Blog Archives
The Condemner: Arisen
The Condemner: Arisen is a dark fantasy novel that drops you straight into a world already splitting at the seams. It opens with Snip, a wiry and stubborn survivor, returning to a growing settlement ruled by his old friend Bobby, now “King Robert.” Their relationship is complicated, built on shared history and shaky trust, and things fall apart fast. A single moment of violence sends Snip running for his life, hunted by people who once saw him as family. From there, the story shifts to his struggle in the northern kingdom of Fanlon, where he gets tangled in cults, crime, and a hulking miner named Laf who saves him for reasons that feel as mysterious as they are unnerving. It’s gritty, moody, and full of momentum.
The writing has a lived-in roughness that good dark fantasy thrives on, but it also lets in these brief moments of softness, just enough to make the hard edges hit harder. Snip’s voice in particular is addictive. He’s flawed, cynical, sometimes funny without meaning to be, and painfully honest. His reactions feel grounded, even when the world around him swings between political ambition, daemon worship, and back-alley chaos. The author’s choice to center such a small man in such a dangerous world works beautifully. It makes everything feel bigger, heavier, more threatening. Even the early warehouse scene with the plague-masked revelers lingers like smoke in the lungs, strange and unsettling without feeling forced.
What surprised me most was how often the book made me feel two things at once. Curiosity and dread. Warmth and irritation. Admiration and exhaustion. The genre label here is firmly dark fantasy, but it’s got a human pulse running through it that keeps it from sinking into hopelessness. The ideas around power, loyalty, and the cost of survival show up in small gestures as often as in big confrontations. And whenever the world starts to feel too large, too mythical, the story tugs you back to the intimate perspective of someone who just wants to make it through the day with his ribs unbroken and his conscience mostly intact. That balance kept me turning pages.
If you like character-driven dark fantasy with grit, tension, and a touch of the uncanny, this book will be right up your alley. It’s especially suited for readers who enjoy morally tangled protagonists and worlds that don’t pretend to be kinder than they are. I’d recommend it to fans of grimdark and anyone who appreciates a fantasy story that feels personal even when the stakes swell to the size of nations.
Pages: 322 | ASIN : B0GC8R8LXF
Progress in Her Healing Journey
Smoky Blue Sunrise follows a woman haunted by her sister’s death who flees to the mountains to start over, and an impending storm forces her to face what she’s running from. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The inspiration for the setup of Smoky Blue Sunrise was to introduce a new character or two and put them in the same setting as in my debut, Elizabeth’s Mountain, which takes place in Asheville, North Carolina, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I kept two of the main characters from the first book and intertwined them with the new main characters of the second book. While I was writing Smoky Blue Sunrise, Hurricane Helene struck the region, forcing me to make a significant alteration to my contemporary narrative to incorporate the destructive storm.
Jolie’s internal monologue carries much of the novel. How did you balance introspection with forward momentum?
Jolie’s grief process, mixed with her survivor’s guilt, was a huge hurdle for her to overcome. Her self-reflection and healing progress were essential for the story’s satisfying advancement.
The hurricane operates as both a literal danger and an emotional catalyst. When did you know a storm needed to be part of this story?
The storm was essential for realism, yet it also symbolized Jolie’s progress in her healing journey and the varied nature of survival.
What is the next book that you’re working on, and when can your fans expect it out?
As of this moment, I am considering my next work in progress to be either a prequel to Elizabeth’s Mountain or a standalone sequel to my Lunch Tales series. I’m hoping for either late 2027 or early 2028.
Author Links: GoodReads | X | Facebook | Website
Jolie-Mae Buckley doesn’t think her heart can ever heal. Two years ago, she graduated from college summa cum laude and was on track for medical school. Drowning in guilt after a disastrous mistake turned deadly, she’s unable to move forward.
When she answers an ad for a live-in nanny four hours away in Western North Carolina, on Elizabeth’s Mountain, Jolie knows this is her opportunity to start her life anew.
As details of Jolie’s misfortune emerge, her new employers, Jesse and Amanda Taylor, detect a nefarious undercurrent in her story. Jesse’s protégé, Brody, gently persuades Jolie to revisit that awful day when a perfect storm of events destroyed her world. In the meantime, Hurricane Helene is barreling toward Asheville, where survival becomes paramount, exposing the fragile line between hope and terror. In the aftermath of Mother Nature’s chaos, and with Jolie’s heart hanging in the balance, the truth about that fateful night breaks free like the floodwaters no one predicted.
Book Title Bible: How to Title Your Christian Book with Faith and Inspiration
Book Title Bible lays out a clear and practical roadmap for Christian authors who want to craft book titles that feel inspired, purposeful, and market-ready. The book walks through everything from keyword strategy to emotional language, from scriptural phrasing to series branding. It also weaves in stories, examples, and gentle nudges about the realities of publishing and discoverability in a crowded marketplace. The pages are packed with advice on how to balance faith and marketing in a way that respects Scripture and still works well on Amazon. The tone is earnest, direct, and full of encouragement, and it’s obvious the author wants readers to succeed in both ministry and sales.
As I moved through the chapters, I found myself genuinely impressed by how practical the book is. I kept thinking about how many times authors get stuck on a title and how this guide takes away so much of that pressure. The breakdown of keywords, especially the reminder that Amazon behaves like a search engine, was really helpful to me. It made the whole titling process feel less like guesswork and more like something I could actually navigate with confidence. I also appreciated the examples drawn from recognizable Christian titles. Seeing how other writers tapped into emotion or Scripture made the ideas feel real and doable. Part of me even got excited to try brainstorming titles, which is not a thing I normally enjoy.
The book offers a lot of guidance, and I was energized by the steady flow of ideas. The author shares a lot of tools and insights that I found to be very helpful. Rather than focusing on any single point, the book pushes ahead with momentum, giving me plenty to think about and explore. The enthusiasm behind the advice kept me reading. I liked the tone. It felt friendly. I also loved the strong emphasis on honoring Scripture and keeping titles true to the heart of Christian writing. It made the entire book feel grounded and sincere.
I think this book is a great fit for Christian authors who struggle with titling or for anyone preparing to publish for the first time and feeling unsure about the marketing side of things. It’s especially useful for writers who want solid, actionable steps without losing the spiritual heart of their work. If you want a guide that mixes faith with a clear publishing strategy and gives you lots of ideas to play with, this book will be perfect for you.
Pages: 74 | ASIN : B0G8RPPZ2R
The Creative Method of Wealth Generation
The Creative Method of Wealth Generation breaks down how thoughts shape reality, why the universe behaves much more strangely than we think, and how someone can use that strangeness to create real financial abundance. Helm mixes science, spirituality, and personal stories to explain his method for turning ideas into wealth, and he moves from quantum physics to mindset to practical habits. The book basically argues that awareness and intention play an active role in shaping what shows up in our lives, and it uses this idea to teach a structured way of creating money and opportunity.
This is a thought-provoking book that piqued my curiosity right from the beginning. Helm writes in a way that feels earnest and almost disarmingly open. I could sense how much of his own life he had poured into the ideas. Sometimes I thought the concepts were too wild, but then I was back in because he explained them with simple stories and no pretense. He didn’t pretend to be a scientist. He just followed his own trail for forty years and showed what happened. Sometimes the blend of physics and personal reflection made me smile because it felt so relatable and so hopeful.
The way Helm talks about desire is emotionally stirring. He treats wanting more as something natural and even noble, which felt refreshing. I appreciated his honesty about doubt and his struggle to trust the process. It made the bigger ideas feel grounded. While a few sections wandered a little far into abstract theory for me, the heart of the book stayed clear to me. He really believes people can change their lives by changing how they think and act, and he genuinely wants readers to try.
The Creative Method of Wealth Generation would be great for readers who enjoy mindset work, personal growth, and big “what if” questions about how life works. It’s a good fit for anyone who likes the mix of science-meets-spirit and wants a daily practice for building wealth. If you enjoy books like Think and Grow Rich or The Science of Getting Rich, this one feels like a modern companion that goes deeper and tries to answer the questions those books leave behind.
Pages: 165 | ASIN : B0GBNR3WM3
On the Wings of Flying Tigers
I finished On the Wings of Flying Tigers with the feeling that I’d spent time inside a long oral history, one that never quite lets you forget the human cost behind aviation heroics. The novel follows Albert Delacour, a Florida farm boy who teaches himself to fly, enters the Army Air Corps, and is eventually drawn into the early, morally tangled days of American involvement in China before World War II. The book traces his journey from rural poverty and racial hostility through military discipline, engineering ingenuity, romance, and finally into the shadow-world that produced the Flying Tigers.
The narration is plainspoken, often blunt, and feels personal. Delacour doesn’t romanticize hardship, but he doesn’t apologize for toughness either. There’s a rawness to the farm scenes, the training sequences, and the military bureaucracy that feels authentic. The book lingers on details others might skim like hands black with oil, the humiliation and humor of boot camp, the odd intimacy between men being shaped into weapons, and that accumulation gives the story weight.
I also found the book’s moral center more interesting than its aerial combat. This is less about dogfights than about choosing sides before history has made them obvious. Delacour’s frustration with American isolationism, his admiration for Chennault, and his growing certainty that neutrality can be a form of cowardice give the novel its tension. The romantic subplots, especially Betty, are messy, but that messiness works. Love here is not a reward for bravery; it’s another risk, often poorly timed.
On the Wings of Flying Tigers will appeal most to readers of historical fiction, military fiction, and aviation fiction, especially those who prefer character-driven war stories over battlefield spectacle. Fans of W.E.B. Griffin or readers who admire the grounded immediacy of The Things They Carried may recognize a similar insistence that history is lived by imperfect people, not myths. In the end, On the Wings of Tigers isn’t a polished legend of flight; it’s a rough, earnest account of how conviction gets airborne, one risky decision at a time.
Pages: 254 | ASIN : B0FSYH4DJJ
Watery Eyes: Reflections of a Muslim Woman
Watery Eyes: Reflections of a Muslim Woman, by Yerusalem Work, is a wide-ranging collection of poems that moves through faith, womanhood, identity, memory, grief, and tenderness. It blends personal history with spiritual reflection and cultural pride. The book shifts from intimate whispers to big declarations, sometimes soft as prayer and sometimes sharp as truth. The themes that repeat across its many pages feel like a heartbeat. Love. Loss. Devotion. A soul trying to stay steady in a world that keeps testing it.
As I read, I felt pulled into the author’s inner world. Her writing is warm and direct, and I found myself pausing often just to sit with an image or a line. She talks about faith in a way that feels lived rather than taught, and that honesty hit me hard. I kept feeling this mix of ache and comfort. Some poems feel like opening a window after a long night. Others feel like stepping into a memory that isn’t mine, yet somehow rings familiar. Her voice rises and sinks, and I liked that the rhythm never stays still. It mirrors real emotion. Messy, surprising, sometimes contradictory. The work feels confident and vulnerable at the same time.
There were moments when the ideas felt bigger than the poem holding them, but I didn’t mind. I actually liked the looseness. It gave the book a raw edge. I loved how she writes about Ethiopia and womanhood and faith as if they’re woven into the same cloth, each thread tugging on the next until the whole thing glows. Some pieces felt playful, some mournful, and others almost like confessions. The writing invited me to consider my own ideas of belonging and purpose.
I would recommend Watery Eyes to readers who enjoy poetry that comes straight from the heart. It’s a good fit for people who like reflective writing, spiritual searching, and stories rooted in identity and culture. It would also speak to anyone who has ever carried love and loss in the same breath. This is a book for readers who want to feel close to another person’s inner life and who appreciate writing that is sincere, emotional, and alive.
Pages: 167 | ASIN : B0G6WHMTZ8
Breathe and Believe
Breathe and Believe, by Arthur Wiggins, drops readers into the messy, money-soaked world of American Midwest University athletics, where one bad week blows up an entire department. Bruce McDermott, a marketing specialist on the rise, watches his mentor quit, his secret relationship implode, and his football program slide toward NCAA sanctions and budget disaster. Interim athletic director Tara Gantt battles power-hungry basketball coach Ron Hill and his boosters over gender equity, football vs. basketball priorities, and the push to build a new multi-purpose facility, while a tragic road accident involving the women’s tennis team shows the very real cost of all these decisions. By the time Bruce walks into a legislative hearing with a giant check and a campus-wide vision, the book has turned a spreadsheet crisis into a story about ambition, grief, and what it really takes to keep a university sports machine alive.
The storytelling has a slow-burning style that works overall. The early chapters around the motel incident, the surprise resignation, and then the van crash hit hard and fast, and I caught myself thinking, “OK, this is not just a sports novel, this is a whole train wreck of a weekend.” The author writes meetings, press conferences, and budget talks with the same seriousness as big games, and that gave the book a grounded, insider feel. There are passages packed with numbers, acronyms, and institutional history where the tension dips. The dialogue often carries the weight, with characters stating the stakes rather than letting subtext do more of the work. Still, when the story leans into crisis scenes or personal confrontations, the pacing snaps back, and the pages move quickly.
What really hooked me were the ideas underneath the plot. The book digs into Title IX, gender equity, and the brutal math of “too many sports, not enough money” in a way that feels honest. We see how a 53 percent female student body sits next to only 39 percent female scholarship athletes, and you can feel how wrong that is without the author giving a lecture about it. Tara Gantt’s arc, as a veteran woman administrator who built a separate women’s program only to see it merged, trimmed, and constantly second-guessed, gave the book heart.
Bruce’s role as a marketing guy caught between ideals and survival felt believable to me; he is selling walk-a-thons, naming rights, and spring game hype so the department can pay back a 1.3 million dollar overspend, and the whole thing feels both clever and a little desperate. The tennis team crash is handled with a blunt, unsentimental style that hit me in the gut; it underlines that all the talk about TV contracts and conference moves sits on top of actual young people in vans on bad roads.
I also liked how Wiggins treats politics and media as part of the same ecosystem. The scenes with the local newspaper scrambling for a “thumper” front-page story and sniffing around the athletic budget felt very true to life, and there is a sly humor in how leaks, half-truths, and spin drive the narrative around AMU more than any scoreboard does. The boosters, legislators, and campus leaders come off as flawed rather than cartoonish villains, which I appreciated. There were moments when I wished for more time inside the student-athletes’ heads and a bit less time inside meeting minutes. Even so, I came away with the strong sense that the author has lived in this world, and that authenticity carries the book.
I would recommend Breathe and Believe to readers who enjoy behind-the-scenes sports stories, campus politics, and workplace dramas where the real action happens in boardrooms, press boxes, and budget spreadsheets more than on the field. If you want a thoughtful, occasionally heavy, very human look at what modern college athletics does to the people inside it, you’ll enjoy this book. Arthur Wiggins has written a grounded, slow-burning sports novel for readers who love college athletics stories packed with messy politics, money trouble, and real emotional fallout.
Pages: 309 | ASIN : B0DFCHCWND
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
LITERARY TITAN 