Blog Archives
The Stonecaster
The Stonecaster, by Dillon W. Buck, is a modern parable about James, a sensitive boy who receives a mysterious stone that changes color according to the state of his heart. Through childhood wounds, college temptation, heartbreak, work, leadership, marriage, grief, faith, and entrepreneurship, James learns that life is shaped less by what happens to him than by the quality of his response. The stone becomes less a magical object than a mirror, teaching him that every choice sends ripples outward.
I appreciated how the book uses a simple allegorical device without letting it become merely decorative. The color-changing stone could have felt too tidy, but Buck gives it emotional utility: blue for peace, red for misalignment, gold for purpose. It becomes a private weather system, a way for James to notice what he is carrying before he releases it into the world. I was especially drawn to the early chapters, where James’s pain as a misunderstood child is rendered with enough tenderness to keep the lesson from feeling sermonized. The book is at its strongest when it lets discomfort sit on the page before translating it into wisdom.
What also stayed with me was the book’s insistence that growth is not a single luminous breakthrough, but a repeated return. James fails, forgets, chases the wrong things, confuses intensity with love, and mistakes validation for worth. That gave the story some necessary grain. I found the later sections more openly instructional, and at times the parable edges close to motivational speech, but its sincerity carries it through. The most affecting movement is James’s shift from striving for worth to living from it. That idea gives the book its spine, and it turns the final chapters into something calmer than triumph: a kind of earned stillness.
Readers who enjoy inspirational fiction, personal growth books, leadership parables, faith-based self-help, and coming-of-age stories will find The Stonecaster inviting and useful. It belongs beside books like Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist or Andy Andrews’s work, though Buck’s focus is less on destiny as a far horizon and more on the daily discipline of response. This is a book for readers who want a story that behaves like a compass, gently but persistently turning them back toward intention. The Stonecaster reminds us that the life we build begins with the ripple we choose to send.
Pages: 119 | ASIN : B0H1N8BWDL
Nebraska Avenue
Nebraska Avenue follows Vinny Perino, a Brooklyn boy newly transplanted to North Bay Shore, Long Island, during the bicentennial summer of 1976. Lonely, uncertain, and out of step with suburban rhythms, Vinny finds his way into a circle of paperboys, Artie, Wally, Franco, Lenny, Curtis, and Gabby, whose days revolve around Newsday routes, baseball, fireworks, neighborhood codes, and the small but momentous dramas of being thirteen or fourteen. What begins as a story about a new kid learning how to belong becomes a warm, funny coming-of-age tale about friendship, nerve, loyalty, and the strange civic order of childhood.
I was quickly won over by the book’s comic patience. Author Vincent Rubino doesn’t rush past the details; he lingers over milk crates tied to handlebars, grape juice in the fridge, paper shacks, banana-seat bikes, pink suburban houses, and the private laws that govern kid society. That accumulation gives the novel its charm. The humor has a wonderfully local flavor, often built from banter, mock-serious debates, and the ornate logic of boys who think they are businessmen because they collect newspaper money on Saturdays. I especially enjoyed how the novel treats childhood not as a soft-focus postcard but as a bustling republic with its own economy, rituals, grudges, and heroic nonsense.
What surprised me most was how much feeling Rubino draws from ordinary adventures. The book is nostalgic, certainly, but not embalmed in nostalgia. Vinny’s homesickness gives the story a tender undertow, while the friendship that forms around him feels earned rather than preordained. Artie’s quick mouth, Wally’s steadiness, Gabby’s sharp presence, and Mr. Raviola’s role as both boss and neighborhood fixture give the story a generous ensemble feel. By the time the plot turns toward burglaries, suspicion, and a paperboy-led scheme to clear Mr. Raviola’s name, the stakes feel just right: large enough to matter deeply to the kids, small enough to remain true to the world they inhabit.
I think the book is ideal for readers who enjoy coming-of-age fiction, historical fiction, humor, and middle-class suburban Americana. Readers who liked the boyhood camaraderie of Stephen King’s The Body, though with far more sunshine, mischief, and neighborhood comedy than dread, will find a similar affection for the fierce, temporary kingdoms children build together. Nebraska Avenue is a funny and bighearted ride through a vanished summer, where a newspaper route can become a map to courage, friendship, and home.
Pages: 246 | ASIN: B0H1YRFHFH
How the Winterlilies Grow
How the Winterlilies Grow follows Aradella, a young woman desperate to save her mother from the deadly Aurora Veins, as she is pulled from her ordinary life of candles and marketplace worries into a kingdom-shaking quest for the legendary winterlily. What begins as a search for a healing flower widens into a journey through dwarven bargains, goblin negotiations, sea voyages, hidden gardens, spiritual testing, and open rebellion against King Draven’s cruel rule.
I was most drawn to the way the book treats courage as something trembling rather than polished. Aradella is not a fearless heroine carved from marble; she is anxious, stubborn, tender, and often overwhelmed. That makes her growth feel earned. Her search for the winterlily becomes more than a plot device. It becomes a crucible where grief, faith, control, and surrender all meet. The story’s Christian elements are direct and unmistakable, but they work best when woven into Aradella’s fear of losing her mother and her slow realization that she cannot carry the whole world by herself.
The novel also has an appealing classic fantasy feel. There are dwarves, goblins, sirens, magical weapons, winter-bound towns, royal decrees, secret histories, and a climactic ball that turns into something far more dangerous than ceremony. The story’s abundance makes the pacing feel crowded, and some scenes pause to explain feelings that the action already suggests. Still, I found the sincerity of the book hard to dismiss. Its best moments have a lantern-lit quality: warm, earnest, and bright against snow.
I think this book is best suited for readers who enjoy Christian fantasy, young adult fantasy, adventure, fairy-tale quests, and faith-based coming-of-age stories. Fans of C. S. Lewis’s moral clarity and Gail Carson Levine’s enchanted-kingdom sensibility may find familiar pleasures here, though this story leans more openly into devotional reflection. How the Winterlilies Grow is a snowy quest about healing, but its deeper bloom is trust. A tender fantasy where faith flowers in the coldest places.
Pages: 338 | ASIN : B0GX2Y96BD
I Want Readers To Have Fun With It
Back to the Beach follows a young gay man shaped by childhood longing, family tensions, and betrayal, as he leaves Queensland’s Sunshine Coast for Sydney in 1981 and searches for freedom, identity, and belonging. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The inspiration for Back to the Beach was to draw from my own experiences when faced with homophobia and prejudice growing up in the 1970s. Exploring these themes within a fictionalised setting, I hoped, would allow readers to identify with the characters and the obstacles they face in the novel. Similarly, the search for freedom, identity, and belonging is a universal challenge that everyone is confronted with at some point in their lives, regardless of their sexuality. These are central themes of the novel.
Previously, I had written murder mysteries. In Back to the Beach, I wanted to write a character-driven story that resonates with readers and sometimes challenges their preconceptions. Ultimately, though, I want readers to have fun with it and enjoy the nostalgia and the world I tried to recreate. Humour is used as a contrast to the darker themes of the book, as it does in life.
How did you approach balancing Tim’s personal coming-of-age journey with the broader social history of queer life in Australia?
Although Back to the Beach is written in multiple points of view, Tim’s story centres the narrative. Homophobia was institutionalised in Australian society during the 1970s, and this only gradually improved in the 1980s. Tim’s coming-of-age storyline offers an insight into the prejudice of the period and the challenges anyone seen as ‘different’ faced. My intention was to portray this world in an authentic and accessible way by exploring the isolation and alienation that many people experienced growing up.
I undertook extensive research to get the social and cultural references correct in the novel. In terms of the broader social history of queer life in Australia, I supplemented my research with enquiries to AQUA (Australian Queer Archives), who were extremely generous with their time. Writing a historical novel is challenging at the best of times, but especially when it is set in a time period that is within living memory. You have to get the details right; otherwise, the risk is that any errors can distract the reader from the story.
Back to the Beach offers a snapshot of Australian society during the 70s and 80s. It is also a poignant look back at the Sydney gay scene, just before the devastating impact of AIDS, when everything irrevocably changed.
The novel is candid about desire, shame, sex, and self-discovery. What felt most important to get right when writing those scenes?
Given that Back to the Beach is aimed at an LGBTIQA+ readership, I wished to explore all these themes in a realistic and unfiltered way. The reader demographic has to be resilient, in terms of the challenges they face as a community, and I believe they are looking for this in their fiction.
Although the novel tackles serious issues, readers should find the novel uplifting. Tim’s often difficult road to self-discovery shows how many of us have to reevaluate our inherited prejudices and preconceptions to make sense of the world. Tim’s journey portrays this as challenging, yet worthwhile, in order to be himself and have a happy and fulfilling life. Tim’s youthful optimism prevails, even though at times, he is miserable. The book’s message is that no matter how bad things may seem, things will get better.
My approach to the sex scenes in the novel was unflinching. Sex is part of life, and especially in terms of the gay sex portrayed, I believe the target demographic of the book demands honesty and a candid approach. I also felt it was important to approach the foibles and desires of each character without judgement or censorship.
Olivia and Sylvia’s chapters widen the story beyond Tim’s experience. Why was it important for you to include their perspectives?
In writing Back to the Beach, I felt the secondary point of view characters added that sense of realism I was striving for in the novel. It is quite layered, especially considering the two timelines in which the narrative unfolds. The secondary characters, in how they respond to the changes in society in the 70s and 80s, show how the cultural shifts of the times play out. The role of women, for example, was undergoing a dramatic shift during these decades. Olivia challenges the traditional role that was assigned to women. Similarly, Sylvia, a far more conservative character than Olivia, is unafraid to stand up for herself. Many of the test readers cited Sylvia as their favourite character in the book, and she is a nod to the many strong women I knew growing up.
Each of the point-of-view characters assists in propelling the narrative along and also provides contrasts in how they see the world and deal with its challenges. These differing perspectives enrich the narrative, which would have been impossible if the novel had been written in the first person.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Instagram
This story is juxtaposed with Tim’s arrival in Sydney in 1981. Now 20, he must learn to navigate the city’s vibrant gay scene, as he dives headlong into everything this big, bad city has to offer. Tim believes he has escaped his past, but life is never that simple. Tim’s adventures offer a compelling snapshot of Sydney’s early 80s gay scene with its bars, saunas and nightclubs, before AIDS changed everything.
BACK TO THE BEACH is a prequel to Alistair Sutton’s The Day Before You Came, which was #13 in The Bookshop Darlinghurst’s top seller list for 2020. If you are looking for a layered, character-driven novel, Back to the Beach, with its attention to detail, quirky characters, and engaging situations, is a must read.
The Fragility of Nature
The Falcon and the Songbird follows a girl coming of age in Texas whose private world is overtaken by the aftermath of Kennedy’s assassination, racial injustice, land greed, and the fight to protect a fragile natural habitat. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I was fifteen and going to school in a small Texas town the day JFK was assassinated. It was the most devastating, shocking, unthinkable thing that had ever happened to me. Like April, I grew up loving nature and animals. At the time, I was not very sensitive to the fragility of nature, and I was also rather indifferent about racial injustice. It was only gradually, and later in life, that these subjects became important to me.
April feels both innocent and perceptive. How did you develop her voice?
I wanted to capture how a girl sees things and people around her as she is growing up. I started writing this novel several decades ago (!) and so I was able to put down my own feelings and memories.
How did you approach writing about the social and political tensions of the early 1960s?
Surprisingly, many people born after around 1970 are unaware, or even ignorant of the social and political upheavals of the 60’s. I wanted to weave this into the story in a way that people could relate to.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
I am too busy at present getting this book “out there” to be thinking about my next book.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website
A rare bird nests exclusively in the Texas Hill Country, and Clay, a sensitive young biologist, is determined to save it from extinction. He gets assistance from April, who finds herself increasingly drawn to him, even though she has long determined that she will never end up like the other adult women around her.
Back to the Beach
Back to the Beach by Alistair Sutton is a queer historical coming-of-age novel about Tim, a young gay man who leaves Queensland’s Sunshine Coast for Sydney in 1981, while the story also looks back at the childhood, family tensions, friendships, and betrayals that shaped him. The book moves between Lorikeet Beach in the 1970s and Sydney’s gay scene in the early 1980s, building a portrait of someone trying to understand desire, shame, freedom, and belonging. It is as much about place as it is about people, with the beach, the city, and the body all becoming parts of Tim’s search for himself.
What I liked most was the way Sutton lets the past and present talk to each other. Tim’s adult life in Sydney feels brighter, louder, and more open, but the childhood chapters give that freedom weight. We see the bullying, the awkward friendships, the longing for Saxon, and the complicated pull of family before we see Tim trying to make a life on Oxford Street. That structure works. It reminds us that becoming yourself is rarely clean. You do not just arrive in a new city and shed the old skin in one piece. Some of it sticks. Some of it has to be scraped off slowly.
The writing is rich in period detail, sometimes almost crowded with it, but I found that part of the book’s charm. The restaurants, bars, surf clubs, clothes, music, and social rituals make the world feel lived in rather than staged. Sutton is also candid about sex, and that frankness will not suit every reader, but it does fit the novel’s larger interest in bodies, power, discovery, and risk. I was especially drawn to the author’s choice to give space to characters beyond Tim, including Olivia and Sylvia. Their chapters widen the story and keep it from becoming a simple escape narrative. Still, I did feel the novel occasionally lingers longer than it needs to, especially when a scene has already made its emotional point. Even then, the excess often feels tied to the book’s appetite for life.
I would recommend Back to the Beach to readers who enjoy LGBTQ+ historical fiction, character-driven coming-of-age stories, and novels that explore gay identity with warmth, humor, and a clear sense of social context. It will especially appeal to readers interested in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s, the pull of chosen family, and the messy courage it takes to leave home without fully knowing what waits on the other side.
Pages: 339 | ASIN: B0GR8PC61J
The Best of Young Athletes
The Sweet Season centers around a group of overlooked girls who are shaped into a softball team led by an aging coach with a stubborn belief in effort. Where did the idea for this novel come from?
As a high school football player who had the great fortune to play on a very successful team, the book began as an ode to all the coaches who spend countless hours coaxing the best out of young athletes. However, early on I realized that while Coach’s character was a critical component, the story needed to be told from the point of view of the players and I elected to go with teenage girls since they often must confront life’s many challenges, both on and off the field, much earlier than teenage boys. Similarly, I decided to build the story around a softball team, not only because girls are more commonly engaged in this sport but also because it’s a very strategic game that requires its players to make many critical decisions on an inning-by-inning, game-by-game, basis. So, I crafted a disparate group of overlooked girls who, with the aid of their aged coach, find not only themselves and each other but also something none of them ever expected—they become a team, an entity separate and apart from their individual selves, an entity that accomplishes more than any of them ever dreamed possible.
How does sports fiction allow you to explore character in ways that other genres might not?
When you show up for a team sport, you’re immediately confronted with issues and problems that can often be ignored in everyday life. Suddenly, your effort and dedication matter. If you don’t give it your best, then it’s not just you that suffers—all of your teammates will suffer as well. Each member of any team needs to put in considerable time and effort, not only to improve their own skills but also to find the best way to help their teammates improve their skills. In the Sweet Season, I explore this dynamic through characters like Jessee, an exceptional athlete who learns that helping her teammates is far more productive than criticizing them; and Fee, an exceptional student who learns that despite her lack of athleticism, there are ways she can help the team succeed; and Bebe, a dedicated member of a very conservative church who learns that leading by example is far more productive than imploring others to see the world through the same religious lens that she does.
Cat becomes the emotional center of the story. When did you realize how important she would be to the novel?
I live in a town with a large immigrant community from Somalia and I once attended a lecture from a member of that community who described his incredible overland march from his burned-out village to a refugee camp and ultimately to America. Although I had initially conceived the Cat character as an outsider, casting her as an immigrant who practices a religion utterly foreign to most girls who have grown up in a small midwestern town allowed me to delve even deeper into prejudices built around race, religion and culture, all of which evaporate when the evil you don’t know becomes the person you do know. Cat’s courageous ability to overcome the crippling adversities that her family endured, as well as her own fears, becomes the lodestar that ultimately unites her teammates.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
My first book, Morocco, A Remembrance of Childhood, Colonialism and the Cold War, is a memoir covering my early childhood years growing up as the son of a U.S. Navy officer and airplane pilot in a very foreign country, while The Sweet Season is centered on adolescence. Logically, my next book should focus on my adult years working as a corporate lawyer. However, I’m not John Grisham and I apparently lack the creativity to extract an interesting story from that time of my life. Instead, I’m currently crafting a novel centered on a widowed writer living alone in a small town in Northern Michigan who bumps into a middle-aged woman who shows far more interest in him than would appear warranted. Following this chance encounter, their budding relationship is disrupted by a murder that jeopardizes both of their futures. On the way to its surprising conclusion, the book will delve deeply into the small town’s historical past and the many ways in which this past has colored the lives of the man and woman at the narrative’s center. Just your average historical novel, mystery story, and court room drama, focused on an unlikely relationship that may or may not blossom. My target date for publishing is sometime during the summer of 2027.
Author Links: Amazon | Website
A chance meeting between a crabby old man, rehabbing a dilapidated Victorian mansion in an impoverished midwestern town, and five disparate teen girls pessimistically seeking contributions to support the summer softball team they have, for various reasons, been “sentenced” to join, ultimately alters the course of all their lives.
More than a sports story, more than a coming-of-age story, The Sweet Season is an inspirational exploration of the journey we all take from childhood to adulthood; as well as a thought-provoking exploration of the critical pathways we either choose or reject along the way.
Inspired the Same Love of Reading
Journey to Nirisia follows a quiet fourteen-year-old girl whose summer job quickly turns into a journey to a magical world. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
My passion and drive comes from the desire to place compelling books in the hands of an Upper Middle-Grade audience. I write stories that challenge and engage young readers while honoring their intelligence and curiosity. My aim is to inspire the same love of reading that shaped my own childhood.
Many readers will recognize Emma’s anxiety and uncertainty. How did you approach writing those aspects of her character?
Everyone experiences anxiety and uncertainty at some point in life, especially during the teenage years. My stories feature characters who are imperfect—and who are not expected to be anything else. Through their journeys, I hope readers recognize just how awkward, challenging, and complicated life can be. More importantly, I want them to understand that it is perfectly fine to be different, to have fears, and to experience emotions that take time and courage to navigate.
Were there scenes or characters that surprised you while writing the book?
Great question. Truthfully, my answer is no. I knew exactly who I wanted each character to be from the start. Emma, the introvert, is wonderfully flawed, and I wanted her journey to begin that way—filled with doubt, insecurity, and moments of indecision. After all, regardless of age, we all experience these feelings from time to time.
If my writing can make readers think, ‘that’s exactly how I feel,’ then I’ve accomplished my goal. My hope is that my audience sees themselves in these characters and realize they are not alone in their struggles, fears, or uncertainties.
Can you give us a glimpse inside the next installment of this series? Where will it take readers?
I would love to tell you about The Library Between Worlds: The House That Lies. If you love mysteries, this one is for you.
The story summary is: Dunhallow is cursed. Its residents are vanishing without a trace, and though all believe that Ashford House is the cause, none have lived to prove it.
But when Emma, Faylen, and Cedar find themselves in this spooky town, they set out to be the first ones to return with answers. And when someone close to them goes missing, waiting is no longer an option. They must uncover the dark secret hiding behind Ashford House’s walls—or sealed away in its basement.
Can the trio solve the mystery that an entire town cannot, before Ashford House claims them too?
Author Links: Amazon | Website
5 Star review / Emily-Jane Hills Orford for Reader’s Favorite*
Emma has always preferred the company of books over people. She believed in the magic within their pages, never suspecting the worlds they held truly existed. Now she is about to discover just how real those worlds are.
A dark force known as Eraser is ravaging countless realms, destroying their stories one by one. With each tale he consumes, he moves closer to unraveling reality itself.
To stop him, Emma must find the Wizard’s Crystal, a magical prison powerful enough to contain him. If she fails, every world ever written could vanish, leaving no stories left to save.
