Blog Archives
Before They Are Lost Forever
Toward a Theory of Everything is a mix of science, spirituality, and poetry that examines the connection between the physical and the spiritual on a quest to make sense of existence. What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
The first section of my book, about a “theory of everything,” was difficult to write, because I was challenged with concisely presenting and integrating ideas from my lifetime experiences with my current knowledge, beliefs, and worldview. In addition, I had to search for scientific research to back up some of my assumptions, while at the same time realizing that scientific findings and theory can and should be challenged.
What was the biggest challenge you faced in putting together this poetry collection?
Poetry has always been easy for me, because poetic ideas and phrases come to me as a gift. It is my awareness of the need to write poems and poetic thoughts down as they come to me during dreams or in my conscious state, before they are lost forever. I seldom or never experience writer’s block. All of my memorable lifetime, I have been a thinker.
What is one thing that you hope readers take away from Toward a Theory of Everything?
I write for my readers to expand their worldview vis-à-vis what they have been taught by their parents, culture (including religion), and formal education. Also, in all of my writings, if not most, I communicate for the purpose of helping and healing the reader.
Author Links: Amazon | GoodReads
Arcanoforge: Midnight Metropolis
Arcanoforge: Midnight Metropolis is a feverish plunge into the neon-choked streets of Noctara City, a dystopian sprawl where humans and husks, ghosts and hemo magicians blur into a single, strange pulse. The story follows Tattie, a blood seer who’s fled her dying homeworld, and Brax, the man who tracks her across galaxies as their shared past claws its way back into the present. Around them spin a chorus of restless lives, skaterats, dealers, dreamers, all caught in the thrumming heart of a city that feels alive and dying at once. It’s part cyberpunk, part occult noir, and part heartbreak.
The writing is gritty, poetic, and weirdly tender. Author Caroline Barnard-Smith doesn’t just describe Noctara, she burns it into your head with words. Every street and shadow has its own personality, every conversation crackles like static. I loved how the world felt handmade, patched together with old wires and bad memories. The characters stumble through it broken and fierce, never really heroes, just people trying to stay one step ahead of decay. The prose leans heavily on texture, smells, lights, and sounds, and it builds a rhythm that makes the whole book feel like a song played through busted speakers. Sometimes it’s overwhelming, but in the best way.
There’s this deep ache about survival, about what we lose when the world stops caring. I kept thinking about the husks, these half-human enforcers who’ve traded pain for obedience, and how much that says about our own craving for numbness. And Tattie, she’s messy, angry, brilliant. I believed every choice she made, even when it hurt to watch. The story toys with power, guilt, and the ghosts that cling to love long after it’s gone.
Arcanoforge: Midnight Metropolis reads like Blade Runner crashed into The City & The City with a shot of Neuromancer’s grit and the bruised heart of a Becky Chambers story. I’d recommend it to anyone who loves science fiction that’s soaked in mood and grit. Fans of Gibson and VanderMeer will feel right at home. If you like your futures dark and your magic dirty, if you want to taste the metal in the air, this book’s for you.
Pages: 278 | ASIN : B0FFH6BS5L
Day Drinkers
Day Drinkers is a lush, sun-baked story about Gemma, a woman caught between worlds on the fictional Caribbean island of St. Columba. The book follows her tangled life among drifters, hustlers, and dreamers who drink through the heat and chase meaning in the wreckage of paradise. Gemma’s story begins with small talk under a tarp at Boon Dock Marine and unfolds into something much larger, her struggle with identity, survival, and the ghosts of her family’s past. Author Kitty Turner paints the island with heat and texture: the smell of rum, salt, and cheap perfume, the pulse of reggae, and the quiet ache of belonging. This is a story about the people who live in the margins of paradise, where beauty and corruption coexist and survival is an act of endurance.
What I loved most about Turner’s writing is how it feels it rolls over you, thick and heavy, then suddenly clears into moments of stillness. Her sentences swing between gritty and lyrical, giving the island a heartbeat that feels alive. Gemma isn’t an easy heroine, she’s messy, flawed, and stubborn, but she’s real. I found myself rooting for her even when I wanted to shake her. The dialogue feels sharp and natural, full of humor and island slang, and the author never softens the hard edges of poverty, addiction, or moral compromise. The story’s spirituality creeps in like humidity, subtle at first, then impossible to ignore. Turner threads mysticism through realism in a way that feels both grounded and haunting.
The island itself sometimes feels more vivid than the people who inhabit it, and a few side characters blur together. But the novel’s rhythm, its mix of danger, longing, and low-simmering dread, kept me hooked. I admired how Turner doesn’t try to redeem everyone. She just lets them be, in all their contradictions. The result is a book that feels lived-in, like a slow afternoon after too much sun and too little water.
Day Drinkers reads as if Donna Tartt spent a summer in the Caribbean with Taylor Jenkins Reid’s eye for glamour and ruin, spinning a story that smells of salt, sweat, and spilled rum. I’d recommend Day Drinkers to readers who love character-driven stories with atmosphere so thick you can taste it. If you’ve ever wanted a novel that feels like a hangover and a confession rolled into one, this one’s for you.
Pages: 358 | ASIN : B0FLF6MW68
Cutting Through the Lies
(Photo credit: Kevin Harkins Photography)
Legends of Little Canada is a memoir that shares the story of growing up in a neighborhood in Lowell, Massachusetts, which was eventually destroyed by urban renewal in the 1960s, and how this experience shaped you into who you are today. Why was this an important book for you to write?
For too long the issue of “urban renewal” projects, which forcibly displaced people from their homes and long-established small businesses, has been dispassionately debated by academics and policy makers. The “debate” has been between those who condemned the policy as cruel and systematically unjust because it always came at the expense of the most marginalized people to further the interests of the powerful, and those who defended the policy by arguing that, even if the plans ended up failing, the intent was a benevolent one aimed at improving the lives and conditions of the people living in substandard housing.
After spending my adult years learning about the systemic forces that class and race play in dehumanizing the poor and people of color, I utilized that knowledge to resist, organize and empower others by developing strategies to protect them from meeting the same fate I couldn’t prevent happening to me and my loved ones as a child. To do for them what I wish others would have done to defend and protect the rights and dignity of my Aunt Rose and those I loved from being denied to them.
It would have been totally appropriate for me to have written a historical account of what happened and cried out about the injustice of what was done. But, I also observed the insidious trap of how writing such a book would have little use because it would just be dismissed, or minimized, by labelling it as a book with an “agenda,” to be taken with a grain of salt because of my political leanings. As a result, in this age of harsh ideological divisiveness, those who agree with my positions would accept it to confirm their own convictions and those who opposed my political persuasions would reject the book without even reading it. Or to read it only with the intent to find ways to “cherry-pick” parts out of context to try and discredit it among others who might be persuaded by my conclusions.
It was bad enough that the people of Little Canada were powerless to prevent the destruction of the community they loved and were forcibly displaced from their homes, but what makes that injustice even more insidious was that the same power structure also controlled the ability to shape the historical narrative to justify the wrongs they did. They used their power to shape and concoct a false narrative which whitewashed their human rights violations against the people of Little Canada by claiming that their true goal was to improve our lives rather than admitting it was done for their own economic interests.
For the reasons I already stated, I realized that I would not be able to reclaim the narrative if I wrote a scholarly historical account, a polemic or even a memoir in my present adult voice because those who created the false narrative would seek to dismiss my efforts to reclaim the narrative as ideologically driven. They would be allowed to maintain the revisionist history that their prime intention was to create better living conditions for the people of Little Canada. That they did it for us.
I am not powerful enough as the man I am today to overcome their ability to continue to spin that false narrative and get away with it. But I knew somebody who was. The boy I was when I lived through what they did to me and the people of the community I loved. So I chose to write a memoir of that experience, not in my adult voice recalling what was done, but to write it by reliving it as the young person who had no formed politics or understanding of who was doing this to us.
By taking readers back through the innocent eyes of a 13 year old boy who didn’t have any comprehension of the economic forces and political machinations he only heard identified as a faceless entity called “urban renewal,” “young Charlie’s” voice, not only gives witness to those who are no longer here, his innocence blows apart the false narrative that the destruction of Little Canada was done for his and his loved ones benefit.
“Young Charlie’s” painful experience enabled him to cut through the lies and revisionist history by his simple ability to tell right from wrong and reclaim the narrative for the people who were victimized by what those in power did to them and their community.
You grew up in a neighborhood that supported one another and formed a genuine community, not just people living in the same place. What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
You are correct, Little Canada was a community not just a place to live. By community, I mean that everyone felt more like an extended family who knew and cared for each other and felt pride in that unity. A feeling like everyone mattered and each person was loved for who they were and the whole gained by the strength that comes from being able to appreciate and pool all of the unique quirks and characteristics each person brings to the community.
I also learned that to keep oneself and a community strong one has to stand firm against bullies and others who seek to bend a community’s will to their own selfish quest for domination. If they succeed then a community based on sharing and compassion can be turned into an oppressive domination that the demagogue or bully can use to intimidate anyone who threatens their power by enforcing conformity to their demands.
That’s not community, that’s blind tribalism. I have been searching all of my life to find the sense of community I lost that I had living in the Little Canada community that was destroyed by urban renewal.
My success as a leader and organizer has come when I was able to build a community where it didn’t exist. Where I was able to show people that strength comes from diversity, not division and that instead of remaining intimidated by bullies and feeling too weak and hopeless to resist, that they must stop believing the myth that compassion is weakness. In fact, compassion, unity and love is the only thing powerful enough to defeat a cruel bully or oppresser. Think of it. Even the sheer lust for power or greed will never generate more ferocity within a person than somebody fighting to protect somebody they love from being taken from them.
What is one piece of advice someone gave you that changed your life?
I think the faith and moral teachings my Aunt Rose taught me that God doesn’t stop bad people from what they’re doing, that God expects people to do it. And that prayer does not produce supernatural miracles like parting the Red Sea, but it’s something we draw on to give us the internal strength “to do what’s right, when it’s easier to do wrong, or to keep hoping when all appears hopeless. It’s not that goodness or hope always comes out on top, but they have NO chance if somebody stops believing in them.”
Whether one believes in God or not, the wisdom of this advice has changed my life by recognizing that I must make the choice and be responsible about what kind of moral path I will follow.
What was the most challenging part of writing your memoir, and what was the most rewarding?
It was a very painful experience because I had to reopen the raw pain and trauma I spent years trying to repress as I saw one friend after another disappear from my life as each eviction came and the devastating emotional toll it had on my family and neighbors unable to comprehend how this thing called urban renewal could force thousands of us out of our homes. I had to relive the horror of being powerless to protect my beloved Aunt Rose from being forced out of the home she lived in all 65 years of her life and the ensuing tragedies that befell her and so many others.
The most rewarding part of writing the memoir is that it allowed me reconnect with these very same people I loved and lost and the more I opened up my memories to the details I had repressed the more they felt alive again, as if I was transported by a time machine and I had another chance to be with them. And to keep revisiting them anytime I want by rereading my book.
Author Links: GoodReads
A Chance to Use My Knowledge
The Right Time is a time-slip romance where a woman escaping an abusive marriage wakes up in the 1980s, finding a second chance at freedom, love, and self-discovery amid the ache of what she’s lost. What inspired you to blend time-slip elements with a story of domestic survival and healing?
I was continuing my Time Slip series that started in The Wish: A Time Slip Novel, the first of a series of stand-alone women’s fiction stories that will take place in various times. The therapist from The Wish, Dr. Maeve Fossey, is the only recurring character, as she hears the wishes and mysteriously causes them to come true.
A couple of years ago, Taylor Jenkins-Reid’s Malibu Rising won a Reader’s Choice award for best Historical Fiction. It was set in the 80s, and this blew my mind! I grew up in the 80s. I love reading historical fiction, but I hadn’t written any. If the 80s are historical fiction, I can finally write a “historical” story set in a time I remember and provide details that feel authentic without a ton of research. I loved 80s music, movies, and TV, so this was my chance to use some of that knowledge.
How did you approach writing the 1980s setting in a way that felt nostalgic but not overly romanticized?
In 1985, I was thirteen years old, so I was old enough to remember a lot about the time. I think because I was there, I didn’t over romanticize it. There are advantages and disadvantages to every time.
Andie’s journey feels deeply personal. Was any part of her story drawn from real experiences or people you’ve known?
There are several pieces of this story that are based on real events, and writing about them was a type of therapy. The late-night fights between my mom and her boyfriend from when I was ten were real. On at least two memorable occasions, I heard them fighting, mostly his loud voice. Once, he tried to hit her and missed, punching a hole through the drywall of their bedroom wall. The second time, he broke a sturdy homemade stool in the kitchen, smashing it to pieces for emphasis as he berated her. For the next several months, until we moved, I had trouble sleeping. The cat and dog were also real. My cat would climb up to my loft bedroom to sleep, and the boyfriend’s dog would guard the base of the ladder.
My mom’s excuse about hitting a doorknob when trying to explain a black eye is something I also remember. The black eye was a turning point because she was unable to hide the abuse at work after that. Usually, he hit her where it didn’t show. Her co-workers all drove trucks and helped us move that Friday.
Also, real was being stood up by my co-workers for a Starbucks gathering in 2018 or 2019 that many said they would attend. In the story, nobody shows up. In real life, after waiting 75 minutes alone, I left and was walking home when someone else texted to ask if we were still there. I didn’t tell her I’d given up. I went back and met her for twenty minutes before heading home again. On the way, I ran into 5 others from work who’d gone out for drinks instead. I was hurt because they’d been no-shows for me and had gone out in the neighborhood anyway. They hadn’t bothered to tell me they’d changed their mind or invited me to go to Browns instead. I’ve never tried to have an after-school get-together again. If invited to a book launch, my co-workers don’t even RSVP, so I stopped including them. Like Andie, I struggle with personal connection daily.
And, who hasn’t been stuck in a Customer Service loop somewhere, trying to use authenticator apps and personal verification questions? Most of the time, all I want is to get through to a person who can help, not AI Customer service or endless menu loops that don’t answer your question or let you choose a team member to speak to. The frustration is real.
The other piece that was more fun to use was my experience working at video stores. I worked in one from April 1989 to July 1990 in high school. I worked at another through my third to fifth years of university from 1992 onward, keeping one shift a week through my substitute teaching years, only giving it up when I was hired for a full-time teaching position in September 1996.
What can readers expect in book three in your A Time Slip series?
I am toying with a few different ideas, but the one calling to me the most is related to The Right Time. One of the tertiary characters may suffer a heartbreak and find herself somewhere new. She is in her early thirties in 1985, and I think she will wish herself into the future, but I’m not sure where yet, but I hear Canada is lovely.
With two more Racing books planned, a dystopian heist clamouring for attention, and romantic suspense in progress, my next time slip story is still swirling through my thoughts without feeling concrete. Not yet.
Father Lost Child Found
On the surface, Father Lost Child Found is an espionage thriller that opens with a daring rescue on a Brisbane train platform and spirals into a global chase across Estonia, Thailand, and beyond. Beneath that, though, it’s the story of Galina Ivanof, a woman trying to untangle the mystery of her father’s death while confronting the ghosts of her past. What begins with crop circles and whispers of buried secrets soon collides with questions of family, loyalty, and truth. The novel blends spycraft with a touch of science fiction, weaving personal heartbreak into a much larger tapestry of conspiracies and otherworldly puzzles.
The writing caught me off guard in the best way. The style is brisk and punchy, yet the author lingers at just the right moments on small sensory details. A crutch abandoned on a train platform, the cold smell of snow-soaked pine, the weight of silence between mother and daughter, these flashes made the story breathe. Sometimes the prose veers into melodrama, but I didn’t mind. In fact, I found myself leaning into it. I liked the mix of high-stakes action with quiet, vulnerable scenes, especially the strained relationship between Galina and her mother. It gave the thriller bones a very human heart.
On one page I was in the thick of a spy story tangled with oil companies, government secrets, and drones. On another, I was reading what felt like a family saga about loss and reconciliation. And then there’s the sci-fi layer with crop circles and UAPs, which added a lot of intrigue and gives readers a break from the emotional threads. I appreciated that the author took risks. It’s rare to see a thriller that dares to stretch across genres and landscapes in such an ambitious way.
I’d recommend Father Lost Child Found to readers who like their thrillers to swerve off the predictable highway. If you’re open to a story that mixes spy games with family wounds, political secrets, and just enough science fiction to keep you guessing, this book will be a ride worth taking. It’s heartfelt and surprising, and that’s what made me keep turning pages.
Pages: 186 | ASIN : B0F7JTL4SJ
Stepping Beyond the Rules
Timeless follows a field agent for an agency that manipulates history who is sent to save a boy, and winds up caught between loyalty, survival, and personal desire. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The novel grew out of my passion for both history and fiction, as well as my fascination with the 1930s—an era that proved decisive for the continent’s future. And of course, there must always be a touch of romance. No matter how practical or calculating the world becomes, love will remain central to our way of thinking and one of our strongest motivations for as long as humanity exists.
Anne is hard-edged, sharp-tongued, cynical, yet deeply human. What do you think makes her a valuable and worthy heroine?
Anne thrives in a male-dominated world, and she does so without ever having to become one of the men. She remains true to her womanhood and embraces her emotions. She takes risks and raises the stakes, but never blindly or naively—rather with intention and confidence in her abilities. That balance is what makes her such a compelling heroine.
What themes were particularly important for you to explore in this book?
I wanted to emphasize that women are fully capable of purposeful, professional self-realization without being held back by so-called feminine weaknesses. They can unite, organize, and accomplish missions far more complex than putting together a Christmas fair. To highlight this progress felt important—to show that women are not bound solely to roles defined over millennia. The novel also touches on sacrifice and solidarity, and how stepping beyond the rules can sometimes achieve more than hiding beneath them.
Will this novel be the start of a series or are you working on a different story?
The idea of turning this into a series has certainly crossed my mind, but that depends on whether the story resonates strongly enough with readers.
Author Links: Amazon | GoodReads
A secret organization sends its agents into history’s turning points to serve hidden interests.
On the brink of World War II and German occupation, Anne—a disillusioned operative—embarks on her final mission: to save a boy marked for death in a small country soon to be overrun. The assignment seems simple—until she discovers that more than one life may be worth saving.
A gripping story about time, choice, and the weight of decisions that shape our past, present, and future.
Self-Liberation of Parson Sykes: Return to Southampton County
Return to Southampton County continues the remarkable saga of Parson Sykes, a man born into bondage who fights for his freedom and dignity during and after the Civil War. The book traces Parson’s journey from enslavement in Southampton County, Virginia, through his enlistment in the Union Army, and his eventual return home during the Reconstruction era. Mason blends vivid storytelling with meticulous historical detail, showing how Parson’s personal struggle mirrors the nation’s own messy path toward justice. Through letters, government records, and oral histories, Mason reconstructs not just one man’s fight for self-liberation, but an entire people’s uneasy awakening into a world that promised freedom yet delivered resistance.
The writing feels patient, like it breathes history rather than rushes through it. Mason’s prose is steady and careful, but it also burns with quiet passion. He doesn’t lecture. He lets the scenes do the talking. When Parson stands among the ruins of Richmond, or when he dreams of his mother’s cherry syrup, I could almost taste the air, heavy with both hope and grief. The author’s military background adds authority, yet he writes not as a soldier but as a witness—someone humbled by the courage of those who came before. At times, the detail gets dense, the kind that makes you reread a paragraph just to take it in. But that density feels earned. It’s the sound of someone who did the work and wants to honor every name, every truth.
What moved me most were the moments of quiet reflection, when Parson isn’t marching or fighting, but remembering. Mason writes these scenes with tenderness. He captures the loneliness of a man freed by law but still bound by memory. The book also hit me with anger, the good kind, the kind that comes when history is told without sugarcoating. Mason doesn’t shy away from the cruelty of the era, nor from the failures of Reconstruction. His writing doesn’t preach, it just tells the truth and lets the weight of it land.
I’d recommend Return to Southampton County to anyone who loves history told through human eyes. It’s not just for scholars or Civil War buffs. It’s for readers who care about what freedom really means when it costs everything. The book rewards patience and empathy. It’s heartfelt, grounded, and full of reverence for those who refused to give up on liberty. Mason’s work reminds me why stories like this matter, not because they’re comfortable, but because they make us remember who we are and how far we still have to go.
Pages: 243 | ASIN : B0FGQMT95R
LITERARY TITAN 