Blog Archives
Grand Battles and Long Journeys
Awakening follows a former quarterguard who turned killer-for-hire in an underwater nation filled with class violence and magic, who is forced into the Bishop’s rebellion. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I’ve been building the world of Atlamaria and eventually writing the Goremage story for over nine years. It originally started as a completely different novel idea that came about from a short story in a high school creative writing class. I shelved that and ended up expanding the world into a homebrew Dungeons and Dragons campaign a few years later, which only got two sessions in. I really liked the world I had started building, and kept working on the lore and world, until I had built up the entire world of Atlamaria and Aurelithia. I’ve always loved fantasy novels and movies, and have written multiple in the past, so the finished product of the Goremage series was a sort of love-child of the years of worldbuilding I had done and some abandoned characters I wasn’t ready to let go of.
What challenges came with designing a believable underwater civilization?
I had a pretty soft science system when it comes to the sci-fi side and kind of leave a lot of it up to the reader’s imagination, which I think helps. I’ve done a lot of research on it and how it would actually be built in the world, but I think writing out the nitty gritty of that would be boring, and lose a lot of the whimsy, so it feels more believable for the reader to have a ‘less is more’ approach. I think the biggest challenge was reminding myself that they were underwater, meaning there were limitations to where they could go and what they could do (though this is a bigger issue with books two and three). Because I enjoy epic fantasy, I like the idea of grand battles and long journeys, but the entirety of Atlamaria is smaller than the state of Texas, so I had to have them travel with that in mind.
How did you balance horror elements with fantasy adventure and political intrigue?
Book one definitely focuses a lot more on the fantasy and horror elements, whereas book two leans a lot more into the political intrigue and horror. Since my goal wasn’t to write a traditional fantasy, I think it was easier to just focus on what I wanted the story to be, rather than what it ‘should’ be.
Can you give us a glimpse inside Book 2 of the Goremage series? Where will it take readers?
Book two is a much deeper dive into the politics of Atlamaria and the relationship between Pearl and Elio. Returning to Atlamaria, Pearl and Elio find the Triarch has already started their push for total control — and will stop at nothing to get it. As they struggle with their interpersonal relationship, the grieving process, and the ongoing political upheaval, they must also face just how far they’ll go for the greater good.
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Sacred Crossroads: The Path Appears When You Take The First Step
Sacred Crossroads, by Mitch Russo, is a metaphysical fantasy novel about Noble Manning, a practical hardware store owner in Cedar Springs, Massachusetts, whose carefully ordered life begins to crack open when the family store reveals itself as something far more mysterious than a small-town business. Through Noble, his daughter Sarah, Jenny Martinez, Rosa’s legacy, and the strange pull of Manning’s Hardware, the book explores grief, family inheritance, spiritual awakening, and the courage it takes to step into a larger truth.
What I liked most is that the novel treats transformation as both magical and deeply human. Noble’s resistance feels familiar. He wants numbers, ledgers, systems, and proof. Honestly, I understood him. There is comfort in shelves being labeled and life behaving itself. But the book keeps pressing against that comfort, asking what happens when the world is bigger than the tools we use to measure it. The hardware store is a smart central image because it keeps the story grounded. Hammers, keys, wood, registers, and old ledgers. Ordinary things. Then Russo lets them hum with meaning. That mix gives the book its strongest texture.
The writing leans into wonder, sometimes so much that the message comes through very clearly. This is not a quiet literary novel that hides its themes in the shadows. It wants to talk about awakening, purpose, fear, and becoming. Still, there is sincerity here, and that counts for a lot. I was especially drawn to Jenny and Rosa’s thread because their wisdom feels lived-in rather than abstract. Their story gives the novel heart and history, and it helps balance Noble’s more internal struggle with a wider sense of community and inheritance.
As spiritual or visionary fantasy, Sacred Crossroads will most appeal to readers who like fiction with an open heart and a clear sense of purpose. It’s a good fit for people drawn to stories about awakening after loss, small towns with hidden magic, family legacies, and the idea that everyday places can become thresholds. Readers who enjoy reflective, meaning-driven fiction will likely appreciate its warmth and invitation. I’d recommend it to anyone standing at a personal crossroads, especially someone who wants a novel that feels less like an escape and more like a nudge toward courage.
Pages: 218 | ASIN : B0GGNRK2TC
YOU ARE MY YELLOW
You Are My Yellow follows Tony, a yellow monster living in the very green Land Green, where being different makes him feel lonely and unwanted. After trying to hide who he is, Tony meets Penny, a small red dragon who also feels out of place because she can’t fly or breathe fire like the others. Their friendship becomes the heart of the story, and when danger strikes Tony’s school, Penny discovers that the very thing she thought made her “bad” at being a dragon is actually what helps her save the day.
I found the emotional core of this book genuinely touching. I’m like stories that give children language for that awful little ache of feeling excluded, and Tony’s sadness felt easy to understand without being too heavy. The message is clear, and I appreciated that the book doesn’t just say “be yourself” and leave it there. It shows how hard that can be when everyone around you seems to agree that different means wrong.
The writing has a bouncy, rhyming rhythm that gives the story a playful read-aloud quality, though there are moments when the rhyme takes over and makes the wording feel a bit crowded. Still, there’s warmth in the repetition, especially in phrases like “You are my yellow,” which becomes tender rather than cute. The ideas are simple but sincere: belonging, courage, friendship, and the painful little compromises children sometimes make to fit in. The artwork supports those ideas beautifully. I liked the strong color worlds, the green sameness of Tony’s home, the red warmth of Penny, and the way the illustrations make difference visible before the story even explains it.
You Are My Yellow is a gentle and heartfelt story about self-acceptance, but what stayed with me most was the friendship between two children who recognize each other’s hurt and make room for each other. I’d recommend it for young readers who are navigating friendship, confidence, or feeling different, and especially for parents who want a story that opens the door to a tender conversation afterward.
Pages: 36 | ISBN : 978-1037117695
Milo Savage and the Gargoyle Hunters – Dance of the Gargoyles
Dance of the Gargoyles by D.S. Quinton follows Milo Savage and his friends as they return to the gargoyle realm to rescue Gerty, Uncle Horace’s loyal sheepdog, who has been dragged toward the dangerous borderlands of Westworld. Their rescue mission tumbles into riddles, ghostly gargoyles, waking giants, Snarlok schemes, and a ticking clock tied to the mysterious Dance of the Gargoyles. It is the third book in the Milo Savage Series, and it carries the energy of a quest already in motion.
I enjoyed the book most when it leaned into its oddball inventiveness. Quinton has a knack for making danger feel elastic: a stone road becomes a tidal wave, a signpost becomes a trial of riddles, and the gargoyle realm seems to obey rules that are half magic and half mischievous engineering. The humor is broad enough for young readers, but it has a nimble and genuine quality that kept me smiling. Grimlo, Uncle Horace, Gorp, and the kids all bring a slightly different rhythm to the story, and that gives the adventure a lively, companionable clatter.
I enjoyed the way the book treats courage as something practical rather than grandiose. Milo and his friends are scared, confused, hungry, and frequently outmatched, but they keep moving. The friendship among the kids gives the story its ballast, especially when the realm becomes strange enough to unmoor them. I also liked that the book doesn’t sand off its weird edges; it lets the gargoyles be eerie, ceremonial, and funny all at once. That mixture gives the story its own unique sparkle.
This middle-grade fantasy is a children’s adventure and portal fantasy filled with magical creatures, gargoyles, and a friendship quest. Readers who enjoy the accessible wonder of The Chronicles of Narnia or the brisk, creature-filled adventures of Cressida Cowell will feel at home here, though Quinton’s world has a goofier, more gargoyle-haunted personality. The perfect audience is middle-grade readers who like fast-moving quests, enchanted creatures, riddles, and a little safe-creepy peril.
Pages: 140 | ASIN : B0GHPNJ96L
Loyalty, Compassion, and Determination
Arcadian Alcove centers around a woman who discovers that tales of fae, telepathic cats, and hidden magic of her youth were not just stories. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Although Arcadian Alcove is a fantasy, the very real plight of endangered species was the actual inspiration. A family with a long history of caring for creatures, supernatural and actual, became the foundation of the story. Their battle with a corrupt governor whose greed threatened a forest sanctuary seemed like an effective way to draw attention to the need to protect wildlife, while creating a mystical world, where a grieving child could find a new life as he realized an uncanny connection to the fae.
Arcadian Alcove feels like a character itself. How did you build the house, gardens, and land so they carry such emotional weight?
Arcadian Alcove is a world that, in many ways, blurs the line between fantasy and reality. The grounds and gardens are inhabited by the fae living under rosemary bushes, building homes in hollow logs, and interacting with the wildlife. More importantly, the mystical beings reflect human emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, and stubborn determination. Since little people also spend time in the guardians’ home, over the years, adjustments have been made to accommodate them. Porcelain thimbles are kept in the kitchen drawer for them to use as tea cups. Hidden entryways allow the fae access to the house when the doors and windows are closed. The house has its own personality.
Great-aunt Melissa’s presence lingers through the story. How important was the idea that family can leave behind values as much as possessions?
It’s important to know who your ancestors were, where they came from, and how they lived. Characteristics like loyalty, compassion, and determination tend to be passed down through generations. I wanted the source of Lia’s resoluteness to be remembered as a gift from her great-aunt, but I also wanted the connection to be a reminder that the legacy of past generations affects us all.
Can we look forward to more books from you soon? What are you currently working on?
Oh, yes. There will be more books. You can expect a mystery to be my next one.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Navigating her new role as a guardian of the fae, Lia must protect the delicate balance of this supernatural realm while facing threats of eminent domain signed by the governor of North Carolina, a greedy politician whose self-serving plans for a highway could destroy the territory where the little people dwell. With the help of her nephew Michael, who, recovering from the loss of his parents, possesses an intuitive connection to the mystical beings, Lia, Eric, and Athena, a telecat, enlist the help of the inhabitants of Arcadian Alcove to fight the governor’s threat to their sanctuary and defend the enchanted land they call home.
As they navigate the challenges of grief, magic, and environmental preservation, they learn that some battles are worth risking everything and that love transcends even the greatest of losses. Sometimes, the most extraordinary adventures lie just beyond the ordinary.
An Act of Survival
Two Hearts Within One Soul: Volume 1 frames love not as coincidence but as cosmic decree, a bond the gods designed before the characters were born. What drew you to that metaphysical architecture rather than a conventional romance structure?
Conventional romance is about the ego, but I focus on the Return. My architecture is built on the 888 frequency—a mathematical heartbeat that proves love is a cosmic decree. I am exploring the ‘Zeus Theory’: the idea that we were once eight-limbed, invincible beings split into four-limbed fragments. We aren’t looking for a ‘partner’; we are survivors of a divine accident looking for our own missing limbs. It is a biological and spiritual necessity to find the only person who holds the rest of our original symmetry.
Classical music and ballet are woven into the novel’s emotional fabric. Why did those art forms feel like the right language for this love story?
Words are ‘four-limbed’—heavy and limited. Music is the rhythm of the soul captured through thoughts, allowing us to hear beauty in a lyrical tone. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then the ballerina’s movement is the art that allows us to see that soul’s rhythm move through the physical body. A Mozart aria or a pirouette is an ‘eight-limbed’ reach back toward our lost divinity, allowing the characters to communicate in a frequency where the split hasn’t happened yet.
The idea of becoming “habitable to yourself again” after devastating loss is the emotional core of the book. Was that theme the origin of the novel, or did it emerge through writing these two characters?
It was the origin—an act of survival. When you lose the love that made you whole, you feel unoccupied, like a house with no one inside. Writing this was my way of ‘rebuilding the temple,’ proving that the missing rooms of the soul are still there, held in the vibration of the other half. To be ‘habitable’ means making peace with the four-limbed skin we are trapped in while we wait for a reunion (oneself) that is already written in the stars.
This is Volume 1. What does the series hold that this book is only beginning to reveal about these souls, this bond, and the cost the gods mentioned?
The series is a grand odyssey through the entwining of Heaven, Hell, and Earth. Volume 1 was the ‘Phantom Ache’ of the split. Volume 2 explores the resilience of the caterpillar—the quiet strength required to endure the weight of the human form and the darkness of grief.
Finally, Volume 3: ♾️888, reveals the Source.
We journey to the African Baobab tree of life and the Egyptian Underworld, mirroring Isis’s search for the pieces of Osiris and the Southeast Asian myth of the Sun and Moon to prove that no love is impossible. This journey doesn’t just take a lifetime; it takes eternity after eternity. Across time and space, love that is made of Heaven and Earth belongs to the end of time. It reveals that the circle of life is the Art of the Heart: ‘LOVE.’
Author Links: GoodReads | Website | Amazon
Centuries ago, the gods bound King Marici’O and the ballerina Dahli’a with a single soul, two hearts destined to find one another across lifetimes. Set against the opulent backdrop of eighteenth-century Europe, Marici’O is a grieving king torn by the loss of his queen. Across the continent, Dahli’a, a luminous ballerina, mourns a love she cannot explain—until fate begins to stir.
On the edge of death, their souls meet in a dream, urging one another to fight for life. Neither believes the encounter is real—until a chance performance of Le Papillon in Austria changes everything. Marici’O recognizes the ethereal dancer on stage as the woman from his vision. Dahli’a freezes mid-performance when she sees the man who once pulled her back from the abyss standing before her.
As dream becomes reality, their bond deepens, defying worlds that separate them: royalty and art, tradition and freedom, past pain and present hope. But love forged by gods comes with a cost. Will they surrender the lives they’ve known—or embrace a destiny shaped by divine design?
Depths of Introspection
Honor: A Sci-Fi & Fantasy Anthology gathers twenty-two independent authors together in one project. What was the most rewarding part of building a collaborative collection like this?
It was really rewarding seeing how twenty-two different authors interpreted the theme of honor in such wildly different ways across sci-fi and fantasy stories, with their own styles and voices. Not to mention, the authors have our own group where we’ve been able to connect and grow together over time, bouncing ideas and strategies off of each other. It really grew into something quite sweet.
The editor’s note describes honor as “a multifaceted and beautiful enigma.” What aspects of honor interested you most while assembling the collection?
I was most interested in the gray areas of honor—where personal obligation clashes with societal expectation. It’s where the best conflict comes from. And I was most curious about how the other authors would formulate their narratives.
The range of settings is enormous, from grounded fantasy landscapes to distant planets and political sci-fi. How did you balance tonal variety while keeping the anthology emotionally cohesive?
Even if the setting is a distant planet, the core emotion—the struggle with honor—is universal, which ties everything together. I think with the theme being so interesting, it required depths of introspection by each of the authors that made all of us dive into the emotional side.
The anthology also features original art throughout. How did the visual element shape the reading experience, and how did you work with the artists to capture the tone of individual stories?
We really did work with some great artists for this anthology. I gave the artists specific emotional beats or imagery from specific stories to capture, rather than just a scene description. I thought it made the visual elements feel integrated, not just decorative.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
ALL FOR HONOR!
Honor is an exciting new anthology from Golden Griffin Press, featuring twenty-two SF&F authors. Each of them is a rising star in independent publishing in their own right, but we brought them all together to create this beautiful anthology.
Clocking in at nearly 200,000 words, Honor is packed to the brim with 22 new SF&F stories for readers to enjoy and maybe even discover a new favorite author–or twenty-two!
Not to mention we hired some amazing artists to fill this anthology with awe-inspiring sci-fi and fantasy art!
The War for Heaven
The War for Heaven, by Isaac Grisham, begins with Damian Hartter dying in a car accident and waking up in an afterlife that is not the serene, doctrinally tidy heaven he half-feared and half-wanted. Reunited with his dead wife, Alena, he enters a Celestial City full of strange rules, alien souls, bureaucratic departments, uneasy Guardians, lost children, and old fractures in Creation. What first feels like a second chance at domestic peace soon becomes something larger and darker: a mystery about the architecture of eternity, the politics of salvation, and the war still smoldering between Heaven and Hell.
I liked how the novel refuses to make the afterlife merely luminous. Grisham gives Heaven kitchens, libraries, orientations, traffic, work, committees, and petty cruelty; the result is funnier and more unsettling than a paradise made of harp music. Damian’s skepticism is the book’s best instrument. He’s grieving, sarcastic, wounded, and often ill-prepared for the cosmic scale of what he discovers, which keeps the story human even when the canvas stretches into multiversal theology. The humor works because it’s slightly mordant rather than flippant, and the worldbuilding has a pleasingly ornate quality: diamond walls, bureaucratic embassies, soul logistics, and infernal loopholes all clicking into place like celestial machinery.
What surprised me most was how emotionally grounded the book remains beneath its speculative abundance. Damian and Alena’s reunion could have become sentimental, but their marriage still has texture: old disagreements, unspoken losses, love complicated by memory. The subplot involving children in the Afterlife gives the story a genuine moral ache, and Damian’s shifting relationship to fatherhood feels earned rather than pasted on for softness. The book’s explanations are expansive. I found myself admiring the ambition. Grisham isn’t simply asking what Heaven looks like; he’s asking whether perfection can survive contact with institutions, fear, grief, and desire.
I think The War for Heaven is best suited for readers of speculative fiction, afterlife fantasy, theological fantasy, supernatural adventure, metaphysical mystery, and character-driven fantasy who enjoy big ideas delivered with wit and emotional ballast. It may appeal to fans of Neil Gaiman’s mythic playfulness or readers who liked the cosmic irreverence of Good Omens, though Grisham’s novel is more earnest in its grief and more invested in the architecture of its world. The War for Heaven turns eternity into a place worth questioning, defending, and finally loving.
Pages: 349 | ASIN : B0GP93RYMC
