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The Pulse of Past Generations
Way Keeper follows a compassionate boy in tenth-century France whose growing connection to the Old Ways tests his family bonds as he learns to protect a sacred inheritance he does not yet understand. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Since Way Keeper is the first book of a prequel series to The Evensong Enchantments, my debut trilogy, its inception sprang from those stories. The characters that I had created seemed to want more…their lineage, the magic system, and the Druidic prophecy—the undercurrent that drives those first three books.
The roots of the stories are deeply entwined with my fascination for the untold Druidic legacy and its intersection with early Christian beliefs. I wanted to convey how ancestral memory shapes identity, especially through sacred places like Chartres. This setting serves as a crucible for Lucian’s journey, where the past is not just remembered but felt in every stone and stream.
What guided your use of stones, water, and woodland sensations to make ancestral memory feel present in Lucian’s everyday world?
I aimed to create a world where the landscape is a living memory. Stones represent permanence, water signifies memory, and the earth itself embodies the spirit of the Old Ways. By weaving these elements into Lucian’s daily life, I hoped to illustrate how our surroundings can hold and transmit the pulse of past generations.
How did you develop Lucian’s understanding of when to use magic, when to exercise restraint, and what caring for others requires?
Lucian’s journey mirrors the path from instinct to wisdom. His early experiences with magic are not yet fully understood by him. In fact, at times they frighten him as he is yet a child. But as he leans into trusting his ancestral gifts, he learns that true power lies not just in wielding elemental forces but in understanding and compassion—and even more importantly, the intention behind his actions. This evolution is central to his character arc and will continue to unfold in the coming books.
What drew you to recurring images of breath, blood, and light, and how did you balance their ceremonial rhythm with emotional immediacy?
Breath, blood, and light symbolize life force, connection, and the divine. These images recur to remind readers of the sacredness of existence and the interconnectedness of all beings. Balancing the ceremonial with the personal was key; I wanted readers to feel both the ritual and the rawness of Lucian’s experiences.
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Atmospheric, lyrical, and steeped in the mysteries of the ancient world, Way Keeper is a coming-of-age tale of brotherhood, loss, destiny, and the enduring memory of the earth.
For readers who crave historical fantasy with depth—where magic is ancient and sacred, history feels lived-in, and the boundary between the mortal world and the unseen grows thin.
In tenth-century France, twelve-year-old Lucian has been raised in the Old Ways, learning the quiet mysteries of the earth. But when his grandfather dies, an ancient legacy becomes a burden Lucian was never prepared to carry.
Far from home, he discovers the old stories are not stories at all. Forgotten Roads still wind beneath the mortal world—and something within them remembers him. When everything he loves is threatened, Lucian must follow a path no Druid has walked in generations, and discover why the Old Ways have chosen him.
Way Keeper begins The Moonstone Magicks, prequel to The Evensong Enchantments.
If you’re drawn to the lyrical fantasy of Juliet Marillier’s Daughter of the Forest, and the visceral, mythic scale of John Gwynne’s The Shadow of the Gods, enter the forgotten Roads of the White Dragons. Discover Way Keeper today.
Reluctant Keeper of the Old Ways
Coming of Age
Otherworldly Roads
Sacred Runes & Forgotten Enchantments
Elemental Magic
A Realm Where the Land Remembers
Inside Henry Cato
Katharine English’s Inside Henry Cato is a sweeping queer coming-of-age novel about a Kansas boy searching for a life that feels genuinely his. Growing up with an abusive, fiercely religious mother, Henry finds refuge in storytelling and an intense fascination with women’s shoes. He runs away in 1967, first joining young idealists bound for San Francisco and later entering the art scene of New York. The older Henry narrates these events with the knowledge of what they cost him, giving the novel the intimacy of a confession and the shape of a survivor’s memoir.
English uses shoes as the book’s central language. For Henry, they represent beauty, escape, erotic feeling, performance, and eventually creative purpose. That symbolism could have become heavy-handed, but it keeps evolving alongside him. His early thefts are acts of resistance, his modeling career turns his appearance into someone else’s property, and his later work as a shoemaker finally lets him create beauty on his own terms. Letters exchanged with his childhood friend Perry interrupt the first-person narrative at key moments, grounding Henry’s reinventions in a relationship that remains candid, funny, and remarkably tender.
Perry is the novel’s strongest supporting character and its emotional anchor. His slangy, irreverent letters bring warmth to a story filled with abuse, exploitation, sexual violence, and the Vietnam War. Trixie and Xander also give Henry a convincing chosen family in New York, while his relationships with Del, Cherub, and Lady Vesta explore the complicated border between care and control. English is especially perceptive about bodily responses that don’t neatly correspond to consent, and she treats Henry’s fluid sense of gender and sexuality as something lived and evolving. He doesn’t need to arrive at a tidy label for his identity to be real.
The novel is ambitious, vivid, and emotionally generous, though its 376 pages occasionally feel crowded. Henry sometimes explains the meaning of an experience after the scene has already communicated it, and the historical commentary can slow the narrative’s momentum. A few coincidences and dream sequences also announce their significance more insistently than necessary. Still, English’s sensory writing is consistently memorable, from the damp rot of the childhood cellar to the leather, glitter, smoke, and music of Henry’s later worlds. The recurring images of masks, thresholds, and footsteps give the sprawling story a satisfying unity.
I’d recommend Inside Henry Cato most strongly to readers who enjoy character-driven historical fiction, queer coming-of-age stories, and novels about chosen family, artistic identity, and survival. It will especially appeal to readers interested in the counterculture of the late 1960s, the early queer communities of San Francisco and New York, and protagonists whose identities resist simple categories. The book contains explicit depictions of childhood abuse, sexual assault, and violence, so it asks for some emotional readiness. For the right reader, Henry’s voice and his lifelong friendship with Perry will linger long after the final page.
Pages: 376 | ASIN : B0HCHF37MC
A Very Human Question
Bella Santini in the Land of Everlasting Change follows a fourteen-year-old girl who enters a magical fairy realm and discovers that her mysterious connection to its magic may reveal a hidden truth about her identity. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Bella Santini was born from my own experience of feeling different as a child. I was highly sensitive and deeply aware of the emotions around me, but I did not always understand what I was sensing or where I belonged. I wanted to create a character who carried some of that same uncertainty.
Fantasy gave me a beautiful way to explore those feelings. Bella begins the story believing she knows who she is and what her world is, even though she has never felt completely at home in it. Then she enters a place where everything she understands about herself begins to shift. The magic is part of the adventure, but underneath it is a very human question: What happens when you discover that the things that made you feel different might actually be part of who you are?
That became the heart of the Land of Everlasting Change. Bella is entering a magical world, but she is also entering a deeper understanding of herself.
Bella enters the fairy realm almost by accident. What did you want her unexpected journey to represent?
Life rarely announces the experiences that are going to change us. We can be moving through an ordinary day and suddenly find ourselves somewhere we never expected to be, emotionally or literally. Bella does not choose a grand quest. She falls into one.
I wanted that unexpected journey to reflect the experience of growing up, particularly during the tween and early teen years. The world begins changing around you, relationships change, your awareness of yourself changes, and suddenly the rules that once made sense do not seem quite as certain.
The Land of Everlasting Change makes that experience visible. Bella cannot control everything that happens around her, but she can learn to understand what she feels, make choices about how she responds, and discover what those choices reveal about her. For me, that is where courage begins.
Yelimoon Fairy School adds a magical-school element to the story. What was most exciting about creating the school and its magical curriculum?
Yelimoon was tremendous fun to create because it grew out of a real place that captured my imagination. I lived in Cheltenham, England, and often admired the beautiful buildings of Cheltenham College. Their historic architecture became the visual inspiration for Yelimoon Fairy School. I loved taking something that existed in the real world and imagining what might be happening behind those walls if they belonged to a school for fairies.
From there, I could let my imagination run free. I created magical classes, unusual teachers, creatures, friendships, mistakes, and all the delightful complications that happen when young people are learning abilities they do not yet know how to control. What interested me most, though, was that Bella could not simply master a spell and suddenly master herself. She has to experiment, make mistakes, become frustrated, try again, and learn whom she can trust. Yelimoon teaches magic, but the experiences Bella has there teach her about herself. That is one of the things I love about writing fantasy for young readers. You can give a child an extraordinary world while still speaking to something very real in their life.
What can readers expect from Bella’s continuing adventures in the Land of Everlasting Change?
Bella’s world continues to grow, and so do the challenges she faces. Each adventure explores another layer of growing up through fantasy, friendship, difficult choices, misunderstandings, consequences, and, of course, magic.
In Troll War, Bella begins discovering that understanding another person requires looking beyond what we have been told about them. In Princess Bella Visits the Dragon’s Lair, her choices become increasingly important, and she learns that even well-intentioned decisions can have consequences. As the series continues, the world expands further, and Bella’s understanding of herself becomes more complex.
There are larger mysteries unfolding as well, including questions about Bella’s connection to this world and where she truly belongs. I want readers to have the pleasure of following an ongoing fantasy adventure while growing alongside Bella. She does not become fearless or suddenly have everything figured out. She becomes more capable of listening to herself, understanding others, making choices, and meeting change when it arrives. That, to me, is a much more interesting kind of magic.
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When Bella follows a trail of glowing lights into the woods, she’s suddenly swept into the Land of Everlasting Change, a magical realm where nothing stays the same for long and courage is tested in unexpected ways. Taken to a mysterious fairy school, Bella must face a series of magical trials that challenge not just her abilities but also her confidence, her choices, and her belief in herself.
As Bella navigates strange rules, powerful fairies, and friendships that test her heart, she begins to discover that real strength isn’t about being fearless, it’s about learning how to stand steady when things feel uncertain.
Bella Santini in the Land of Everlasting Change is the first book in a heartfelt middle-grade fantasy series about resilience, identity, and finding courage from within. It’s a story for sensitive readers, children who have felt out of place, and anyone learning how to trust themselves in a world that keeps changing.
Perfect for middle-grade readers who love magical worlds, brave heroines, and emotionally meaningful adventures.
An Unconscious Choice of Chaos
Tessa Kinsela’s An Unscious Choice of Chaos is an emotionally candid coming-of-age novel about how quickly adolescence can outrun a young person’s ability to understand it. Ashley begins Year 9 believing that careful thought can keep life orderly. Then friendship, desire, grief, alcohol, secrecy, and trauma begin exerting their own momentum. Kinsela makes the butterfly effect more than a recurring image. It becomes the book’s emotional structure, with each seemingly small choice altering the shape of everything that follows.
Ashley’s voice is intelligent, observant, funny, and intensely analytical. Her attention to bedroom colours, family rituals, school timetables, books, trees, and food gives the novel a vivid everyday texture, while the Queensland heat and bushland make its setting feel lived in. That domestic detail matters because it establishes the warmth surrounding Ashley before her inner world starts to fracture. The chapter titles, from “Anticipation” and “Exposure” through “Shame,” “Resilience,” and “Equilibrium,” create a thoughtful map of that psychological journey.
The novel’s most affecting quality is its willingness to remain close to Ashley when her reasoning becomes tangled. Her relationships with Tanner, Maddy, and Bray reveal different forms of intimacy, but the emotional heart of the book lies in her bonds with her family, especially Lacey. Kinsela handles consent, sexual assault, self-harm, substance use, and emotional distress with seriousness and compassion. The story also captures how shame can distort responsibility, leaving a person convinced that every harm they’ve suffered began with some earlier mistake of their own.
This is a confronting read, but it’s also a deeply humane one. Ashley’s recovery arrives through honesty, professional care, familiar places, books, and the quiet presence of people who keep loving her. The ending feels earned because healing is presented as an ongoing practice. Tessa Kinsela captures the terrible velocity of one small choice becoming a storm, then shows how tenderness can teach a life to hold steady again.
Pages: 252 | ASIN : B0HBRGDZR3
Bella Santini in the Land of Everlasting Change
Bella Santini in the Land of Everlasting Change, by Angela Legh, is a children’s fantasy adventure that blends fairy-tale magic, a hidden world, magical-school fantasy, and a coming-of-age story with a surprisingly thoughtful look at emotions. Fourteen-year-old Bella would rather spend her summer painting than camping with her parents, but a mysterious light leads her into a fairy realm where she’s arrested, questioned by the Seelie Court, and eventually sent to Yelimoon Fairy School. What starts as a strange detour quickly becomes a much larger discovery about Bella herself. She may have entered this world believing she’s human, but the magic around her keeps suggesting there’s much more to her story.
The fantasy world is colorful and busy in a way younger readers can easily picture. There are fairies with shimmering wings, magical spells, enchanted mirrors, a fairy tribunal, trolls gathering in the woods, an ancient chalice, a formerly stone gargoyle named Torvieto, and even a parallel realm inhabited by emotions. Yelimoon gives the book its magical-school adventure energy, while Bella’s initiation trials create a clear series of challenges that keep the story moving. One of my favorite stretches is her search for the Chalice of Keani, which turns into a genuine fantasy quest filled with puzzles, danger, strange magic, and some clever problem-solving from Bella.
What gives this children’s fantasy novel its own personality, though, is the way emotional growth is built directly into the adventure. Bella learns about fear, sadness, frustration, calm, trust, friendship, bullying, and the stories people tell themselves about who they are. Those ideas aren’t confined to conversations. In Emovia, emotions actually become forces Bella and Torvieto have to navigate, so techniques such as breathing, calming yourself, examining fear, and trusting your own judgment become part of surviving the quest. Bella also changes in believable ways. The girl who begins the book irritated with her parents and determined to stay inside painting gradually discovers courage, loyalty, resourcefulness, and a much greater sense of what she might be capable of.
There’s plenty left unresolved by the end, and that works well for the opening book of a fantasy series. Ginekei and Ashworth are still moving pieces into place, the trolls are gathering, Bella’s royal connection is becoming harder to hide, and even Bella doesn’t yet understand the truth about her identity. At the same time, this first adventure gives her a satisfying arc of its own. She arrives in the Land of Everlasting Change feeling frightened and powerless and finishes surrounded by friends, aware of her growing magic, and more willing to trust herself.
Readers looking for a middle grade fantasy, fairy adventure, magical school story, or children’s book about emotional intelligence will find all of those elements woven into Bella’s journey, with enough mystery waiting in the wings to make the next installment feel like a natural continuation.
Pages: 190 | ASIN : B0FS6HZY8K
Shared Experiences
The Arbiters follows a group of teenage friends who discover a development project is threatening their favorite wilderness area, and they are determined to find a way to save it. Why did you want to combine a coming-of-age story with an environmental conflict?
I think it is important for young people to care about the planet and their local environment. Anyone, including a young person, can make their voice heard in various ways when it comes to injustices against nature or otherwise. I remember development near my home during my childhood and the sense of loss I felt. Through my stories, I want to inspire people to take action.
Friendship is just as important to the story as the environmental conflict. What did you want to capture about teenage friendships during this stage of life?
Some of my greatest friendships were forged during my childhood and teen years. Shared experiences created and tightened those bonds. We had incredible, unforgettable outdoor adventures together. I’m sure the friendships of many people have a similar genesis. I want to celebrate and showcase the joy, sometimes bittersweet, of those connections.
The novel shows different ways of making a difference, including research, writing, art, observation, and direct action. Was it important to show that activism doesn’t have to look the same for everyone?
Yes. We all have different personalities and strengths. Each talent can be harnessed in ways big and small. Everyone can contribute. You may not realize the difference you make, but it all adds up to good.
Is The Arbiters intended as a standalone story, or do you see possibilities for following Reily and his friends into the next stages of their lives?
The Arbiters was written as a prequel to my earlier novel, The Restorers. In that book, my main character, Reily, and his friend, Wil, are in their 40s. I enjoyed going back in time and writing the coming-of-age tale, imagining what Reily was like as a 15-16 year-old with his nascent environmental convictions. I’m currently writing the third book in the trilogy, which takes us to the present day and features some of the same treasured characters.
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Together they fight back with their own form of frontier justice and realize new things about themselves in the process. Ben Kabumba lets his feet, and inquisitiveness, do the talking. Wil Wisnoski plays defense–with and without a pen. Eddie Knisely improves his jaded world through watercolors, while Reily yearns for the neighborhood dream girl and wet and wild extracurricular pursuits.
In this coming of age story, an adventuresome coed crew, and enterprising dog, discover love, acceptance, and the importance of making a difference. Words and research matter, along with proper reconnaissance, covert deeds, and a fed-up bureaucrat named Billy Tilghman. Armed with knowledge and a little bit of serendipity, they disrupt–if not, disassemble–the devious plans of a bumbling developer, and protect their sacred lands. Stirring environmental passions, spiritual connections, and a dose of 1970’s nostalgia, The Arbiters has readers cheering for a knotty tree and falling for the charms of a few timely snakes . . . of one kind or another.
The Arbiters
The Arbiters by Brook Lenker is a coming-of-age adventure set in eastern Pennsylvania in 1975 and 1976, where the pleasures of being young gradually collide with a much bigger question about who gets to decide what happens to the natural places people love. Reily Watters and his friends spend their time fishing, hiking, swimming, chasing romantic interests, getting into trouble, and exploring the Mannequin Creek watershed. When a proposed pumped-storage hydroelectric project threatens to transform that landscape, their familiar woods and water take on new importance. The environmental storyline grows naturally from Reily’s attachment to the creek, so the book’s interest in conservation feels personal. It’s as much about young people discovering what matters to them as it is about saving a place.
One of the book’s most enjoyable qualities is its ensemble of characters. Reily is the emotional center, curious about nature, girls, friendship, and the person he’s becoming, but the supporting characters develop lives and ambitions of their own. Wil’s dry wit and interest in writing give the group a different kind of intelligence, while Boom’s scientific curiosity becomes especially important as he and Cindy investigate the snakes living near the proposed reservoir. Eddie may be the biggest surprise. His rough, impulsive personality sits alongside a genuine artistic talent and a growing confidence that gives him more depth as the story progresses. Even Merle Darkes, the developer pushing the hydroelectric project, gets his own chapters, allowing the novel to show how ambition and self-interest can shape the way someone sees a landscape. The shifting viewpoints make the story feel less like one teenager’s crusade and more like a community of people moving toward choices that reveal who they are.
Lenker also has a strong affection for the texture of the 1970s, and the novel is packed with music, television, cars, clothes, food, slang, and other period details. Those references create a lived-in world. Just as important, the landscape itself becomes one of the book’s most memorable presences. Fishing holes, waterfalls, forests, quarries, farms, and creeks accumulate meaning because the characters keep returning to them. The plot can be leisurely and episodic, particularly when it follows romances, school life, sports, and the group’s everyday escapades, but that spaciousness serves the coming-of-age story. By the time the fight over the dam reaches its resolution, the reader understands exactly what could be lost. The government’s eventual rejection of the project therefore lands as more than a bureaucratic victory. It’s the preservation of the physical world in which these friendships and discoveries have taken shape.
I recommend The Arbiters most to readers who enjoy character-driven coming-of-age fiction, outdoor adventures, environmental themes, and stories with a strong sense of place. It should have particular appeal for people who remember the 1970s, since they’ll recognize plenty of cultural touchstones, but younger readers interested in conservation and friendship can connect with its central concerns just as easily. The book understands that learning to care about something often happens before a person knows what to do about it. Reily and his friends begin with fishing, swimming, crushes, jokes, and afternoons that seem endless. They come away with a clearer sense that the places they love can be vulnerable, that their own talents can have a purpose, and that speaking up can matter. That combination of youthful adventure, friendship, humor, and environmental stewardship gives The Arbiters its distinctive identity.
Pages: 231 | ASIN : B0DS6BN31G
A True Friendship Can Survive Anything
A Small Memory follows an eighteen-year-old college basketball player and his best friend as they serve as live-in counselors for adults with intellectual disabilities while navigating the challenges of young adulthood. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
This novel exemplifies that old adage, “Write what you know.” It was actually inspired by my experience living in the circumstances the two main characters encounter. This was several decades ago when that concept was brand new so everyone was feeling their way. Living in that group home while experiencing independence myself along with my best friend provided the inspiration.
The friendship between Mike and Ted is the emotional foundation of the novel. Why was it important to make that relationship central?
As I said, my friend from high school and I did actually room together under those circumstances and this is a tribute to that friendship. Also, growing up, I read John Knowles classic, A Separate Peace. There is a deeply rooted friendship at the heart of that novel, but ultimately tragic consequences destroys its future. While there is a traumatic event in my novel, I wanted to show the resilience of true friendship. Most people have that one special friend that exerts a hold on us for whom we would sacrifice so much.
Ted’s injury forces Mike to confront guilt, grief, and limits he cannot control. How did you approach writing that emotional journey?
I will admit to being a pantser for a large part of my approach to writing. The first part of the novel is almost a memoir as most of those circumstances were based on things we actually experienced. The remaining two-thirds is one hundred percent fiction. When Mike is facing emotional struggles on multiple fronts, I had to be careful to not let it become something that was a simple pity party he was throwing for himself. Those sections went through multiple edits and beta readers to help me make certain that Mike didn’t become one-dimensional, or that his actions would be out of character. I also thought back to challenges I faced in maintaining friendships under difficult circumstances and drew upon those.
If readers remember one message from the novel, what would you like it to be?
A true friendship can survive anything.
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When Ted is brutally attacked by a resident and left in a coma, Mike is forced to confront a question that will haunt him: Why wasn’t he there? As Ted slowly awakens with no memory of his former life-or of Mike-their easy shorthand of nicknames and shared dreams vanishes. What remains is a fragile stranger in his friend’s body, and a guilt Mike cannot outrun.
A Small Memory is a quiet, emotionally resonant novel about friendship tested by trauma, the burden of responsibility, and the long work of forgiveness. For readers who believe the deepest love stories are sometimes about friends, it asks: Who are we when the past is gone-and who will we be if it returns?
