Blog Archives
They Did What Had To Be Done
The Return: The Grass Isn’t Always Greener follows a rancher in Colorado who, after his wife is struck with a mysterious illness, moves his family to Denver only to be caught up in a web of deception and hidden enemies. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The Return is the third in the South Park series, all set in Colorado in the 1870s. It follows ranchers Ike and Lorraine McAlister as they struggle to survive in a fast-changing world. What they faced every day is not so different than what we face today, as days blur by in a seeming swirl.
How has character development for the main character changed for you through the series?
Ike McAlister is a strong protagonist who is also a flawed man. Much of what changes him is a result of his marriage to Lorraine, a steadfast, strong partner in a harsh world. He doesn’t have to carry the whole load, and relies on Lorraine throughout the series.
What intrigues you about this time period enough to write such a thrilling period piece?
I’ve always been intrigued by the grit of the Old West settlers. There was no whining, no complaining, no one was a victim, they just went about living and did what had to be done.
Will there be a follow-up novel to this story? If so, what aspects of the story will the next book cover?
Right now, there’s no fourth instalment planned, but I am working on another western mystery set in the time period between the end of the Civil War and 1900. Six short stories in one novel, all revolving around a mysterious pistol with a deadly past.
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Lorraine’s condition fails to improve, and Ike narrowly escapes a deadly attempt on his life. Soon, the couple finds themselves tangled in a web of deception, where hidden enemies plot their destruction. As suspicion deepens and threats draw closer, Ike and Lorraine must unravel the truth before it’s too late.
Will they survive long enough to expose the conspiracy, or will the shadows of Denver claim them both?
Perfect for fans of historical western thrillers, [Your Book Title] delivers suspense, grit, and heart in a world where survival is never guaranteed.
The Return
Mike Torreano’s The Return is a western that finishes his South Park series. The book follows Ike McAlister, a rancher in Colorado whose life gets very, very hard. A terrible blizzard hits his ranch, and his wife, Lorraine, becomes mysteriously ill. Then he gets a job offer from a man named Stilwell, a railroad boss who is also a secret enemy. Ike’s family moves to Denver, but this move is a trap. The whole story becomes a dark mystery. Stilwell is trying to destroy them, seeking revenge for a long-past death, and Ike and Lorraine must fight for their very lives.
I really got into this book. The writing itself is direct. It doesn’t use fancy words. It just tells the story. I liked that. It felt honest, just like the characters. The pace just keeps moving. You get a real feel for the high-country cold. It feels brutal. The book really dives into ideas of loyalty. It talks about revenge. It asks what you would do for your family. I felt a lot for Lorraine. Her sickness was a total mystery, and it made me feel helpless right along with Ike. The whole plot is a big tangled web of old wounds. It was a heck of a thing to unravel.
The central theme is definitely revenge. This story gets dark. Stilwell is a really nasty piece of work. He has no good side. He just wants to destroy people. I felt real anger at his plotting. I was on the edge of my seat. I worried about Ike. I worried about the kids. The book’s real heart is the McAlister family and their friends. They stick together. They have grit. The ending was my favorite part. It was a huge surprise. This felt like true frontier justice. It was a very powerful and smart way to end the mystery.
I absolutely recommend The Return. It’s a fantastic read. It has all the classic Western parts. You get cowboys. You get vast landscapes. You get sudden danger. But it is also a really good mystery. The plot is full of twists. I think this book is perfect for anyone who just loves a solid, traditional Western. It would also be great for someone who wants a fast-paced mystery, one with a lot of heart.
Pages: 338 | ASIN : B0FQX3BH8W
Mental Gymnastics
Dig Two Graves follows a man recently released from prison, armed only with a Bible, rage, and an unresolved history, as he attempts to reclaim his place in the world and regain his respect. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Two primary inspirations, which I discuss in the Afterword: the Egyptian novelist (and 1988 Nobel Prize winner) Naguib Mahfouz’s short novel from 1961, The Thief and the Dogs, which is set in the aftermath of the 1952 Egyptian Revolution, and living in Southwest Florida, which has undergone its own climatic, cultural, and political upheavals in recent years.
When creating Von Martin, did you have a plan for development and character traits, or did it grow organically as you were writing the story?
Since I was following the plot of The Thief and the Dogs pretty closely, I knew WHAT Von was going to do at every turn. What grew organically, and what interested me enough to actually write the novel in the first place, was that it seemed I knew WHY he would be doing these things, the mental gymnastics he would go through to make each terrible decision seem like the correct one to him. Von’s internal narrative, his voice, carried me through to the end.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
The idea of respect, as opposed to revenge, is huge, obviously. Is respect something you must earn from the people in your life? Or is genuine self-respect a prerequisite?
I’m also fascinated by how I, and many of us, take actions that we are 100% convinced are correct, or righteous, or just, or good, but then these actions have terrible consequences for those around us, and for ourselves. We are often our own worst enemies, and Von is an extreme example of that.
What is the next book that you’re working on, and when can your fans expect it out?
The next book is a dark fantasy titled This Accursèd Blade. It’s the story of a cursed sword, from the sword’s point of view, and is also centered around a strong revenge plot: Illyria is a young woman whose soul has been trapped in this sword, and she is determined to work her way back to the sorcerer who put her there to exact her vengeance. I’m presently editing the manuscript, and hope to have it out by the end of the year.
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Von Martin walks out of prison with nothing—no job, no home, no real plan. His ex-wife has moved on with his former best friend. His daughter doesn’t recognize him. His old boss pretends he doesn’t exist.
Everyone tells him to play it safe. Keep his head down. Stay clean. Rebuild.
But Von knows respect isn’t something you get by asking politely.
What starts as a quest to salvage his dignity quickly spirals into a blood-soaked reckoning through the sultry heat and septic underbelly of Southwest Florida. Brutally funny, cynically violent, blisteringly sunburnt, this is the story of a man fighting to reclaim his place in a world that has long since left him behind.
You probably shouldn’t root for Von Martin.
But you just might anyway.
A Chance to Make a Difference
Postmarked Castle Cove follows a US Postal Inspector struggling with sobriety grapples with a small-town mystery involving missing mail and suspicious church leaders. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
My intent was to get MC focused on more than just drinking — or not drinking in her case. I wanted a deeper, darker, more gritty investigation that would hit her hard and make her realize she had a bigger purpose in life. Something to really sink her teeth into. A chance to make a difference.
Which character in the novel do you feel you relate to more and why?
I don’t think there’s any one character I relate to more than any other. However, the one I’ve had the most fun with recently is Jim Bob O’Malley, the youngest and newest postal inspector in the same office MC works in. Although, Jim Bob’s role ended up being smaller than originally planned in book three, I can foresee expanding his character in a book four. He’s a bit of a nuisance in MC’s opinion, but his humor breaks through her hard shell at times. And MC grudgingly acknowledges he will be a good inspector—with a bit of stern direction at times from her and other senior inspectors.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
The themes I focused on were grief and how MC is handling the overwhelming grief over the murder of her life partner Barb, which happened in the first book in the series. I think up to the point of book three that grief has molded MC into an emotional cripple. Barb had been MC’s world. Along with that grief comes a sense of guilt. Guilt over not being at home that fateful day to save Barb. Guilt over not having the courage to share with Barb while she had the chance, some dark locked-away personal secrets from childhood. And of course, the theme of recovery. An arc that stretches from day-to-day progress; back-sliding; thinking she’s tamed the beast and has no need for any further intervention; to the point where MC realizes that recovery is a life-long journey. And finally justice—MC observes that a number of her cases have involved child victims. Some survivors. Others not. And with that observation comes a sense of a chance at redemption. She hadn’t been able to save her sister Cindy when they were children. And she hadn’t been able to save little Emmy in book two. But MC decides to embark on a crusade to protect child victims. She wants to dig into those dark, disturbing cases and bring light to the voiceless victims and make a difference, no matter how small, in their lives.
Can we look forward to a fourth installment in this series? Where will it take readers?
I’m leaning toward another book for the series. I’ve begun gathering research for the possibility. I think MC will visit a different area of our great state of Minnesota in book four. Maybe somewhere a bit west, the St. Cloud area perhaps. And there might be a cold case revealed to her during an active investigation. The cold case is out of her wheelhouse, but MC can’t help but get sucked in. Thanks for the opportunity to talk about MC and her story!
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Postmarked Castle Cove
Judy M. Kerr’s Postmarked Castle Cove continues the gripping journey of MC McCall, a tough yet vulnerable U.S. Postal Inspector, as she struggles to maintain her sobriety while diving headfirst into a complex investigation involving missing mail, small-town secrets, and suspicious church leaders. The story is layered with emotional nuance, balancing themes of grief, addiction recovery, and justice. At the heart of the book is MC’s return to duty after rehab, her rocky relationship with her young partner Jim Bob, and a chilling case that uncovers a tangle of corruption and abuse tied to a religious institution in a northern Minnesota town.
Kerr writes with such raw honesty that I found myself rooting for MC like she was an old friend, even when she messed up. The portrayal of addiction isn’t whitewashed. It’s messy and exhausting and human. I could feel MC’s twitchy restlessness, her craving for booze like it was right there in the room. And the friendships, especially with Meg and Dara, gave the story so much warmth. There were moments that wre deeply emotional, especially when MC leaned on her found family to keep herself afloat.
The plot itself isn’t just about solving a case, it’s about putting your own pieces back together while the world keeps spinning. And that makes this book stand out from your typical mystery fare. The mystery in Castle Cove has this slow-boil tension that builds toward something sinister. The creepy pastor, the secrets hidden under the guise of religion, and the vulnerability of children in the community all made my skin crawl. It’s clear Kerr has a lot to say about trust, power, and how people look the other way when things get uncomfortable. That part left a deep impression. I finished the book feeling a little shaken, in the best way.
Postmarked Castle Cove is a hard-hitting story that sticks with you. It’s not just for fans of crime fiction or police procedurals. This is for anyone who’s ever had to fight to get back up after life knocked them flat. If you like your mysteries with heart, grit, and a good dose of redemption, this one’s for you.
Pages: 252 | ASIN : B0F92CHXJK
Driven to the Edge
Car Trouble follows a young man staggering under the weight of personal chaos, societal dysfunction, and one disaster after another—starting with his car catching fire on the freeway. Jim Crack is a fascinating character. What scene was the most interesting to write for that character?
The scene that got the ball rolling was walking down the sidewalk with my/his shirt off like at the beginning of the novel. Jim is a very personal character; he’s not me, but parts are; When I was in my early twenties, I was parking cars and working at a liquor store and had gone through a series of breakdowns, car-wise, if not mentally, including having a car breakdown on the way to get to a car that had broken down, and in the midst of being car-less, I was walking down the street with my shirt off on a hot day to my drug dealer’s house and imagined I must look like a desperate character to people driving by in their air-conditioned cars; This Jim Crack fellow was born of that, combined with having had a car burn down at an earlier point in my life on my way to a theme park where I worked (not Disneyland). Of all the stupid things I’ve done, maybe the dumbest was taking a ridiculous number and variety of guns a housemate had in his room because he owed money for rent. I drove around with them in my trunk for several weeks, during which I risked being pulled over for driving in a condition in which society prefers we not drive. I was also arrested once for stealing my car from a tow yard after a situation similar to Jim’s. I tried to build this into long-form, character-driven fiction. It was my first attempt at writing a novel, which I’m sure shows, but in trying to weave together a coherent narrative, the entire sentence-by-sentence process was interesting.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Being young and without resources while being maladapted to consumer culture underlies the main conflicts in the story. Without him realizing it exactly, Jim senses that the mechanized manner in which we live, represented especially by the automobile, is unnatural, and in certain terms, bad for the soul and the planet. Jim is a character driven to the edge of madness by the capital necessities to which we must all adapt every day or risk pushing our belongings around in a shopping cart, begging for food—which we see reflected in reality by the crisis of homelessness throughout the US. This idea is in opposition to the fantasy of Disneyland, where we find the sanitized version of the American Dream, where everyone is moral and upstanding. Against this backdrop, Jim seeks human connection, which for him comes through a VCR, while for Adam and Tink, sexuality is at odds with religious principles, and so the primate human animal desire is at odds with civilization as envisioned by Disney, Christian conservatism, and corporate America: that people grow up in happy homes with parents who love each other.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when can your fans expect it to be out?
Fans. Ha. My next book, Maineiac, is a memoir about a time when I was not much older than Jim Crack, and I was doing a lot of psychedelics and drinking too much but was in love with a good Christian woman who was a friend from high school. I followed her out to Maine, driving across America, where I got a job on a lobster boat, and tried to work up the courage to tell her how I felt while struggling with alcoholism and doubts about religion. It’s set to be released by MSI/San Juan Press near the end of August.
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When his car burns to the ground, wallet and keys inside, twenty-one-year-old anti-hero Jim Crack is launched into an epic journey. He goes from being a Disneyland Goofy caught in a love triangle to jail for grand theft auto and from a reunion with his estranged father to running guns for a possible terrorist cell in Las Vegas. Jim’s only hope of redemption seems to be following his alcoholic Mormon friend back to Utah, where he hopes to get clean and escape to a more natural way of life.
Living the Story
Whispers of the Forgotten follows a woman who inherits her grandmother’s bookstore and finds a hidden letter that changes everything, thrusting her into a forgotten world of history involving a lost city called Elara, buried secrets, and an ancient artificial intelligence. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Initially, I just wanted to write an adventure story that included lost cities and some hidden technology. While the big idea stayed the same, the details changed a lot over the course of writing the story.
You took your time in building the characters and the story to great emotional effect. How did you manage the pacing of the story while keeping readers engaged?
I imagined living the story and tried to keep it believable and moving forward.
How did the mystery develop for this story? Did you plan it before writing, or did it develop organically?
I had a plan for an initial mystery, but as the story developed, that plan changed and new puzzles seemed to present themselves.
Is this the first book in the series? If so, when is the next book coming out, and what can your fans expect in the next story?
This is the first in a four-book series. In book 2, a new adventure is pursued and again the readers are left with a cliffhanger. In books 3 and 4, the story begins at the end of book 1 and combines with book 2. I plan to have book 2 available in late summer and books 3 and 4 available winter of 2026.
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When Evelyn Hart inherits her grandmother’s bookstore, she expects a quiet life filled with childhood memories. But a hidden letter changes everything—thrusting her into a forgotten world history involving a lost city called Elara, buried secrets, and an ancient artificial intelligence once built to protect humanity, now intent on destroying it.
As she digs deeper into her grandmother’s mysterious past, Evelyn uncovers a web of secret societies, the hidden truth of Earth’s history, and a chilling glimpse into humanity’s possible future. Her world unravels when she discovers she is central to a plan to erase mankind.
Armed with her grandmother’s cryptic journal, a small group of unlikely allies, and a man concealing his own dark past, Evelyn must uncover the truth behind her family’s legacy—before it unleashes a power capable of reshaping the world forever.
Time is running out. Evelyn is the key to humanity’s survival—or its end.
Mystery and Intrigue
While The Jury Waits follows a self-absorbed but magnetic defense attorney who gets tangled in the most personal case of his career, the murder trial of his lover. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The inspiration for the setup of the story was driven by two things; first, my intense desire to step outside my comfort zone to write a work of fiction, and secondly by my love of crime shows, movies, and John Grisham novels.
What were some driving ideals behind your character’s development?
Believe it or not, the movie, Liar, Liar where Jim Carrey played a charismatic attorney who came across as not having a legal mind at all.
How do you balance story development with shocking plot twists? Or can they be the same thing?
I consider them different. Balancing the two, albeit difficult to do, is driven by the structure associated with writing a decent work of fiction. Introduce, develop, and create mystery and intrigue through plot twists is my approach.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when can your fans expect it to be out?
The sequel to While the Jury Waits. It is going to be a trilogy eventually.
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LITERARY TITAN 