?
Yes, I did because I always thought back to scenes in Universal Horror classics for some of the chapters. There is also a subtle homage to Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein in the chapter with the custodians. There is also an interest in having it adapted for the screen.
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Franesca and Noah are excited to start their new lives as newlyweds, but the fight for reality never ends! Catapulted back into yet another adventure, life is put back on pause.
Thrust into the battle to stop the vampire Lilith from helping Novus Ordo change history by stopping the production of the Universal silent movie The Man Who Laughs, Francesca, Noah, Tori, and Josh face off against the supernatural forces of evil in 1920s Hollywood — both in this universe and a parallel Neo-Fascist one.
