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The Story Shaped Itself
Doryto and the Door of Wanderers centers around a man with the exceptional ability to find almost anything, who is pulled into a mysterious interdimensional adventure. Where did the idea behind this novel come from?
The idea actually started with a tagline: Doryto is hired by his grandmother to find himself in another dimension where he has lost everything. From there, the story shaped itself as I wrote. I love the freedom of following characters through their decisions one at a time, rather than being tied to a strict outline.
Doryto’s voice is funny and personal—how did you strike the balance between authenticity and storytelling clarity?
I set out to write the most ridiculous story I could think of, and I knew I needed a voice to ground it. Doryto provides that balance; he wouldn’t be as effective if he took everything seriously in a world where Sasquatches smell like Fruity Pebbles.
In truth, this story mirrors my own journey of sorrow while my husband was dying. I needed the humor because my world was going dark; it was a form of survival. I wanted to explore the different versions of ourselves we present to the world, what it’s like to become ‘more’ or ‘less’ of yourself, and the profound experience of losing someone you love dearly. It’s about the desperation of those left behind to remember the journey—to hold onto the pieces of who you were with them while finding the courage to redefine yourself without them. The biggest gift is ultimately allowing yourself to heal.
Do you see more stories in this world or more journeys for Doryto ahead?
Maybe. Right now, my focus is on finishing The Watershed Butterfly. I originally wrote Doryto as a standalone, but who knows what the future holds?
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website
Lost keys, runaway dogs, even a basketball-sized bag of weed in downtown Atlanta—if it’s lost, Doryto is your guy. What he can’t find is stability.
Living behind the desk of his failing Birmingham storefront, Doryto thinks his life is weird enough already—until a homeless woman blocks his door, claims to be his “not-exactly” grandmother, and begs him to find her missing grandson… who happens to be another version of him from a neighboring dimension.
Suddenly reality has layers, dogs are gatekeepers, wedding rings are portals, and something that smells like Fruity Pebbles is hunting people who can slide between worlds. Thrown into alternate versions of Birmingham—some broken, some dangerous, all unsettling—Doryto must track down the version of himself who loses everything, before he becomes the next one to disappear.
Witty, gritty, and wildly off-kilter, Doryto and the Door of Wanderers explores identity, belonging, and the unexpected cost of extraordinary gifts.
Because finding things is easy.
Finding yourself is where it gets dangerous.
Doryto and the Door of Wanderers
Doryto and the Door of Wanderers is a genre-bending speculative fantasy novel with a strong comic streak, and at its core it follows Doryto O’Shannassy, a homeless finder in Birmingham who can locate almost anything, as a simple missing-person job opens into interdimensional travel, alternate selves, dangerous Squatch, and a much larger struggle around the mysterious Door of Wanderers. What struck me first is how much the book trusts Doryto’s voice to carry the whole ride, and for me, that gamble mostly pays off. He’s funny, scrappy, oddly tender, and so specific that even when the story gets wild, I still felt like I had a real person to hold onto.
What I liked most was the writing’s looseness and personality. It doesn’t feel polished into something cold. It feels authentic. Doryto talks the way a person might actually talk when life keeps getting stranger by the hour, and that gives the book a warm, offbeat energy. There’s a real charm in the way the novel moves from lost dogs and storefront rent to Celtic bloodlines, dimension-hopping, and metaphysical rules about suffering. That sounds like a lot because it is a lot. But the book often makes that excess part of its appeal. I kept feeling like I was listening to somebody tell me an unbelievable story on a long drive, and somehow the best choice was to let them keep going.
I was also interested in the author’s choices around identity, pain, and belonging. Beneath the humor and fantasy mechanics, the book keeps circling loneliness, family damage, and the question of what it means to find something, or someone, or even yourself. That idea of Doryto meeting other versions of himself could have been played just as a clever fantasy device, but here it feels more personal than that. It becomes a way of asking who we might have been under different pressures, and what suffering does or does not teach us. The novel can feel crowded with ideas, and there were moments when I wanted a little more clarity in the worldbuilding. Still, I respected the ambition. The book isn’t trying to be neat. It’s trying to be big-hearted, strange, and searching.
I would recommend this to readers who like fantasy that is more voice-driven than rule-driven, and to anyone who enjoys weird fiction, multiverse stories, or character-led adventures with humor, heart, and a Southern flavor. It’ll probably land best with readers who are happy to follow an unusual narrator into increasingly unusual territory. I think people who like speculative fiction with emotional messiness, eccentric mythology, and a strong first-person presence will find a lot to enjoy here.
Pages: 269 | ASIN : B0GNKHXD18
