Blog Archives
The Marvelous Adventures of Lucas Bard
In a world where the lines between reality and fantasy blur, an imaginative boy named Lucas faces more than the usual middle school dilemmas. His life takes a wild turn when he inherits his late grandfather’s enchanted monocle. The lens is capable of opening gateways to a fantastical realm. Thrust into a bizarre dimension with enigmatic automatons, Lucas discovers all kinds of mysterious happenings. Dive into a tale of adventure, friendship, and self-discovery, where every moment is a step into the unknown, and each moment a test of courage and wit.
Summer Fallout
Summer Fallout is a contemporary crime drama and family-centered thriller that follows a beach-town family still reeling from a violent hurricane season when their adult son is shot on his own front porch. The novel moves between moments of coastal calm and sudden brutality, focusing on the emotional fallout rather than just the crime itself. The book is about survival. Physical survival, yes, but more deeply the kind that happens in hospital waiting rooms, quiet kitchens, and the long stretch of time after trauma when life is supposed to go back to normal and refuses to cooperate.
Author Denise Ann Stock spends time letting scenes breathe. Long walks on the beach, family dinners, small conversations that feel ordinary. Those moments matter because when violence breaks in, it lands harder. The contrast is sharp but not flashy. The author clearly wants the reader to feel what it is like to live in a place that looks like paradise while carrying fear just under the surface. The point of view stays close to the mother, and that choice works. Her thoughts circle and spiral the way real fear does.
The book’s ideas are simple but heavy. Safety is fragile. Communities can look peaceful while hiding cracks. Trauma does not arrive once and leave politely. I appreciated that Stock does not rush healing or tie things up neatly. As a work of crime fiction, the mystery matters, but as a family drama, the emotional stakes matter more. The pacing leans toward reflective rather than propulsive, which may surprise readers expecting a fast thriller. For me, that slower rhythm felt honest.
By the end, I felt like I had spent time inside this family’s life rather than just watched a plot unfold. Summer Fallout will appeal most to readers who enjoy contemporary crime novels with a strong emotional core, especially those who like stories about resilience, family bonds, and the long shadow violence can cast over everyday life. If you like reflective crime fiction that lingers on aftermath and human cost, this book is worth your time.
Pages: 228 | ASIN : B0G4G349X2
Diverging Streams
Diverging Streams is a work of literary science fiction that blends time travel, alternate realities, and deeply human moments. The novel follows Haskell Yngren across multiple timelines, weaving together pivotal events from adolescence, adulthood, and parallel versions of his life. What begins as a vivid, often humorous barroom incident expands into a meditation on chance, memory, desire, and the small decisions that quietly fracture a life into many possible paths.
Author Earl L Carlson writes with a confident, old-fashioned storyteller’s rhythm, the kind that is unafraid to linger. He pauses to philosophize, to explain, to wander off briefly and then return. The prose is rich but not showy. He trusts long scenes and detailed observation, especially when he is writing about adolescence, embarrassment, longing, and those fragile moments when everything feels charged and irreversible. Some passages are genuinely funny, others almost uncomfortably intimate, and that contrast feels intentional.
The story leans into digressions and omniscient commentary, sometimes stepping well outside the action to reflect on culture, sexuality, or human cruelty. Still, those same detours are also where the book’s personality lives. The speculative elements are never flashy. This is not a fast, gadget-driven science fiction novel. Instead, the genre functions as a framework for asking what might have happened if a single moment tilted another way. The alternate timelines feel less like puzzles to solve and more like emotional echoes.
I felt that Diverging Streams is best suited for readers who enjoy reflective, character-driven speculative fiction. If you like science fiction that behaves more like literary fiction, are curious about time but deeply invested in memory, desire, and consequence, this book will likely resonate. It rewards patience and a willingness to sit with discomfort, humor, and nostalgia all at once.
Pages: 172 | ASIN : B0FP5TSF7T
Passages – A Voyage from War to Peace
Passages follows the life of Miko Papagiannis from his childhood in Greece to his adult years as a physician in the United States. The story opens with a vivid scene on the Aegean where young Miko watches a decommissioned naval ship being destroyed during a training exercise. The grim beauty of the sinking sparks questions about memory, violence, and the unseen weight carried by those shaped by war. From there, the novel moves through Miko’s family history, his father’s struggles as a fisherman, his grandfather’s unspoken wartime scars, and finally Miko’s own encounters with veterans in his medical training. By the time he meets AJ, a troubled veteran who enters his care, the threads of war’s lingering shadow across generations begin to weave into something larger.
This book pulled me in fast. The writing is plainspoken yet emotional in a way that sneaks up on you. Scenes rise and fall with a natural rhythm, and sometimes the simplest moments hit the hardest. Watching the ship sink through a child’s eyes made me feel a pinch in my chest. Later, hearing AJ wrestle with shame and loneliness felt even heavier because the earlier chapters had already planted the idea that war wounds rarely stay in the past. The prose can be earnest, but it never drifts into preachy territory. It just sits with the characters while they struggle to make sense of their own stories, and I found myself rooting for them almost without noticing.
My favorite parts were the conversations that seem small on the surface but crack open whole emotional worlds underneath. Miko talking with his mother about his grandfather lingered with me. It felt honest, almost raw, like things families say only after years of holding back. The book also surprised me with how gently it handled the mentoring relationship between Miko and AJ. Those scenes could have turned clinical or stiff, yet instead they felt human and a little messy in the best way. I liked how the story let silence do some of the work. People don’t always confess their pain neatly, and the author understands that. I wished the pacing between chapters jumped less sharply, but the emotional payoff made the jolts worth it.
Passages felt like a novel written for people who have lived close to hardship, or who have watched someone they love carry invisible weight. It also feels right for readers who enjoy stories about healing that don’t look dramatic but instead unfold in quiet rooms, awkward talks, and brave little choices. If you like reflective fiction rooted in real human experience, this book would be a meaningful read.
Pages: 234 | ASIN : B0FBS569TS
Small-Town Scandals
Shadows in the Pleasure Gardens follows an apprentice banker who witnesses a robbery and finds himself in the middle of a small-town scandal and shady racetrack dealings. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I was inspired a few summers ago, when I was working as a law clerk on the weekdays and a horse racing official on the weekends. Law clerking was dreary, dull work, but I enjoyed the racetrack, even though all the old-timers there implied it had a shady background. I find small-town scandals interesting because it’s personal to all the characters, rather than being something you have quickly heard and forgotten.
I enjoyed your characters, especially Chester. What was your favorite character to write for and why?
I loved writing about Fisheye. It was fun for me to think of ridiculous ways a reactive horse might respond in different scenes.
What scene in the book did you have the most fun writing?
I most enjoyed writing the scene where the Sheriff and Chester go to Judge Mason’s house after arresting the robbers. Judge Mason and Sheriff Hoogkirk are distinctive characters with strong personalities, and I enjoyed imagining their argument about the law.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
My next book is The Little Pilot, and I hope it will be available in 2027. I’m also hopeful that my novel set during the American Revolution will be available this year or next.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Chester is an unambitious — or independent- minded — apprentice to Mr. Tate of Tate’s Banking and Loans when he witnesses a bank robbery and finds himself serving as Sheriff Hoogkirk’s justice-seeking assistant. His newfound role in law enforcement introduces him to gambling, carousing, and horse racing at the town’s pleasure gardens, and he is drawn to its excitement at the expense of his courtship and professional career. When an acquaintance from the racetrack is implicated in the robberies, Chester worries he must choose between truth and justice.
Shadows in the Pleasure Gardens weaves together timeless themes, including the personal search for purpose and fulfillment, pressure to conform to societal expectations, corruption of the powerful, and how horses help us escape it all, if only for a bit.
Promise of Mercy
Promise of Mercy pushes the Dreamscape Warriors saga into darker, sharper territory as the long-idle Utopian Founders wake after six centuries and move to seize power by force. Their plot spirals outward fast. Liam O’Connor is kidnapped and flung through an ancient portal into the unknown, the Temple priestesses are drugged and held hostage, and the O’Connor children are thrust into a frantic rescue operation that tears across worlds. The book mixes political upheaval, telepathic warfare, and tight family bonds in a story that never stops moving.
While reading, I found myself pulled in by the heart of the book, which is not the action, but the relationships. Springs writes family moments with a warmth that caught me off guard. A quiet conversation between Liam and Deirdre over pastries feels as gripping as any firefight. Even scenes of chaos keep circling back to loyalty, fear, duty, and love. I liked how the story makes room for softness inside a hard universe. The writing itself is straightforward, sometimes almost plain, but the plainness works. It lets the emotions land without dressing them up.
I also caught myself getting fired up during the more intense chapters. The Founders’ arrogance, their cold talk of “genetic purity,” and their plan to eliminate Liam or “correct” his children stirred real anger in me. On the flip side, the fight inside the Temple hooked me completely. Seeing Bayvin take a hit, Aisling and Deirdre charging in, Celinia steadying herself even while drugged, and the arch priestess trying to hold everything together made the stakes feel personal. The author writes these scenes with a quick rhythm that kept me flipping pages and muttering under my breath. The book might lean heavily on lore sometimes, but even then, I didn’t mind. It felt like being swept into a world that genuinely believes in its own history.
By the end, I walked away feeling surprisingly moved. This is a story where the characters’ courage matters more than their weapons, and where mercy is treated as a kind of power. The book would be a great fit for readers who enjoy sci-fi adventures with real heart, for fans of military space opera with family drama baked in, and for anyone who likes telepaths, portals, and rebellions, all mixed with warmth and humor. If that sounds like your style, Promise of Mercy delivers.
Pages: 446 | ASIN : B0DBBBNN5P
Tales of Adventure
Slickrock weaves together the paths of a loner who discovers a body in a granary and a college student who is roped into a scheme by a crew bent on revenge. Where did the idea for this story come from?
The remote wild country in Canyonlands National Park seemed like a great place to store a kidnap victim while waiting for the ransom, and it was also perfect for the intervention by “Relic,” the moonshining hermit of Canyonlands.
How do you balance story development with shocking plot twists? Or can they be the same thing?
One builds naturally into the other, especially when a character is cornered by circumstance and their own choices.
Do you have a favorite moment in Slickrock? One that was especially fun to craft?
That’s a tough question. Maybe the scene where Relic fools the shooter into thinking the deputy is already dead.
Can we look forward to more work from you soon? What are you currently working on?
Yes, I really enjoy writing about the moonshining hermit and tales of adventure and intrigue in the desert outback!
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Malia is kidnapped and held in an old trailer in a remote canyon. When a gin-brewing recluse named Relic rescues her, an investigating deputy teams up with a hunter who is not who he claims to be… Malia and Relic must survive a deadly shoot-out, evade their pursuers, and warn the deputy before it’s too late. But someone in town is helping the bad guys. And a trip-up in their plan only makes them more determined and lethal…
Identity and Purpose
Take My Hand follows a guidance counselor grappling with her own identity and desires while navigating the dangers of a magical realm. Where did the idea for this novel come from?
Initially, I wanted to write a sapphic paranormal romance involving the girl briefly introduced at the end of Take Me Now. However, as I began writing, I realized I wasn’t ready to do the character justice—I felt I needed to read more sapphic fiction to ensure the voice felt authentic and true.
So, I started from scratch and went back to my roots as a coach in my corporate career. From there, Trina took shape. As the story developed, I also felt compelled to write the novel from two points of view, which meant giving Robert a substantial and credible voice—one that could mirror and challenge Trina’s doubts, guilt, and struggles with identity and purpose.
How did you handle the magic in this story, and how did it evolve as you were writing?
For this second book, I wanted to focus on another type of magically gifted individuals I introduced, known as Cloakers. Without giving too much away, they are called this because of their ability to conceal their truest selves and adopt different personas.
Interestingly, before Trina became a guidance counselor, she was originally conceived as a female hitwoman who simply found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m glad I changed that direction. It allowed me to concentrate more deeply on expanding the world of the Dark District that I introduced in my earlier novellas, Sojourn and Take Me Now, both of which are compiled in the Silver Book Award–winning duology, Dark District Primer.
The female hitwoman may still appear in future stories. Never say never, I say.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
The themes of self-discovery and identity became central as Trina’s backstory evolved. Initially, I was drawn to how compelling her power was, but it soon felt necessary to impose a cost for her repeated use of it. Her struggles with self-identity and self-esteem became the most logical place for that toll to manifest.
I tried to inhabit Trina’s inner world as honestly as possible, ensuring that the experiences she goes through would meaningfully change her by the end of the novel. At the same time, I wanted the story to remind readers that vulnerability—especially when we share our true selves with others—always comes with risk.
Ultimately, I hope the book encourages compassion, both toward others and ourselves. I dedicate it to those still searching for who they are, and to those brave enough to cherish the people who walk that journey with them.
Can you give readers a glimpse inside Book 3 of the Dark District series? When can we look forward to seeing it released?
While each book in the Dark District series stands on its own, I enjoy letting characters make brief appearances across the novels to reinforce the sense of a shared universe. These cameos are designed to enhance cohesion without requiring readers to have read the previous books, allowing the series to be enjoyed either as standalone stories or chronologically.
Book 3 will focus on Trina’s best friend, Andrew De Silva, who moonlights as a finder of magical objects while maintaining his day job as a history professor at the country’s oldest pontifical university. He has a loud, chatty personality, but like many in the Dark District, he carries secrets and unresolved issues of his own.
The story will also introduce Robert’s side of the family, expanding the world further with a new lineage and a new branch of magically gifted individuals. I’m currently working on the book and targeting a 2027 release.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Mostly, she has the perfect job of sowing the seeds of empathy & understanding by being a guidance counselor at the Forrester Arts College in the magically cloaked community known in Manila called the Dark District. She is beloved by students and has a killer body to die for and to covet.
She had everything figured out until she met Robert Samaniego, the new English professor joining them this term.
With a new semester, a new batch of students to mentor, a new distraction on campus, on top of maintaining a lifelong secret that can unravel at any moment if she doesn’t watch herself, can Trina hold it all together?
Or perhaps the Universe heard her prayers and sent someone to give direction and focus to the life that she thought she was living perfectly.
Someone to hold and protect her.
Someone to share and accept her secret and her past.
Someone to be there for her and take…her…hand.
LITERARY TITAN 