Blog Archives
A Small Memory
Robert Dyer’s A Small Memory is a heartfelt coming-of-age novel about friendship, responsibility, and the lasting effects of trauma. Set in Ohio during the 1970s, it follows Mike Youngstown, an eighteen-year-old college basketball player who moves into a group home with his best friend, Ted Dirksen. The two young men work as live-in counselors for adults with intellectual disabilities while balancing school, relationships, and their first real taste of independence. Their arrangement begins as an exciting new chapter, but it becomes far more demanding after Ray, a troubled new resident, enters the home.
The relationship between Mike and Ted gives the novel its emotional center. They tease each other constantly, compete over everything, and communicate with the ease of people who’ve known each other for years. Beneath the jokes, though, there’s genuine devotion. Early in the book, Ted tells Mike, “We’re in this together,” a simple statement that becomes increasingly meaningful as their lives change. Dyer makes their friendship feel lived-in through private nicknames, late-night conversations, petty arguments, and small acts of loyalty. Because that bond is established so carefully, the later scenes carry real emotional force.
The group home setting also gives the story warmth and depth. Stuart, Mark, Paul, John, Kevin, and Ray aren’t treated as a single interchangeable group. Each has his own habits, fears, abilities, and relationships. One especially revealing moment comes when Stuart resists a job promotion because he’s afraid success will separate him from his friends. He finally admits, “I don’t want to be alone.” Moments like this show how independence can be both a goal and a frightening prospect. They also push Mike to become more patient and observant, even when his confidence tells him he already understands the people around him.
Mike’s narration is direct, energetic, and emotionally open. He can be protective and generous, but he’s also impulsive, stubborn, and convinced that determination can solve nearly anything. After Ted suffers a devastating brain injury, that confidence turns into guilt and a desperate desire to repair what has been damaged. The second half of the novel follows Mike as he tries to support Ted’s recovery while holding on to basketball, college, and his relationship with Karen. At times Mike’s thoughts circle repeatedly around blame and forgiveness, but that repetition suits a character who can’t simply reason his way out of grief. His growth comes from learning that caring for someone doesn’t always mean controlling what happens to them.
A Small Memory is a tender story about the many forms friendship can take after life changes it. Its most affecting scenes are often quiet ones, such as a returned hug, a remembered nickname, or a familiar joke emerging through confusion. The novel handles painful material with compassion while still making room for humor, romance, and the ordinary messiness of college life. Dyer’s book asks what it means to remain loyal when a person can no longer return to the life everyone expected for them. Mike’s answer isn’t perfect, but it’s deeply human: he stays, adapts, and keeps choosing the friendship they built together.
Pages: 304 | ASIN : B0H6GQ6SW6
The Third Estate: Devil’s Tango
Devil’s Tango is a sprawling political-action thriller built around secret organizations, military intelligence, elite assassins, experimental research, and a conspiracy that reaches into public institutions. The story opens at a funeral where veteran operative Kai Lovac discovers that his friend’s death may be connected to the Third Estate, a hidden network that influences governments and controls people through money, leverage, and carefully placed agents. From there, the plot pulls medical student and former pilot Sophie Allard into Lovac’s investigation. Sophie is already fighting to preserve her career when she’s accused of a crime she didn’t commit, and her search for the truth soon becomes tangled with Lovac’s hunt for Dossier 1627, the mysterious Professor Milo Anderson, and the secrets surrounding Project Afterburner. The book establishes its dangerous world immediately, filling even a chapel with armed mourners, concealed loyalties, and the expectation that violence could erupt at any moment.
The book’s greatest strength is its momentum. Scenes move quickly from hospitals and military hearings to covert bases, private estates, aircraft, underground laboratories, and heavily guarded political events. Lovac approaches each environment as a tactical puzzle, constantly studying exits, body language, weapons, and possible threats. Sophie brings a different kind of energy. She’s impulsive, compassionate, stubborn, and highly capable, which makes her a lively counterweight to Lovac’s controlled intensity. Their uneasy partnership gives the story much of its personality. They argue, withhold information, rescue each other, and slowly develop trust without losing the friction that makes their conversations entertaining. The large supporting cast can take some concentration to track, but the shifting alliances suit a story in which nearly everyone has a hidden connection or competing agenda.
Readers of Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne novels will recognize the book’s fascination with concealed identities, compromised institutions, specialized operatives, and conspiracies layered inside other conspiracies. Lovac shares Bourne’s ability to enter a room and instinctively calculate danger, though he’s more settled in his identity and more closely tied to the shadowy professional world pursuing him. The novel also has something in common with Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp books, particularly in its mixture of political power struggles and direct, tactical action. Still, Devil’s Tango gives its story a distinct flavor through Sophie’s medical and aviation background, the almost ceremonial culture of the Assassins Guild, and the Third Estate’s preference for manipulating systems.
The novel ends with several major revelations and victories while leaving the larger struggle open. Sophie gains more control over her future, Lovac returns to the Guild with valuable leverage, and hidden identities inside the Third Estate finally come into view. That ending captures what the book does best: it treats trust as something dangerous, valuable, and constantly renegotiated. The Third Estate: Devil’s Tango is an ambitious thriller with a dense plot, cinematic action, and characters whose relationships matter as much as the secrets they’re chasing. It’ll appeal most to readers who enjoy long conspiracies, tactical detail, morally complicated alliances, and endings that open the door to a larger conflict.
Pages: 323 | ASIN : B0GXXCZT6X
Creative Journey
An Era in Anddemar is an epic science fantasy in which godlike Guardian Powers watch over nature, love, the entire galactic community, and the mysterious realm of the Dreaming. What was the inspiration for the story?
As happened with Tolkien, the ’tale grew in the telling’ and as such, was a journey of discovery rather than invention. I had to get myself out of the way, so to speak, to receive what was welling up from the depths of the World Soul in the form of a new myth for our time. I became a kind of mediator, or holding vessel for an overwhelmingly powerful creative drive to help birth this myth. What initially triggered the vision of Anddemar was a powerful dream I had decades ago, which featured a Goddess at the heart of a galaxy, where she was protecting and guiding children across a plain of broken glass. From thereon, visions, imagination and inspiration took over as an entire galactic community – and the unique threat they faced – came into clearer focus. It was as if I was eavesdropping and sightseeing, then recording what I saw, felt, tasted, smelled, overheard and touched. My other main source of inspiration was my deep love for the works of classic mythopoeic authors, including E. R. Eddison, Lord Dunsany, Mervyn Peake, C. S. Lewis, David Lindsay, J. R. R. Tolkien and Charles Williams; hence there are homages to all of these in the book.
What makes Sir Jaide the right character to guide readers through such a vast galaxy?
As ’the foremost of Anddemar’s knights’, Sir Jaide is passionate, noble, intense, brave, brooding, impulsive, empathic and kind. As such, he perfectly embodies everything that the bland Grey enemy of Anddemar is not. He represents both Anddemar’s active resistance to the invading Greyness, as well as the creative fire, decency, chivalry, and deep love of beauty, communal solidarity, poetry, and Nature that permeate Anddemar as an interwoven network and advanced cosmic consciousness. He’s also one of the few able to journey into the Dreaming – the deepest realm of Anddemar – and the Ring, which he alone wields, is able to take him instantly anywhere in the galaxy. That makes him the ideal guide, not only to and throughout other worlds, but also into the inner sanctuary of the soul, since he’s also prone to deep reflection in his endless quest for insight and deeper understanding. Above all, it’s Sir Jaide’s passionate love for Anddemar – as a living web of stars and beings – that deeply enfolds him in the galaxy’s beating heart.
How did you balance science fiction, fantasy, mythology, and spirituality without letting one overwhelm the others?
It just naturally panned out that way. As a new mythology, the creative journey leaned toward a merging of vision, science, soul, Nature, and art into a seamless whole that reflected an advanced, holistic consciousness and intricate tapestry of relationships. Myths always unify through the alchemy of imagination, because they arise from the uttermost depths of soul, or what Jung called the ‘collective unconscious’, as a timeless union of spirit and substance, eternal and temporal, fire and ice, lunar subtlety and solar intensity.
What do you hope readers experience emotionally while spending time in Anddemar?
I hope they enjoy immersing themselves in the richly detailed worlds, the vast mythology, the unique human and non-human characters, their relationships and solidarity, their struggles, challenges, journeys, battles and triumphs. I hope they feel a breathless sense of wonder as they explore a galaxy pulsing with music, passion, love and mystery. I hope they awaken to an understanding that evil, in contrast, is something banal, ugly, monotonous, empty, and an enemy of the ‘Great Dance’ of life. I hope they rediscover their own love of beauty, poetry, Nature, community, and their capacity to contribute to all that is authentic, decent, truthful, and life-enhancing. I hope they enjoy an experience of the artistry and beauty of language – of how language can become music of the soul – and a celebration of the rhythmic pulse of life embraced as a grand symphony and vehicle of transcendent Mystery.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Sanphire | Website | Amazon
A lifeless Greyness is threatening the living spiral galaxy Anddemar, unsettling Nature, dimming stars, fuelling tyranny, unleashing destruction, and disrupting the Great Dance of the Heavens. In response, a colourful alliance – including an exiled Shapemage, wormholes that channel music and poetry, shamans, the Grail, and a marooned band of Earth scientists – helps to repel this enemy of Anddemar’s enduring marriage of dark and light. And weaving through it all is the exquisite love between the foremost of Anddemar’s knights and the Vidar Quain of the Dreaming. An Era in Anddemar is a groundbreaking, vast mythology for lovers of breathless Romance, epic high stakes, compelling characters, richly detailed worlds, unexpected twists, and the poetic artistry of language.
False Realities
A Grand Façade is a compelling collection of personal essays, short stories, and an extended memoir centered on music. Why was this an important book for you to write?
I suppose posterity would be a partial answer, but I’ve had many people suggest that I write about our experience pursuing our band. I then realized that other essays I’ve written about my life before and after those pivotal events helped to put it (and me) in context. Finally, I felt I could add some short stories I was most proud of, each which explored what became the overarching theme of the collection—the illusions or false realities we may believe or pursue, and those we think we are or pretend to be.
Were there moments where your memories surprised you as you wrote them down?
Not so much surprised, but rather clarified or further decoded who I was at the time, and why I reacted certain ways. The memoir certainly dives deep into my insecurities, but traveling back to that time in my head made me realize more clearly what drove some of my anxieties. I think, if anything, the one thing that surprised me the most was how condensed that period of our lives actually was. It was an amazing realization that one of the most significant and dramatic parts of my life—from quitting our careers and selling our house to the day to our last performance—was less than three years.
Looking back, do you think success means something different now than it did during those years of performing and recording?
I think the very concept of success is, perhaps, the biggest façade of all. Those who have never taken a big risk or pursued a dream consider me a successful writer simply for doing it. I look at any author who can make it a career and I call that successful. They probably look at mass-market authors and see that as true success. There are probably mass market authors looking at a Pulitzer prize-winning author and seeing that as true success. We equate success with happiness or fulfillment, but success has no clear metric. When we pursued our band, I had been fixated on an illusion I called “success.” After writing this, I realize that what matters has very little to do with any preconceived notion of success, and everything to do with lived experience. In that respect, I’ve grown to understand that I have been successful in filling my life with worthwhile pursuits. That said, one also has to resolve and accept the disappointment that will most often come with that.
If readers take away just one idea from A Grand Façade, what would you hope it is?
Don’t pursue the dream, pursue the experience, and embrace each moment while you live it.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website
Intense Drama
Rumors of Love follows a man and his adopted daughter whose mission to deliver painful news to a family in Honduras turns into an international adventure involving a hidden community of giants. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The opening scene you mentioned follows closely on the heels of the previous book in the series entitled Black Pearl. In that book, a courageous 19-year-old mission volunteer (Raquel) has sacrificed her life to save Kennedy Musket, age 13, an adopted daughter of the Musket family. Raquel’s family does not know what happened to Raquel because her sacrificial death had taken place in another land. The Muskets, after a year-long search, have finally located Raquel’s family in Honduras. Thus, Kennedy and her adoptive father (Cody Musket Jr.) travel to Honduras to share with Raquel’s family the circumstances of Raquel’s sacrificial death.
After a long and tearful conversation, Raquel’s father, who is pastor of a small Honduran church, fills Cody Jr. in about a lawless “Socialista” (Marxist) movement which is growing rapidly in an effort to take over the nation and eventually the world. That’s when the book changed direction and took me into places I had never planned–a dramatic combination of political conflict, covert rescue missions, family drama, and a teenage love story.
For readers new to the series, what aspects of Cody Musket’s character and history are most important to understanding Rumors of Love?
The Musket family saga began in the year 2014 with a struggling former US Marine (Cody Musket) who has become a professional athlete, but who carries dark military secrets and suffers from debilitating PTSD. After he meets Brandi, an investigative journalist, a single mom and woman of great faith and courage, Cody’s life turns around. He and Brandi marry and form a covert operation for the rescue of children and abused women, and this outreach carries the Muskets through the next three generations. Rumors of Love is the sixth installment of the series, which stretches into the year 2042. Eventually, Iran joins the Socialistas and forms a military alliance with an ancient race of giants. This brings on a thriller ending that I would never have imagined.
How do you balance futuristic elements with the emotional and spiritual themes that remain at the center of the story?
This intense drama plays out on a stage 20 years in the future. The sci-fi technology depicted here could likely be commonplace by that time, but the needs of mankind will never change. The search for love, compassion, forgiveness, and the battle between good and evil are ongoing.
Can readers expect more adventures with Cody Musket and his family, and what kinds of challenges might they face next?
Honestly, I have no idea. I don’t drive myself to come up with these stories on a regular basis because I’ve never been confident with that approach. Instead, I wait until inspiration for a new story enters my mind out of seemingly nowhere, and that’s the truth, as crazy as it sounds. That’s the reason why I have written only 6 books over the past twelve years. Usually, a good storyteller can find a story to tell. But sometimes, the story must find a storyteller, and that means that I spend a lot of time listening for the next one to come knocking on my heart’s door.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Amazon
Adaptability Is Learnable
The Adaptability Quotient asserts that success in the next human era will belong to those who can revise their thinking under pressure. Why was this an important book for you to write?
Over more than three decades in investing, I kept seeing the same pattern. The people and organizations that performed best over time were not always the smartest or most experienced. They were the ones who recognized when reality had changed and revised their thinking fastest.
IQ describes our capacity to reason. EQ helps us understand and work with other people. AQ — the Adaptability Quotient — is our capacity to update when the terrain changes.
That matters urgently now because AI is becoming a general-purpose partner in cognition — what I call the Second Cognitive Revolution. It can research, interpret, generate hypotheses, argue a case, and produce answers with extraordinary fluency. Used well, it can expand human capability. Used passively, it can let us outsource the difficult work through which judgment and agency are built.
I am private by nature, so writing this book required stepping outside my usual world. I did it because adaptability is learnable — and because the difference between using AI to sharpen our thinking and letting it replace our thinking may be one of the defining choices of this era.
You argue that success belongs to people who can revise their thinking under pressure. Why is changing our minds so difficult?
Because most of us make being right part of our identity. You form a differentiated view, the world proves you correct, and over time that view becomes who you are. Then the environment changes, and the model that just won stops working. Updating it now feels like losing yourself, so you defend it instead.
That’s the trap. If being right is your identity, every disconfirming fact feels like an attack. If the process is your identity, every disconfirming fact is useful. The strongest decision-makers I know hold their views with real conviction and stay willing to abandon them the moment reality stops matching the model. Strong opinion, weakly held. You’re in possession of the opinion. Reality is in possession of the answer. The aim is never weaker conviction. It’s to hold the view strongly — and update before circumstances force you to.
Which example in the book surprised you the most while researching or writing it?
Ernest Shackleton — which surprised me, because I thought I knew the story. It may be the most-told leadership story there is. What startled me when I went deep was how absolute the failure was. By every measure of traditional exploration, the Endurance expedition was a catastrophe: the ship was crushed by the ice before the crew ever set foot on the continent. And Shackleton updated overnight. At what he later admitted was his lowest moment, the goal of crossing Antarctica simply ceased to exist for him, and a new definition of success — every man home alive — replaced it, with no visible mourning of the old one. Everything after that was reclassified. Setbacks became feedback. Small wins became steps. The only failure that counted was losing a man, and he never lost one.
There’s a detail that stays with me. Photographs from that golden age of polar exploration usually have a haunted quality — men who vanished into the snow. The pictures of Shackleton’s crew are different: they show men who grew old and told the story. That’s what adaptability buys. Not the original prize — the ability to redefine the prize, and still win it.
What is one thing you hope readers take away from The Adaptability Quotient?
I hope readers come away with a different relationship to uncertainty — and with one idea in particular: when knowledge becomes abundant, what becomes scarce is agency.
AI gives us access to extraordinary amounts of intelligence. We should use it enthusiastically: to challenge assumptions, widen the possibilities we consider, and move faster. But we should not confuse receiving an intelligent answer with developing judgment. Judgment is built through the difficult human work of deciding what matters, interpreting ambiguous evidence, making choices under consequences, and updating when reality proves us wrong. AI can assist in that work, but it cannot own the consequences or preserve our agency for us.
If you build the capacity to update as the world changes, uncertainty stops being something to fear and becomes something you can navigate — and sometimes use. Being wrong is not the central problem. Staying wrong is.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
Over decades of success across volatile markets, creating cultures and businesses that innovate at scale and endure, Litowitz arrived at a crucial insight. What separates progress from paralysis is not foresight, but adaptability.
In an era of uncertainty, decision-making and problem-solving require developing a high adaptability quotient or AQ―the ability to think clearly, act decisively, and pivot when the path ahead isn’t clear. And unlike intellect or emotional intelligence, AQ is not fixed. It can be learned.
In The Adaptability Quotient, Litowitz offers a three-part system that trains readers in:
Metacognition – How to interrogate your assumptions and decision process
Simulation – How to absorb information and model complex systems effectively
Experimentation – How to make decisions that maximize learning and minimize downside
Drawing from his experience―as well as insights from business, technology, psychology, and cognitive science―Litowitz shows how successful people and organizations move forward when navigating change.
For readers of The Scout Mindset, Thinking in Systems, and Thinking, Fast and Slow, The Adaptability Quotient shifts the focus from understanding how we think to improving how we act. As artificial intelligence, media, and scientific advances reshape the cognitive landscape, adaptability becomes the essential discipline for reclaiming human agency.
For leaders and decision-makers who want more than theory in a world where the old playbooks no longer apply, Alec Litowitz shares an actionable framework for raising and realizing your adaptability quotient.
