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Where The Pecan Trees Grow
Where The Pecan Trees Grow, by Thomas Gates, follows Miguel, a Mexican father who leaves his drought-stricken home in Michoacán to cross the border and search for work in the United States. His journey is dangerous and exhausting, filled with tense nights in the desert, smugglers who mix threat with necessity, and close calls with patrols. Eventually, he finds work on a pecan farm in California, where the quiet rhythm of trees and soil gives him a fragile sense of hope. The story moves between struggle and calm, fear and stubborn faith. It is about survival, family, and the long, slow work of building a life from almost nothing. It is also about promise, the kind that sits heavily on the heart.
I found myself swept up in the raw honesty of the story. The writing feels simple in the best way. It opens a clear window into Miguel’s thoughts and fears. I kept pausing when the story talked about soil or trees. Something in those passages felt grounding. I could feel the heat from the fields, smell the dust, and hear the quiet talk between workers. The tense scenes, like the border chase and the near discovery in the truck, hit hard. They left me holding my breath and maybe gripping the page a little too tight. The gentle moments hit just as hard. The letters Miguel writes but cannot send, his quiet walks through the rows at night, and the way he treats the orchard like something alive and listening. These parts warmed me more than I expected.
There were moments when the book made me ache a little. The prejudice he meets in town feels eerily familiar. Still, the story never falls into hopelessness. It keeps lifting itself up, often because of the farm, the trees, and the quiet steadiness of Big Jim. I liked how the book painted Jim as tough but fair. No speeches. No miracles. Just a man who sees effort and decides it is worth backing. The pacing surprised me at times. Some chapters rush with danger while others slow into a gentle hum. I liked that. Life isn’t even. It jumps and stumbles, and the story captures that feeling well.
By the end, I felt proud of Miguel in this strange way, like I had watched him build himself again layer by layer. I would recommend Where The Pecan Trees Grow to readers who enjoy character-driven stories, especially ones rooted in real emotional stakes. Anyone who likes tales about migration, perseverance, and the quiet strength of ordinary people will find something meaningful here. It is a great choice for book clubs, too. There is a lot to talk about, and even more to feel.
Pages: 163 | ASIN : B0G5M3CDRX
Fulfilling Relationships
Moving Maggie follows a sixty-year-old woman going through a divorce, losing her job, and having to move all at once, who tries to build a new life in a new town and rediscover herself. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I’ve been doing a lot of book signings since Reinventing Rita, my first Midlife Moxie novel, came out in 2023, and I have had the most fascinating conversations with women 50 and older. They tell me about their lives—the good parts and the bad—and the challenges they have had to overcome. So I’m sure that some of the characters in Moving Maggie came out of those interactions.
As for the inciting event, well, while I have never had to move from my home, I have had relationships end unexpectedly and career choices that didn’t quite go the way I anticipated. That meant I had to discard the idea I had formed of what the next 10 or 20 years were going to look like and come up with a new vision and goal.
Being a planner and a bit of a control freak like Maggie, those early stages of transition and reinvention weren’t very much fun! But looking back, I see that it all turned out for the best and gave me an opportunity to develop new skills and strengths—just like Maggie.
Maggie is a fascinating character with a lot of depth. What scene was the most interesting to write for that character?
I think it was Chapter 26, when Maggie and the teenage girl, Janna, have a verbal altercation. Until that point, the two of them had a good relationship, which, given Maggie’s childless state, was unusual for her. But when Janna expressed her frustration after the hospital refused to consider her as a kidney donor for her brother, Maggie responded in “hospital administrator speak.” That generated an angry retort from the young girl that surprised and dismayed Maggie, who had prided herself on knowing how to handle problems in the work environment.
Maggie’s sense of guilt that she had failed to give the right response made her think of other times in her past when she didn’t recognize what the other person needed from her but was instead “all business.” It’s one of the times in the story when she begins to understand that she had to develop a sense of empathy if she wanted to have fulfilling relationships with other people.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Always central to the Midlife Moxie novel series is the idea that we are stronger than we think and that we can handle the changes that come unexpectedly—regardless of our age or perhaps, because of our age, and the wisdom and experience we have gained through the years. And also, that reinvention is not something to be avoided or rejected but is instead a positive activity that can open new doors.
A theme specific to this book is the willingness to be vulnerable and take risks, personally and professionally. As Maggie gradually opened her heart to those around her, she saw that her self-protectiveness had isolated her in the past and resulted in a lonely existence. By allowing herself to care about those she met, even at the risk of being hurt or rejected, she realized her life was becoming much more fulfilling.
And when she found herself taking on responsibilities at her new job (that itself came with no small learning curve), she recognized that making mistakes is part of the process and there is no shame in doing something wrong the first time, if subsequently she did it right.
A second theme is the importance of learning from past missteps and bad choices. Maggie was very driven when it came to her life, and her primary commitment was to her career and professional future. While initially it worked out to her benefit, her tendency to ignore warning signs that developed over time, both at work and at home, ultimately resulted in the end of her marriage and the loss of her job. Now she not only had to create a new future but also make time in her life for other people and experiences without repeating those same errors in judgment and negative tendencies.
I hope the series continues in other books. If so, where will the story take readers?
Because each novel in the Midlife Moxie novel series is a standalone, I will have to leave it to the reader’s imagination to envision what happens next to Maggie and the rest of the Eden community!
However, Maggie’s boss, Sheila Jones, also appears in With Any Luck—one of the stories that’s part of my short story collection, The Language of Love, which was also released in 2025. Sheila handled the sale of a home in Eden to Amy, a newcomer to the town, and, in true Sheila fashion, provides more than just a real estate service.
I hadn’t originally planned for that to happen, but as I was writing that short story, I needed to have someone who would arrange the house sale. I liked the character of Sheila from Moving Maggie so much that I couldn’t help making her part of it!
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The year Maggie Cartwright turned 60, she is hit with a triple whammy of unpleasant and definitely unwanted events: the loss of her job, the ending of her marriage, and the need to find a new place to live. The impact of all these undesirable occurrences is that the woman once known as “Move-Ahead Maggie” has lost her moxie and can’t figure out where she can go or what she can do with the rest of her life.
Maggie’s move to a small rural community sparks a series of unexpected opportunities and new friendships, and she realizes that making a life change can bring unexpected benefits. But as she begins to reclaim her “Move-Ahead Maggie” identity, can she let go of her career-driven focus to take advantage of them?
MOVING MAGGIE is a double winner in the 2025 Firebird Book Awards Competition: Summer Beach Read and Women’s Fiction categories!
Stolen Diary
Stolen Diary follows Jasmin, a gifted young girl raised in a tightly controlled world shaped by family secrets, emotional distance, and the heavy weight of expectations. As she uncovers the truth behind her mother’s mysterious diary, Jasmin begins a long journey of self-discovery that stretches across Mexico, the United States, and Canada. The story blends coming-of-age tension with gentle mystery. It frames the inner life of a brilliant child who wants love, clarity, and a sense of place.
I found myself pulled in by the writing. The sentences feel smooth, simple, and clear. The author lets the scenes breathe, and I could feel Jasmin’s loneliness and her fierce desire to understand the world. Some moments hit me hard. The quiet pain in the family home, the mix of fear and longing, the strange way adults try to protect kids while also hurting them. I felt frustrated for her sometimes. I also felt proud when she found her own footing. The slower parts gave me time to sit with her thoughts, and that made the story feel honest.
The ideas in the book stayed with me. The balance between intellect and emotion. The pressure placed on children who shine in ways adults do not understand. The way trauma hides inside ordinary routines. I liked how the author handled these themes with gentle hands. Nothing felt forced. Sometimes I wanted sharper edges or more confrontation, yet the softer tone works for Jasmin’s world. It made the big emotional moments land with more force. I kept thinking about how families try hard yet still end up wounding each other.
I would recommend Stolen Diary to readers who enjoy intimate stories about growing up, especially those who like character-driven novels set against rich cultural backgrounds. It is a good fit for people who appreciate slow-building emotional journeys and mysteries that unfold quietly rather than loudly. If you want a thoughtful, heartfelt read that lingers in your mind, this book should suit you well.
Pages: 334 | ASIN : B0BSHFRD11
True Change
Common Sense & Other Tales of Disillusionment is a collection of short stories that peels back the layers of ordinary life to reveal the people who are breaking down under the weight of their own choices & circumstances. What was the inspiration for this collection of stories?
Coming off writing my book before this one, BE NOT AFRAID, I’d had the desire to work in a shorter form. BE NOT AFRAID was an incredibly taxing, and thorough, and ambitious project. So, I knew fairly soon after that I wanted to produce a collection. Originally, I’d only wanted to do four stories, but my mother convinced me to do a fifth (lol).
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Well, right off the bat, disillusionment was the overall compass for each story. When I began writing the collection, I was experiencing a good deal of it in my personal life and wanted to explore characters entering into their own bouts of disillusionment, where they always believed life would go one way but, instead, was going another, and not for the better, and, try as they may, they only seem to make it worse. I’m one of those readers who does not read to escape but reads to see the world reflected, the more brutally honest, the more I’ll enjoy it. So, naturally, that’s what I write 🙂
Was it important for you to deliver a moral to readers, or was it circumstantial to deliver an effective book?
Everything I write begins as a premise argument, usually around a unique belief I have of the world. For instance, one might look like this: People are incapable of true change vs People are capable of true change. And I will design characters to embody behaviors and decisions for both sides of that argument, so the story is a compelling one. In the first short story of the collection, “DRIVE YOU TO VIOLENCE,” the premise argument was–Family will drive you to violence vs Family will drive you to compassion. Characters dance on both sides of that premise 🙂
What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?
At the moment, I’m nearing completion of a Fargo-esque crime novel, which I plan to serialize on my substack in the coming months. The working title, which is totally subject to change, currently is THE FIRE YOU’RE DRAWN TO.
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A mother’s patience turns to quiet rage as family secrets unravel.
A filmmaker loses his grip on reality while chasing his masterpiece.
In a near future where machines mimic emotion, humanity itself begins to fracture.
And in the haunting remains of a lost documentary, a vanished man’s voice echoes long after he’s gone.
Each story in AJ Saxsma’s acclaimed collection is a slow descent into disillusionment—where hope flickers, truth corrodes, and the familiar becomes unrecognizable. With a masterful blend of literary fiction, dark realism, and quiet horror, Saxsma confronts what it means to live honestly in a world built on denial.
Fans of Shirley Jackson, Raymond Carver, and Flannery O’Connor will find themselves captivated by Saxsma’s unnerving portraits of love, loss, and human fragility. If you crave stories that unsettle as much as they illuminate, Common Sense & Other Tales of Disillusionment will stay with you long after the final page.
The Night of the Animals
The Night of the Animals, by J.J. Pascal, follows René Navarro through a series of winding, strange, and often grim encounters after his mother’s death. The story begins with a bitter family truce and moves through bars, dusty basements, cramped apartments, and funeral parlors as René becomes entangled with a man named Pascal, a theater troupe, and an elusive family “treasure.” The narrative jumps between present action and memories, mingling bleak humor, oddball side characters, and moments of quiet despair. Death hovers everywhere, sometimes literally, sometimes just the decay of lives gone stale, and yet there’s always a sense that René is searching for something to give all of it meaning.
I found the writing to be wonderfully vivid and strange, the sort that can make a chipped coffee mug or a hole in the wall feel like a portal. Pascal doesn’t shy away from disturbing images or awkward moments, and I liked that honesty. There’s a dark comic undercurrent that kept me turning pages, bits of absurdity dropped into the middle of grief or poverty. At times, the style felt almost claustrophobic, piling sensory detail on top of emotional weight until I felt just as trapped as the characters. That density could be exhausting, but it also fit the mood perfectly.
Beneath all the odd errands and shifting conversations, there’s a constant pull toward identity. How much of who we are is built from family history, and how much is just chance? The book plays with doubles, echoes, and repetitions, as if lives can overlap without ever quite touching. Some moments hit hard: the little observations about aging, fear, and small cruelties landed more heavily than the plot twists. Other times, I wished the story would move faster, but I can’t deny that the slower pace gave room for its unique textures to sink in.
I’d recommend The Night of the Animals to readers who enjoy literary fiction that leans into the strange and the melancholy. If you like stories where humor and sadness share the same breath, where objects hold memories, and where characters feel like they’ve been living long before the first page, this one will reward your patience. It’s not a light read, but it’s the sort that stays with you, gnawing at the edges of your thoughts.
Pages: 129 | ASIN : B0F4Z78QXP
Inside Their Restricted Worlds
Night Hawks follows the lives of small-town drifters, dreamers, and the disillusioned who are all looking for something more, be that a fresh start, an escape, or just some understanding. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The inspiration came to me from Edward Hopper’s famous 1942 painting Nighthawks. I always admired that painting and how it reveals a late-night café frequented by lonely souls. That’s what I always saw in it, anyway. The painting sparked an idea for a first chapter titled “The Last Train to Chicago,” which as a story, won a fiction contest award from The Vincent Brothers Review.
That first chapter ended with Hank appearing to lose his longtime server, Lois, and so I decided to write another chapter exploring where Lois went and what happened and once I felt it was becoming a book, I needed a couple more good characters to drop into the fishbowl already inhabited by Hank and Lois, and I put the four of them on constant collision courses.
Was there anything from your own life that you put into the characters in your novel?
I don’t think so. Both Hank and Tyler are military veterans and I’m not. I don’t believe any of the four main characters are based on anyone I know now or from the past. For each of the four characters, I first established their names, and from the names I got a starting point for building them into people. I worked, too, off their occupations: Hank as a diner owner and cook, Lois as a veteran server, Clara as a young server still living at home, and Tyler, a jittery veteran just home from Afghanistan.
So, when I started putting flesh on each one, I began with knowing their name and job and my imagination assembled them, and then with each new chapter, I learned more about them and how they would react. For me, writing is a daily process of discovery like it is for readers. I don’t do character arcs before I start writing. I want the daily surprise that comes day as I know the characters better and hear their voice and understand their desires and conflicts.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Family is perhaps the most important – and obvious – theme in Night Hawks. But not the usual concept of family. The four people in the book whose paths and lives are so intertwined, don’t really have traditional families anymore and so their journeys require them to bond and become their own little family. There are lots of people whose lives have become small and desperate, and they look to the people inside their restricted worlds to be family members.
Perhaps enduring and persevering are themes, too. Hank, Lois, Tyler, and Clara must all maintain hope for something better. They don’t have a lot to work with but must keep fighting to have satisfactory lives.
What is the next book that you are working on and when can your fans expect it to be out?
I am nearly done writing the draft of a novel titled The Gatsby Lover. It has a connection to The Great Gatsby, but I’ll keep that close to the vest for now. After I let it sit a few days and then make revisions, it goes over to my longtime personal editor, Carol Burbank, for her always useful reactions. Fingers crossed it finds a good publisher!
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Hank Spencer knows what goes on in his diner. He knows which days are best for business and whether the Blue Plate special is selling, and he makes note of the customers who come to drink and make small talk with his servers.
Lois is a hardworking waitress pushing fifty who hasn’t forgotten her big city dreams. When opportunity presents itself, she boards the train for Chicago, despite the risks and her boss’s attempts to warn her.
Working all the double shifts in the world won’t take care of Clara’s problem. She’s young, single, and knocked up. She feels trapped—at the diner, living with her god-fearing parents, and in the gossipy town full of watchful eyes.
Tyler is adjusting to civilian life after a stint in the army. At Hank’s Diner, he finds camaraderie and comfort, and sometimes, he can drown out visions of war over a plate of potatoes and meatloaf, and several, ice-cold beers.
These lonely souls converge under the fluorescent glow of the eatery, late at night and during long days, as the train speeds through, blaring its horn and signaling an alternate path. NIGHT HAWKS is a tender novella with a touch of noir about finding family in unlikely places, living through losses, and the connections that keep us showing up for another shift.
Night Hawks
Michael Loyd Gray’s Night Hawks is a gritty, heartfelt novella that weaves together the lives of small-town drifters, dreamers, and the disillusioned. Told through interlinked short stories, the book captures the quiet struggles of characters who are yearning for something more—a fresh start, an escape, or just a little understanding. From the weary cook Hank Spencer to the hopeful but battered Lois, and the haunted veteran Tyler, each chapter peels back another layer of the town’s people, their regrets, and the fragile hope that still lingers in them.
What struck me most about Gray’s writing is its stark simplicity. He doesn’t waste words. Every line feels intentional, every conversation rings with unspoken truths. Take the scene in The Last Train to Chicago, where Lois and Hundley sit in a small-town diner, the weight of their decisions hanging between them like cigarette smoke. You can almost hear the loneliness in the clink of coffee cups and the hum of a jukebox playing old country songs. The writing doesn’t spell things out, it lets the silence do the talking. And that’s the kind of storytelling that hits me hard.
The book’s emotional depth really comes through in Objects in Mirror, where Tyler, a soldier trying to leave Afghanistan behind, takes a construction job demolishing an abandoned building only to realize he’s also tearing down pieces of his own past. Gray does an incredible job of showing the slow, painful process of healing without dramatizing it. The imagery here is unforgettable: the dust rising from broken bricks, the sweat, the ache in Tyler’s arms are all mirroring his internal battle.
Lois’s story arc was the most gripping for me. She leaves town with high hopes, chasing a better life in Chicago, only to be let down in the worst way. Her return in Wrong Turn is almost too painful to watch. When she knocks on Hank’s door, ashamed and exhausted, you feel the weight of every bad decision she’s ever made. But it’s Hank’s quiet understanding that makes this scene so powerful. He doesn’t lecture her. He doesn’t judge. He just lets her in. And sometimes, that’s all someone needs. While the book’s strength lies in its subdued, character-driven storytelling, there are instances, like in The Off Ramp to Nowhere, where I think the internal monologues could be tightened to maintain narrative momentum.
Gray doesn’t offer easy answers, and that’s what makes Night Hawks so compelling. It’s a book about real people making real mistakes, but it also offers moments of grace and redemption. The prose is unpretentious but deeply evocative, making it a perfect read for those who appreciate character-driven stories with a raw, honest edge. If you liked Kent Haruf’s Plainsong or Raymond Carver’s short stories, this one will stick with you.
Pages: 111 | ASIN : B0DKVGTZ21
Unspoken truths
A Little Something to Hide is a series of short stories following the passengers of the Briscola Coach Service, traveling from San Francisco to Albuquerque. What was the inspiration for the original and fascinating idea at the center of the book?
Many years ago, in a time before ‘pandemic’ had entered the common lexicon, I attended a concert in Oxford with my wife and some friends to see Wildwood Kin, a British folk-rock trio famed for their glorious harmonies. The support act that evening, a duo called Ferris & Sylvester, equally blessed with talent, sang their song, ‘Burning River,’ conjuring in me the image of a distant place. I found the muse powerful in the music and my mind began to wander. The seeds for A Little Something to Hide were planted somewhere during the four or so minutes of that song, with the book beginning its life with a working title of Nearing Albuquerque. From the outset, I envisaged an omniscient narrative perspective, giving the narrator the ability to express each character’s darkest secrets. It was a speculative notion that gnawed at me, with characters popping into my head with their stories loosely formed. The dog and I went for walks and held one-sided conversations about what might unfold and the book started to take shape. I’m so glad I listened to her.
What are some things that you find interesting about the human condition that you think make for great fiction?
There is so much about popular culture today that obsesses about celebrity. Any number of shows delve into the lives of others, providing glimpses of their lifestyles and their motivations, which often manifest as an overwhelming desire for fame and recognition. What frustrates me about these shows is the vacuity of the central characters. I’m not remotely convinced that the façade that they present on screen is a true representation of who they really are, and if it is, they rarely demonstrate any great depth of personality – beyond the make-up and the trappings of consumerism, there’s not a lot that’s redeeming.
I am much more interested in ‘real’ people, those who are not defined by their celebrity, but by their very real existence. The struggles that they face, their unspoken truths, the secrets that they hide – those things are of far more interest to me and why, in A Little Something To Hide, I wanted to explore those who live amongst us and largely go unnoticed, to illustrate that ordinary people often lead extraordinary lives.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
I didn’t consciously set out to explore any themes in the book, and those that appear, are a fortuitous coincidence. In developing each character, certain themes emerged. It wasn’t so much that I adopted them, more that I clung to their coattails, attempting to stay faithful to what unfolded. If there’s one that I think that pervades the novel, it’s that of perseverance; the desire to pursue that which a character most wants. Whilst many of the characters in A Little Something To Hide demonstrated phenomenal determination, others did not, demonstrating a complete lack of resilience. It was this dichotomy that I most enjoyed discovering.
I also enjoyed exploring that which gets left unsaid. The book is jammed with characters who choose not to share too much with the world, and I loved being able to eke their secrets from them as their stories unfurled.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?
I’m really excited about the next book, the first draft of which I began writing in 2003. It’s titled, Dignity and is another book that draws its inspiration from a song, in this case, a 90s song of the same name from a Scottish band, Deacon Blue. The song tells the tale of a bin man who quietly goes about saving his money to buy a boat, with plans to sail to somewhere better than the streets he cleans. I love the premise of the song, again, it’s about a character who is fiercely determined to pursue his dream and is yet another story of an ordinary man with an extraordinary tale – I just had to write it! I’ve moved the location from the gritty streets of Glasgow to the more gentile location of my hometown, Petone, in New Zealand. The story is told through the eyes of a twelve-year-old boy who befriends the protagonist, with more than a token nod to Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man And The Sea. I’m still a couple of drafts away from sharing it and my hope is to have it out by the end of 2026.
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On the Briscola Coach Service to Albuquerque, that’s just not possible.
“All manner of people ride a Briscola coach. Some travel toward dreams, others are escaping horrors, each carries their secrets and the belief that they harbour truths known only to themselves”
Craig Brown’s debut novel, ‘A Little Something To Hide’, takes a peek into the lives of the passengers on the Briscola Coach Service from San Francisco to Albuquerque. Every traveller believes they’re harbouring a secret that none of the world can see. Some secrets are darker than others and none of them are truly hidden.
Climb aboard to learn more and remember, never trust the person you’re next to, no matter how sweet they look.
LITERARY TITAN 