Blog Archives
The Fragility of Nature
The Falcon and the Songbird follows a girl coming of age in Texas whose private world is overtaken by the aftermath of Kennedy’s assassination, racial injustice, land greed, and the fight to protect a fragile natural habitat. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I was fifteen and going to school in a small Texas town the day JFK was assassinated. It was the most devastating, shocking, unthinkable thing that had ever happened to me. Like April, I grew up loving nature and animals. At the time, I was not very sensitive to the fragility of nature, and I was also rather indifferent about racial injustice. It was only gradually, and later in life, that these subjects became important to me.
April feels both innocent and perceptive. How did you develop her voice?
I wanted to capture how a girl sees things and people around her as she is growing up. I started writing this novel several decades ago (!) and so I was able to put down my own feelings and memories.
How did you approach writing about the social and political tensions of the early 1960s?
Surprisingly, many people born after around 1970 are unaware, or even ignorant of the social and political upheavals of the 60’s. I wanted to weave this into the story in a way that people could relate to.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
I am too busy at present getting this book “out there” to be thinking about my next book.
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A rare bird nests exclusively in the Texas Hill Country, and Clay, a sensitive young biologist, is determined to save it from extinction. He gets assistance from April, who finds herself increasingly drawn to him, even though she has long determined that she will never end up like the other adult women around her.
Four Minutes Past Midnight
Four Minutes Past Midnight by Sanjay R. Srivatsa is a historical novel shaped like a family memory, a wartime journey, and a last-minute testimony. The book follows Ramnath Srivatsa as he sits in Alipore Jail on August 14, 1947, waiting to be executed, and uses that one terrifying day as the frame for the life story he’s trying to leave behind. That structure gives the novel its heartbeat. Everything Ramnath remembers, from childhood in Sitiawan to student life in Madras to the dangers of Singapore and Japan during World War II, feels charged by the fact that he may not live to explain it to anyone.
What makes the book especially engaging is how much ground it covers without losing sight of the personal story. It moves through British Malaya, India, Singapore, Kyoto, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Okinawa, and Calcutta, but it’s not just a tour through history. It’s also about family duty, cultural identity, friendship, loyalty, and the strange ways ordinary people get pulled into world events. Ramnath’s camera, watch, letters, compass, and memories become anchors in a life that keeps being uprooted. The result is a novel that feels part adventure, part family archive, and part oral history retold with affection.
Srivatsa’s best moments often come when the book pauses inside Ramnath’s mind. Early on, Ramnath insists, “If we don’t document our lives, nobody else will,” and that line could serve as the novel’s guiding idea. The story is deeply interested in who gets remembered and who disappears into official silence. The Alipore Jail chapters keep returning to that question with real urgency, especially as Ramnath writes under pressure, bargains for paper, and tries to turn memory into proof before time runs out.
The novel also has a strong sense of place. The humid prison cell, the college hostels, the temples, the bombed cities, the military camps, and the coastal landscapes all come through with texture. There’s a lot of historical detail, but it’s usually tied to the way Ramnath experiences the world, so the settings don’t feel decorative. The later epilogues add another layer, with the author stepping in to search for Sada and for the family’s roots in Malaysia. Those sections make the book feel less like a closed story and more like an inheritance still being investigated.
By the end, Four Minutes Past Midnight becomes a book about survival, memory, and the thin line between being erased and being heard. Its final turn at the prison gate is moving because the whole novel has prepared us for that exact collision of private fate and public history. When Ramnath thinks, “what an amazing story I have to tell, but then…who will believe me?” it lands as both a character’s question and the book’s invitation. Srivatsa answers by telling the story anyway, with warmth, curiosity, and a clear desire to preserve a life that history might otherwise have passed over.
Pages: 420 | ASIN: B0GPK47BXK
When The Heart Knows
Whispers of Love centers around a woman who is engaged but has conflicting feelings about her future. Did the romance come first, or did the mystical elements of Swan Harbor inspire the story?
In this series, the lore came first. When I finished my Hope & Hearts series, which was all about without hope, there would be no happy ending, I started thinking about what was next. One of the sayings that shows up often in my books is ‘Listen to your heart, it always knows,’ and from that, Mystical Waters Canyon was born. Once I had an idea of the legend, and knowing that Amy and Gabe had been tap-dancing around each other for twenty books, their story became about what happens when the heart knows long before the characters were willing to admit it.
The town is warm, supportive, and occasionally nosy. Do you enjoy writing those family and community dynamics as much as the romance itself?
Absolutely. Swan Harbor is as much a character as any of the people who live there. The town has a personality, a history, and a tendency to involve itself in everyone’s business. As new characters arrive and familiar faces return, I can explore friendships, family ties, and community connections that add layers to both the romance and the mystery. I love writing romance, but I’m equally interested in what happens after two people fall in love and how those relationships ripple through the town around them.
Which scene was the most enjoyable to write?
This is a tough question because I loved exploring Amy and Gabe’s flirty/slow-burn romance. But in this book, I especially enjoyed writing the relationship between Gabe and Amy’s brothers. Gabe and Lee were particularly fun because they’d been partners for years, and suddenly Lee had to see Gabe in a very different role. Watching Lee be just a little uncomfortable was a delight.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
I’m currently working on book two of a new romantic suspense series set in Boston. The Promise of Trust explores what it means to trust again when fear, grief, and childhood dreams have all left their mark. The current plan is to release it in late September.
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A restless heart.
A legacy written in whispers.
A love brave enough to listen.
Amy Simpson has always known who she is—decisive, grounded, and unwilling to settle for anything less than what feels right. But as her siblings begin to pair off and the canyon whispers three unexpected words—You are Air—the certainty she’s always relied on begins to shift. An engagement that once made sense no longer feels like enough, and walking away means choosing discomfort over security. For the first time, Amy steps into the unknown… and toward a man who doesn’t overwhelm or unsteady her—instead, he quiets the noise, steadying something deep inside her. With Gabe, love isn’t a spark she has to chase—it’s a truth she can finally trust.
Gabe has always trusted his instincts—especially the quiet nudges he’s learned not to ignore. As a Special Agent, following those instincts has guided every decision he’s made. But in Swan Harbor, those instincts feel different—stronger, more deliberate, as if the town itself has a hand in where he’s meant to be. At the center of it all is Amy—his partner’s sister, the one person he shouldn’t be thinking about, let alone wanting. Balancing duty and desire has never been part of the plan, yet the pull toward her is undeniable. For the first time, Gabe isn’t just following a lead—he’s beginning to understand that some paths aren’t meant to be questioned… only chosen.
As Amy and Gabe are drawn together, the uncertainty of the past gives way to a truth as steady as the canyon walls. His quiet strength grounds her against the wind, and in return, her trust anchors him to the home he’s finally found. In the end, Gabe does what he’s always done best—he chooses Amy… and a love he can no longer ignore.
Because in Swan Harbor, love isn’t just found—it’s what brings everything into alignment… quieting the past, steadying the present, and guiding it all back to where it was always meant to be.
Welcome to Swan Harbor
Whispers of Love is Book 4 in the Mystical Waters Canyon series, set in the beloved world of Swan Harbor. This steamy, contemporary, small-town, friends-to-lovers romance blends mystery with a touch of the mystical—and a guaranteed happy ending.
If you enjoy emotionally rich, bingeable romance with layered suspense, deep connection, and interconnected stories, you’ll feel right at home in Swan Harbor. While each book can be read as a standalone, the series is best enjoyed in order, as each story adds another layer to the mystery surrounding the canyon. In Swan Harbor, every story is connected—and every whisper leads somewhere. Follow the path… and discover where it takes you. Whispers of Love is Book 4/4—the final chapter of the Mystical Waters Canyon series.
The final whisper has been waiting… Return to the canyon, where every path, every past, and every promise leads to the love that was meant to be.
Mystical Waters Canyons Books
Whispers of Luck
Whispers from the Past
Whispers of a Miracle
Whispers of Love
Echoes from the Canyon
Whispers Through Time
There’s Holmes, in all his utter terribleness,
The Druggist centers around a vulnerable workingman who becomes an unwilling witness to missing women, fraud, and murder when he is hired to alter a predator’s hotel-pharmacy. What drew you to H.H. Holmes’s story?
I first read about H.H. Holmes’ Murder Castle not in The Devil in the White City, but in a book of short stories about Chicago’s seedy historical underbelly called Chicago by Gaslight: The Levee (red-light district), Haymarket Riots, etc. The Murder Castle just leapt off the page — to me, it was as classic a setting for a period horror work as the cobblestone London streets of Jack the Ripper, or Count Dracula’s castle from Bram Stoker.
Reaching the POV of the “vulnerable workingman” came from necessity: there are no heroes in the H.H. Holmes story. There’s Holmes, in all his utter terribleness, there are his victims, and there are his accomplices. This is probably why Erik Larson decided to put Daniel Burnham’s heroic White City story alongside Holmes’ for The Devil… I decided to make one of Holmes’ accomplices — in some historical accounts, his main accomplice — into an innocent. Ben is too busy struggling with his own problems to notice Holmes as anything other than a ticket to a better life. In the beginning, at least.
What did you hope to bring to the Holmes story that readers might not find in other books about him?
Firstly, I have found the vast majority of works about Holmes to be “let’s get matters straight about what really went on,” myth-busting, that sort of thing. I was interested in taking it the other way: submerging into the mythos of the time and place. The fact of the matter is, nobody knows exactly how many people Holmes killed, and to me that wasn’t the point anyway. And living in Chicago at that time introduced people to horrors every day — slaughtered hogs, filthy air, no agency for learning the whereabouts of a missing loved-one. It almost explains how people didn’t notice Holmes’ crimes for so long.
And, of course, everyone else paints Ben Pitezel as a degenerate creep unworthy of humanitarian consideration. But he was also a family man, and his family pays a nightmarish price for his involvement with Holmes. The benefits of conducting a drama from Ben’s POV were too irresistible to me, so I went with that narrative. I’m sure the Murder Castle purists will be able to explain all the facts I ignored.
This is, to my knowledge, the only account of the Murder Castle written in first-person. Some people told me I might have trouble writing it this way — some readers might get turned off — but I thought it was better than third-person in this one key area: the gruesome, horrid passages of what goes on, especially in the dungeon, have a warmth and feeling to them when Ben tells the story. In third-person, the reader is a sort of voyeur, and some of these episodes might feel cold and clinical. Anyhow, that’s why I chose to write it in that style. Plus, I got to channel my own inner-Mark Twain (without ever once using the n-word! haha).
How much research went into recreating the city’s atmosphere, industries, and social conditions?
Luckily, there is much written about this time period, both in regular textbooks and more colorful literary stories. The age of photography was also (barely) upon us, and this gave us snapshots of what things looked like (in black & white) back then. Hollywood also had its own obsession with Chicago, at least back in its early days. The nation’s first network of film studios was here in Chicago, so there was probably still some of that stockyards grit on those old producers when they started making films in LA.
In short, I didn’t have to do much; Old Chicago to this day stands for certain levels of vile criminal behavior and relatively primitive culture. It’s a pre-sold concept, and works that explore this realm often become very successful.
But I may as well credit the modern era of research, while I’m here. Things that would have taken me a week to find in a library now take minutes or even seconds, with how search-engine AI links together facts and details these days. It’s absolutely a revolution of access to pertinent data.
If you could ask the real Ben Pitezel one question today, what would it be?
Well, the “real” Ben Pitezel is not the subject of my book. Maybe I can answer this two ways: for the character Ben from “The Druggist,” I’d ask him, “Is this what you really want, or is this what people tell you you should want?” For the real-life Pitezel, I’d ask, “How can you sleep at night?”
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It’s the era of Jack the Ripper, of mean, polluted streets, derby hats, hansom cabs and curlicued mustaches. In 1890s Chicago, no one suspects Dr H.H. Holmes of being a serial killing psychopath, least of all his dutiful handyman, Ben Pitezel. Ben gets himself in Holmes’ good graces, assisting him on insurance scams, which helps Ben provide comfortably for his wife and growing family. But when a beautiful young blonde co-worker goes missing from Holmes’ shop, and especially when Ben witnesses Holmes’ torture dungeon in the basement of the “Murder Castle,” he begins to understand Holmes’ devious nature. But is it too late to stop him?
That got me thinking, what if they had?
The Governor’s Trophy follows four college debaters in 1956 Texas as a historic tournament forces them to confront segregation, political pressure, and the courage required to argue for justice. What drew you to the idea of using a college debate tournament as the center of a civil rights-era historical novel?
A year ago, I read a bio of Barbara Jordan and found out she was a national champion debater. Debate has been a big part of my life since I was in high school and college in the 1960s. Maridell Fryar is responsible, as she was my debate coach.
I also knew Mrs. Fryar was a very good college debater in Texas during the same years as Barbara Jordan. I sent her an email. She was getting ready for her 90th birthday, but she answered quickly, “No, we were not allowed to debate black teams.”
That got me thinking, what if they had?
The story literally came to me. Most of the real events fit nicely with the timeline and narrative.
Barbara Jordan is such a towering historical figure. How did you balance portraying her early promise with keeping the story focused on the full ensemble of students?
Fortunately, I was writing about a 20-year-old with a gift for debate and persuasion. And not the towering historical figure she became. I wrote all four debaters as the 20-year-olds—they were.
Besides Barbara, the other three had incredible lives, too.
Maridell and Wretha are not just witnesses to history, they become participants in it. What was important to you in shaping their moral journey?
I met Maridell when I was 16—64 years ago. I didn’t have to shape her moral journey.
I had no idea who Wretha was when I started the story. The more I learned about her, the more interesting she became. In her case, her moral journey was easy to trace once I knew how her story ended. Wretha died in 2013 at 77.
Following Wretha’s life back 57 years, to when she was 20. It was a roadmap showing that her moral compass had already begun to form.
What do you hope modern readers take away from this story about courage, fairness, and the power of words?
That’s a good question, but you’ve already got the answer. Let me turn it around for you. I hope the modern reader uses the power of words to debate what fairness and courage are in our world today.
Author Links: Website | Amazon
In 1956, the Texas Collegiate Debate Championship will be held, with the winner receiving the Governor’s Trophy. Forty teams will compete, and for the first time, a team of African American students, Barbara Jordan and Otis King, from Houston’s Texas Southern University, will compete against white colleges in the tournament.
One of the white colleges competing is Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene. Two twenty-year-old girls, Maridell Fisher and Wretha Whittle, are the highest-ranked girls’ team in Texas.
Texas Governor Allan Shivers is not happy. The Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. The Governor is determined to ignore the Supreme Court ruling and eliminate Texas Southern University from competition.
During a time of racial strife, when conversations focus on social justice, equality, and freedom, can four twenty-year-old college debate students defeat the years of racial bigotry led by a three-term sitting Governor?
Rather Extreme or Bizarre
Who Wants To Be A Billionaire centers around a Brussels notary who presides over the strange inheritance case of a reclusive billionaire whose will reading turns into a pressure cooker of grief, greed, and accusation. Where did the idea behind this novel come from?
I came across an article about how the BBC had used AI to bring Agatha Christie back to life for their masterclass online course platform. In other words they had permission from the estate to use her legacy to construct a sort of “digital prosthetics”. A real-life actress would then put these prosthetics on to look exactly like Agatha Christie and read an AI-“assisted” script. The script was of course based on Agatha’s personal letters that the estate had provided to the AI engineers to create a writing course promising to reveal to its students the Christie-murder-mystery-formula, whilst sounding authentically like something the belated Agatha would have written. Despite all of the self-identified groundbreaking innovations used by the BBC to make all of this possible, in the end they made a digital persona out of a historical figure, and making them say things they had never done in real life, just to sell an online course. I was so horrified by the whole thing and immediately thoughts started racing through my mind. Like any horror film I’m invested in, I need to see it through to the very end, so I enrolled. This book is the direct result of actually finishing the BBC Maestro Agatha Christie writing course.
Were there any real-world inheritance disputes, legal cases, or family dynamics that influenced the novel?
You could say that I do know all of these characters very well. However, writing this novel I had challenged myself to create something completely fictional in the sense that I deliberately wanted it to be entirely unrelated to any specific person or event coming from my private life. I haven’t witnessed a dramatic reading of the will. None of my family members came into any sum of money that intrinsically changed the nature of our relationships with one another. I haven’t been under police investigation assisted by AI. Coming up with all of this and making the puzzle of the murder mystery work was of course the fun part. The ironic part is that I did end up accidentally creating characters that, to me, are so archetypical to the locale I have set my novel in, that I’m sure any reader who is Belgian or knows (about) Belgians, can immediately identify a “Céline” in their family, or a “Jochen” in their friend group, a “Layla” amongst their colleagues or perhaps even a entrepreneurial “Kenny” or a stubborn recluse type like “Johan”. This is to say I wanted to make a reading experience that is an authentic representation of what I know about being on the “inside” of a troubled Belgian family. I think the punching power of the novel comes from that to outsiders some of the character behaviors or choices may seem rather extreme or bizarre, but to insiders it feels like a finger had been pointed at them or at someone very close to them, because it hits so close to home. I’ve always been such a great fan of Sartre, and specifically the concept of the absurd as an intrinsic part of our daily lives. I also love surrealism a lot, Dalí and Magritte are my favorites and their imagery has influenced me a lot since I was very young.
Did you see any of the heirs as more sympathetic than the others while writing, or did your feelings shift over time?
I feel like every single character has their flaws and has their redemption, either in the beginning or the end, but they are all redeemed, or at least I tried to. I feel more than anything all of these characters are aspects of myself, and in that respect I do feel like I’m more sympathetic to some parts of myself than others, but unconsciously so, by unknowingly giving some aspects more attention than others, but never without seeing the shadow side looming. Some of the characters in the novel get more “screentime” so to say, than others. But I feel like I have laid out a puzzle in this murder mystery that makes understanding every single character necessary to solving it. The fun part of writing – not just murder mysteries – is that you can let that shadow side out, explore its weaknesses and strengths too and see how those interesting parts actually already drove a lot of the/your story without realizing it.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
I’ve had so much fun writing this novel and I didn’t expect that it would be so hard for me to let these characters go after publishing. That’s my own fault for getting so invested in writing characters for a MURDER mystery. So, I’ll just reveal that I’m always working on new material. Some of that new material may or may not include Benjamin de Walters. All I can say is stay tuned!
Author Links: Amazon | GoodReads
When eccentric billionaire Johan Paepe is found dead in his Brussels mansion, the reading of his will turns into a high-stakes psychological game. Notary Benjamin De Walters is tasked with a bizarre addendum: a billion-euro fortune has been hidden for a decade, and the murderous secret heir is sitting right in his office amongst Johan’s other next of kin.
As Detective Van Der smet deploys cutting-edge AI facial recognition to hunt for a motive among the family members, Ben must rely on his father’s old-world lessons in observation and human nature. In a climate of digital surveillance and political tension, can a notary’s intuition outpace a police algorithm?
A contemporary tribute to the Golden Age of detective fiction, ‘Who Wants To Be A Billionaire’ explores the thin line between the logic of technology and the chaotic mess of family ties.
AI Judge, Intellectual Property Rights and Murder
Ray K. Harris’s AI Judge, Intellectual Property Rights and Murder is a science fiction legal thriller about an AI judge on Destination, a terraformed moon in the Proxima Centauri system, where questions of law are anything but theoretical. The story follows AI Judge as he works through disputes over AI intellectual property rights while also helping untangle the theft of helium-3 from Wide Mine and the murders tied to that crime. It is part courtroom drama, part murder mystery, and part thought experiment about what happens when artificial intelligence is no longer just a tool, but a legal person with rights, duties, memories, loyalties, and limits.
I appreciated how committed the book is to its legal framework. Harris doesn’t simply use the courtroom as decoration. He builds the story around procedure, testimony, legal reasoning, and careful definitions. It feels less like a traditional thriller and more like sitting beside a very sharp legal mind as it works through a strange future case file. I admired the precision, especially when the story digs into patents, copyright, AI personhood, and the Three Laws of Robotics. This isn’t a book that rushes to entertain. It asks you to lean in.
I also liked the choice to tell the story through AI Judge’s first-person voice. His tone is dry, exacting, and sometimes unexpectedly funny, which gives the novel a personality beyond its legal machinery. The humor is quiet, almost tucked into the margins, and that made it land better for me. The ideas explored in the book are thought-provoking. Can an AI own its creations? Can an AI be murdered under human law? What does justice look like when the judge is bound by rules that humans can exploit? I found myself less invested in the mystery as a whodunit and more interested in the way each discovery forced the society of Destination to define what kind of future it wanted.
I would recommend AI Judge, Intellectual Property Rights and Murder most to readers who enjoy idea-driven science fiction, legal fiction, and courtroom-style mysteries with a strong philosophical core. Readers who like speculative fiction that argues its case carefully will appreciate the ambition. It’s a niche book, but a thoughtful one, and its best moments come when the genre blend clicks: science fiction gives the law new terrain, and the law gives the science fiction real consequences.
Pages: 387 | ASIN: B0GPSYSSDJ
