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At the Foot of the Mountain
At the Foot of the Mountain is a stirring collection of poems that wanders through memory, trauma, heritage, and healing. The book moves between landscapes in the natural world and landscapes within the self, tying the two together in ways that feel tender and raw. Erzinger writes about loss, cultural identity, motherhood, grief, and the slow, patient climb toward recovery. The imagery often returns to mountains, forests, animals, and weather, using the outdoors as both a mirror and a refuge.
I found myself pulled in by the writing’s honesty. The poems feel unguarded, almost conversational, yet they also hit with a kind of quiet force. I caught myself pausing after certain lines, taking a breath, thinking about how plainly the emotions sat on the page. The simplicity of the language made the feelings feel even sharper. Nothing here is dressed up. Nothing hides behind cleverness. I liked that. It made the pain feel real, and it made the small moments of hope feel like little glimmers you want to cup in your hands before they disappear. Some poems made me uneasy in that good way, the way art does when it nudges you to look straight at something you usually avoid.
I also loved the way the natural world acts almost like a character. Animals appear and vanish. Weather shifts. Mountains hold people up or swallow them whole. The poems made me think about how the outside world can reflect our insides without us even noticing. Sometimes I’d read a line and feel a jolt of recognition, like I’d stepped into one of my own memories. Other times I felt the poems drifting far from me, into experiences that aren’t mine. Instead of feeling shut out, though, I felt invited in. The mix of cultures, countries, and family histories gave the collection a restless energy, and that restlessness felt honest. The book breathes in two places at once, maybe more, and I found that tension both sad and beautiful.
I’d recommend this book to readers who enjoy poetry that feels lived in. It’s a good fit for anyone who has ever carried invisible hurts or tried to piece themselves back together after breaking apart. People who find comfort in nature writing will enjoy it too, since the landscape shows up in almost every poem. This is the kind of collection you read slowly, maybe outside, maybe with a cup of something warm, letting each poem settle before moving to the next.
Pages: 98 | ISBN: 198911945X
Bethesda
Bethesda is a collection of poems that moves through faith, pain, identity, womanhood, and longing with a voice that is raw and unguarded. The book feels like a spiritual and emotional journey, one that circles back to God again and again while navigating the heaviness of lived experience. Each poem stands on its own, but together they read like a layered confession. Grief, hope, Blackness, gender, memory, and divine yearning all braid together. The writing pulls from moments of despair and moments of revelation. The themes feel deeply personal yet still universal.
Reading this book stirred something in me. I kept feeling the author’s honesty press against me. Her words feel unfiltered in a way that made me stop more than once just to sit with the weight of what she had said. Sometimes the writing felt soft and vulnerable, then suddenly sharp, almost like a cry I wasn’t prepared for. There is a rhythm in these pages that made me sway between empathy and awe. The way she writes about faith hit me hardest. It felt like I was watching someone reach for God through fog. I felt the hunger in the lines about doubt. I felt the exhaustion in the moments she confessed her confusion.
I also found myself loving the poems that center on Black identity, womanhood, and generational ache. There’s courage in the writing and also a kind of weariness that comes from living too much too early. Sometimes the poems wander. Sometimes they dig straight down. But the variation gave the book its shape. I enjoyed how the language feels both poetic and conversational. There’s an unpolished beauty here. Some lines left me feeling protective of the speaker, and other lines felt like a rallying cry. I especially appreciated how the writer handles inner conflict. It isn’t neat. It isn’t solved. It just lives on the page.
I walked away feeling like this book is for anyone who has ever fought with themselves and still tried to choose hope. It’s for readers who want poetry that feels lived in and not curated. It’s for people who are navigating faith or identity or heartbreak and need a voice that says I’ve been there too. I would recommend Bethesda to those who enjoy emotional, spiritual, and introspective poetry that doesn’t shy away from the hard parts of life.
Pages: 109 | ASIN : B0F7HZJX6D
Heritage Mountain
Heritage Mountain is a heartwarming blend of cozy fantasy and wilderness adventure, following botanist Anita and survivalist Marco as they reunite for an archaeological expedition in the Adirondacks. Alongside their close-knit friends, Maria and Chase, and a delightful cast of supernatural beings like pixies, elves, and a telepathic cat, the group embarks on a journey that’s as much about discovery as it is about connection, both with nature and each other. The story gently weaves folklore, love, mystery, and magic into the everyday, creating a world where firepits reveal ancient tools, and a simple forest walk may bring you face-to-face with stargazers or nymphs.
I genuinely enjoyed reading this. There’s a quiet, comforting kind of magic in the way author Karen Black writes. She gives the characters space to breathe, laugh, stumble, and grow close. I loved the humor between Chase and Maria. It felt like watching old friends tease and support each other without missing a beat. Marco’s protective, grounded energy made him instantly likable. And Anita. I loved Anita. Her blend of practicality and wonder, her quiet strength and openness to magic, made her feel real and relatable. And the worldbuilding? It’s so gentle and subtle, the supernatural just slips in like a whisper. Nothing is overexplained or flashy. And that makes it feel real.
Everything feels safe, and sometimes I find myself wishing for a little more tension or stakes. But then again, that’s probably the point. Heritage Mountain tells a different kind of story. One about trust, connection, and ancient magic hidden in plain sight. It’s quiet but rich, like the kind of story you’d tell around a fire under the stars. It made me want to go hiking. Or at least take a walk and keep an eye out for little footprints in the moss.
I’d recommend Heritage Mountain to anyone who loves stories about found family, soft magic, and wilderness tales that feel like a warm blanket on a chilly morning. If you liked Practical Magic or The Bear and the Nightingale, or just need a break from the world, this book will meet you gently and invite you in. Fans of cozy fantasy, magical realism, and wilderness adventure will find Heritage Mountain a gentle, enchanting read full of heart, hidden magic, and unforgettable charm.
Pages: 264 | ASIN : B0FGVT464K
Heirs of Empire
S A Melia’s Heirs to Empire is a sprawling space opera of loyalty, survival, and rebirth. The story sweeps through twelve human worlds known as the Dodecahedral Empire, where young King Teodor, once presumed dead, claws his way from slavery on a plague-ridden world to reclaim his crown. Alongside him are soldiers, nomads, and lovers bound by webs of duty and betrayal. Melia threads political intrigue, biological warfare, and deep personal transformation into a story that feels both intimate and epic. It’s part military science fiction, part mythic hero’s journey, and part meditation on power and belonging.
Reading this book, I felt pulled between admiration and awe. Melia’s world-building is stunning, dense, and alive with detail. Her writing has a cinematic rhythm, with scenes that pulse between horror and beauty. There’s a strange poetry in how she describes destruction, especially the plague-ravaged London and the living forests of Sas Darona. The characters feel raw and human, even when they’re riding giant spiders or waging interplanetary wars. I loved the contrast between Teodor’s noble stoicism and Guy Erma’s rough-edged loyalty.
What struck me most was how personal the story feels beneath all the spectacle. This isn’t just about empires rising and falling, it’s about what happens to people when the idea of “home” burns down. Melia writes grief and hope side by side. Her characters are always torn, always trying to choose between love, survival, and duty. I found myself angry with them one moment and rooting for them the next. That unpredictability kept me turning pages, even when the politics grew thick. There’s a pulse of emotion here that feels tender, painful, and real.
Heirs to Empire is a bold, emotional ride. It’s perfect for readers who love the grand scope of Dune but crave the grit and heart of Battlestar Galactica. If you enjoy stories that blend science fiction with myth, politics with passion, and chaos with redemption, this book will grab you and not let go. It’s ambitious, heartfelt, and riveting.
Pages: 466 | ASIN : B0FCCX2672
Re-Crafting the Relationship
Beneficial Economics examines history, political theory, and constitutional design to equip readers with the critical information they need to combat the growing ideological divide in America and rebuild a stable and moral society. Why was this an important book to publish at this time?
We provide red state citizens with the constitutional framework of 4 essential functions of the national government:
1. The protective state, which protects citizen liberty and freedoms from coercion and exploitation.
2. The productive state, which creates the fair rules for citizen freedom to produce and obtain the future value of their production.
3. The entrepreneurial state, which decentralizes economic activity to the most local regional metro level to allow citizens maximum ability to innovate.
4. The sovereign state, which protects the sovereignty of citizens and the nation from outside threats from other nations and from inside threats from anti-national forces.
At this time in the nation’s history, the government has strayed from its initial purpose, and is untethered to Madison’s constitution.
The government has failed the citizens, and the citizens have a natural right to abolish this government and start over, with the principles of 1776, which is what the book’s four functions are designed to create.
In your book, you sketch a new political architecture —a “Democratic Republic of American States” — built on state sovereignty, fair economic rules, and resistance to “predatory state capitalism.” Can you give a high-level explanation of what this would look like?
The new architecture of the national government offers two forms of decentralization, intended to overcome the flaws of centralization in Madison’s constitution.
First, the new constitution aims at geographic political decentralization, intended to return authority and government power to citizens at the most local levels of government.
We cite Jefferson’s phrase,
“That which governs the best, governs the least, and closest to the people.”
The book proposes re-crafting the relationship between states and the national government by limiting the national government powers to those “expressly delegated” to the national government, by the states, in the constitution.
Second, the book describes the economic relationship between decentralized entrepreneurial innovation, in metro regions, to the freedom and liberty of citizens to obtain the future prosperity that they are imagining for themselves.
This economic future would look very much like what Adam Smith described for British society in his 1776 book, The Wealth of Nations.
This future economy, in the Democratic Republic of American States, would look like free citizens making free financial and economic decisions which leads society to beneficial outcomes for all citizens.
After reading your book, what steps can the average citizen take to start making meaningful change in their own communities?
In the current two-party, first-past-the post political system, red state citizens do not have a political party or political movement that aims to champion their liberty and financial interests.
The book is designed to promote a red state citizen consciousness of their own class interests, which depends on the creation of a coherent ideology of freedom.
As the political polarization intensifies, and as the Democrat Marxist seek to impose a communist solution, red state citizens will use their state legislatures to implement citizen-led study commissions to recommend changes to the state-national relationship.
Those citizen study commissions become the launching pad for a new constitution.
What is one thing that people point out after reading your book that surprises you?
I am surprised at how alien the notion of citizen liberty and economic freedom has become for red state citizens.
Part of the intent of the book is to use the notion of quantitative physics to explain to red state citizens that nothing bad will happen if citizens are free to make their own decisions.
We extend the notion of Adam Smith to describe that something good will emerge in society when citizens have the greatest ability to obtain the future that their brains are imagining, for themselves, and their families.
Author Links: X | Website | Rumble | YouTube | Substack | Gettr
At this point in American history, middle and working class citizens in red states are confronted with two paths.
Red state citizens could do nothing, and accept the path of blue state Democrat Marxism, that increases the power of the central government over the lives of citizens.
That path leads to a global police state of citizen surveillance and a social credit system controlled by central banks, private corporations, and tech companies.
Alternatively, citizens in red states could restore the original 1776 principles of liberty that animated the first American Revolution, by implementing a decentralized political system, based upon a metro-decentralized entrepreneurial capitalist economic system.
We wrote about the irreconcilable cultural and moral differences between citizens in red and blues states, leading up to a political civil dissolution, at this point in history. (Laurie Thomas Vass, A Civil Dissolution: The Best Solution to America’s Irreconcilable Ideological Conflict, 2023).
In this book, we extend our analysis, that after a political civil dissolution, what comes next for citizens in the red states is creating a new, better constitution.
Our book explores how red state citizens might craft a more fair constitution that puts political power back in the hands of ordinary people, at the state and local levels of government.
We combine a political dissolution with a constitutional dissolution that aims at creating fair economic rules.
Political geographical dissolution – the cultural/geographic separation along red/blue state lines that is inevitable.
Constitutional dissolution – the fundamental redesign of economic rules and institutional structures, moving away from Madison’s system that enabled the original ruling class aristocracy, that eventually turned into a global predatory state capitalism.
Sick
Sick is a deeply unsettling psychological horror novel that follows the toxic, codependent relationship between Susan and her chronically ill husband, John. What begins as a tale of dutiful care gradually descends into something far more sinister. The book explores themes of love, martyrdom, manipulation, and the blurry line between devotion and delusion. At the center is a marriage teetering on the edge of madness, where illness, real or imagined, becomes both the glue and the weapon that binds them.
It wasn’t just the disturbing imagery or the suffocating atmosphere, it was how intimate it all felt. I was drawn in by the clean, evocative prose and the slow, relentless build-up of dread. Author Christa Wojciechowski doesn’t rely on cheap scares. Instead, she weaponizes empathy, using Susan’s exhaustion and desperation like a knife twisting in your gut. Anyone who’s ever been trapped in a one-sided relationship or felt obligated to care for someone while losing themselves will feel that sting.
John is infuriating. He is charming, pathetic, childlike, and monstrous all at once. I found myself swaying between pity and revulsion. And Susan is no angel either. Her love feels noble one minute and complicit the next. Wojciechowski manages to make the reader complicit, too. I kept asking myself why I felt sorry for someone who was clearly manipulating the woman who loved him. But then I’d see his suffering again, and it would all blur. That’s the genius of this book. It messes with your moral compass.
There’s a smell to this book. Not literally, of course, but in the way Wojciechowski describes bodies, fluids, wounds, and rooms filled with neglect. And beneath it all, I could feel this aching, awful love. The writing doesn’t scream. It whispers. And that’s so much worse. It made me uncomfortable, not with violence or gore, but with how honest it was about how far people will go to feel needed.
There were times when I wanted to yell at Susan to run. Other times, I wanted to wrap her in a blanket and tell her it was okay to stop giving so much of herself. I think that’s why the story is so effective, it holds a mirror up to all the ways we lose ourselves in caring for others. The manipulation in this book is terrifying, not because it’s extreme, but because it’s familiar.
If you want a slow-burn, character-driven descent into psychological horror that feels both intimate and raw, Sick is a must-read. It’s perfect for readers who enjoy books like Gone Girl or The Shining, but crave something smaller in scale and more emotionally claustrophobic. It’s not just horror. It’s heartbreak in disguise. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in the darker sides of love, mental illness, and the twisted things we do in the name of care.
Pages: 282 | ASIN: B0FL5RTYQ9
Living In The Moment Method
Bart Bantam The Flying Rooster follows a small bantam rooster who has big dreams of flying, offering young readers important lessons about believing in themselves. Where did the idea for this story come from?
The inspiration for this book actually began 25+ years ago. You see, I am a father of two sons, and when I needed to wake them up for primary school, I coerced them to get up and get ready by using a chicken’s voice. The irritation of my chicken voice worked supremely well! In 2014, I bought an iPad and started doodling. It came to me with a sketch of a bantam rooster and a vague outline of a story. A barnyard chicken is not very large; however, a smaller Bantam, with an even smaller voice, sparked my imagination. Wouldn’t it be surprising if this small rooster did what others were incapable or unwilling to do? As a former therapist, I witnessed the struggles of children in families. I saw Bart as a friend to anyone needing a friend, and a voice to convey a message to further help others in a meaningful way.
What was your favorite scene in this story?
This is an easy answer for me. I gravitate to the final page of the book where Billy, a former bully, has reformed into an appreciative young rooster whose life has changed forever. Billy can’t contain his gratitude, and he lifts the bantam roosters in his wings as the teacher and classmates cheer them on.
The artwork in your book is wonderful. Can you share with us a little about your illustration process?
I am both a writer and an illustrator of my books. Both tasks are challenging to say the least. I am currently using an art program called Procreate. This app allows scenes to be stacked like pages in a book. The tools I use while drawing allow my story to develop. I build the storyline as I draw. Let’s back up a bit. I had the idea for the chicken, then the idea for a Bantam rooster. Finally, alliteration kicked in and Bart Bantam became the main character’s name. As I began drawing young Bart, it helped me see his unique personality. I felt my way through the book page by page, and as I drew, I developed the narrative and the story’s conflicts and resolutions. I believe they call this technique “Pantser.” “Flying by the seat of your pants.” Or as I have laughingly renamed it, “Living in the moment method.” There is an honesty and freshness to this technique in my humble opinion, though editing has become an important collaborative tool.
Can we look forward to more books for young readers soon? What are you currently working on?
Yes indeed! So far, The Tales of Bart Bantam series has a total of four books. Also, there is a supplemental coloring book encouraging young children to express themselves in coloring their favorite characters of Bart and his friends. I also have an adorable non-fiction children’s story about carving a rabbit out of a dead tree stump. As you can probably guess by now, I’m just getting started with this new-found love of writing and illustrating books. Thank you again for your attentiveness. Kindly yours, Papa Fred.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website
★★★★★ “… Brimming with charm, gentle humor, and an uplifting message, (this book) offers inspiration without ever feeling heavy-handed. …Young readers will find a hero in Bart’s boundless enthusiasm.” – Literary Titan
Get ready for an adventure like no other! Join Bart Bantam, a young rooster with big dreams, as he navigates life on the farm with his mother, Mama Betty. But things take an unexpected turn when Bart finds himself in a showdown with the school bully, a rooster much larger than him. With the help of a new friend named Buddy, they set out to do what no other chicken has done before, “Fly!” But when danger strikes, Bart and Buddy must use their newfound skills to save the day. Will they succeed? Find out in the thrilling tale of Bart Bantam The Flying Rooster!
This story highlights:
achieving goals
perseverance and resilience in doing hard things
handling peer pressure around a bully
showing kindness and compassion to others
the power of friendship
Bart’s journey will warm your hear and inspire readers of all ages. From beautifully hand drawn illustrations with vivid color and detail to a tender story from the author’s heart about friendship and forgiveness, Bart’s kindness leads the way!
This book is a true labor of love. It is a created by a dedicated author who uses his own story and illustrations from his own hand (No AI) to help children in a meaningful way. Large 8.5×11 pages bring the characters to life and engages the reader whole heartedly. Premium color and glossy pages make these illustrations dynamic to grab one’s imagination. This short story is perfect for shared reading with little ones or as independent reading for primary school readers ages 7 and up.
If you enjoyed books like Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, you’ll love Bart Bantam The Flying Rooster. So don’t wait, grab your copy now and lose yourself in the wonders of Bart’s World.
LITERARY TITAN 