Blog Archives
A Small Memory
Robert Dyer’s A Small Memory is a heartfelt coming-of-age novel about friendship, responsibility, and the lasting effects of trauma. Set in Ohio during the 1970s, it follows Mike Youngstown, an eighteen-year-old college basketball player who moves into a group home with his best friend, Ted Dirksen. The two young men work as live-in counselors for adults with intellectual disabilities while balancing school, relationships, and their first real taste of independence. Their arrangement begins as an exciting new chapter, but it becomes far more demanding after Ray, a troubled new resident, enters the home.
The relationship between Mike and Ted gives the novel its emotional center. They tease each other constantly, compete over everything, and communicate with the ease of people who’ve known each other for years. Beneath the jokes, though, there’s genuine devotion. Early in the book, Ted tells Mike, “We’re in this together,” a simple statement that becomes increasingly meaningful as their lives change. Dyer makes their friendship feel lived-in through private nicknames, late-night conversations, petty arguments, and small acts of loyalty. Because that bond is established so carefully, the later scenes carry real emotional force.
The group home setting also gives the story warmth and depth. Stuart, Mark, Paul, John, Kevin, and Ray aren’t treated as a single interchangeable group. Each has his own habits, fears, abilities, and relationships. One especially revealing moment comes when Stuart resists a job promotion because he’s afraid success will separate him from his friends. He finally admits, “I don’t want to be alone.” Moments like this show how independence can be both a goal and a frightening prospect. They also push Mike to become more patient and observant, even when his confidence tells him he already understands the people around him.
Mike’s narration is direct, energetic, and emotionally open. He can be protective and generous, but he’s also impulsive, stubborn, and convinced that determination can solve nearly anything. After Ted suffers a devastating brain injury, that confidence turns into guilt and a desperate desire to repair what has been damaged. The second half of the novel follows Mike as he tries to support Ted’s recovery while holding on to basketball, college, and his relationship with Karen. At times Mike’s thoughts circle repeatedly around blame and forgiveness, but that repetition suits a character who can’t simply reason his way out of grief. His growth comes from learning that caring for someone doesn’t always mean controlling what happens to them.
A Small Memory is a tender story about the many forms friendship can take after life changes it. Its most affecting scenes are often quiet ones, such as a returned hug, a remembered nickname, or a familiar joke emerging through confusion. The novel handles painful material with compassion while still making room for humor, romance, and the ordinary messiness of college life. Dyer’s book asks what it means to remain loyal when a person can no longer return to the life everyone expected for them. Mike’s answer isn’t perfect, but it’s deeply human: he stays, adapts, and keeps choosing the friendship they built together.
Pages: 304 | ASIN : B0H6GQ6SW6
Izzy Can’t Talk But He Can Make Friends
Izzy Can’t Talk But He Can Make Friends! is a warm children’s book about autism, friendship, and communication. The story follows Izzy, a nonspeaking autistic boy who feels nervous around his new neighbor, Jimmy. As the boys spend time together, Izzy learns that friendship can grow through shared interests, laughter, patience, and simply enjoying another person’s company. The book presents Izzy’s speech device, service dog, safe space, routines, and stimming as natural parts of his everyday life.
The story works especially well as a social-emotional learning book for children because the friendship develops through believable little moments. Jimmy accidentally sits in Izzy’s special spot, visits his treehouse, watches Izzy’s favorite cartoon, and discovers that they both love chicken nuggets. Aunt Bee helps Jimmy understand Izzy without speaking for every feeling he has, while Jimmy shows a willingness to listen, apologize, and adjust. That gives young readers a practical picture of empathy and inclusive friendship.
The bright cartoon illustrations make this inclusive children’s book lively and easy to follow. Izzy’s emotions are shown clearly through his face, body language, and changes in color and lighting, including a striking scene where he appears frozen inside a blue block when meeting Jimmy. The pictures also add playful details, such as superhero costumes, toy dinosaurs, Uncle Gus getting stuck in the treehouse window, and Lucky the service dog joining the action. These visual touches keep the book energetic while helping children understand experiences that Izzy doesn’t express through spoken words.
As an autism awareness picture book and friendship story for kids, the book has a clear, encouraging message: communication can take many forms, and connection doesn’t depend on speech. Its straightforward explanations make it useful for families, classrooms, and conversations about neurodiversity, while the humor and familiar childhood activities keep the story approachable. Izzy and Jimmy’s friendship feels satisfying because it grows from curiosity, shared joy, and time spent together.
Pages: 34 | ISBN : 978-1962636087
False Realities
A Grand Façade is a compelling collection of personal essays, short stories, and an extended memoir centered on music. Why was this an important book for you to write?
I suppose posterity would be a partial answer, but I’ve had many people suggest that I write about our experience pursuing our band. I then realized that other essays I’ve written about my life before and after those pivotal events helped to put it (and me) in context. Finally, I felt I could add some short stories I was most proud of, each which explored what became the overarching theme of the collection—the illusions or false realities we may believe or pursue, and those we think we are or pretend to be.
Were there moments where your memories surprised you as you wrote them down?
Not so much surprised, but rather clarified or further decoded who I was at the time, and why I reacted certain ways. The memoir certainly dives deep into my insecurities, but traveling back to that time in my head made me realize more clearly what drove some of my anxieties. I think, if anything, the one thing that surprised me the most was how condensed that period of our lives actually was. It was an amazing realization that one of the most significant and dramatic parts of my life—from quitting our careers and selling our house to the day to our last performance—was less than three years.
Looking back, do you think success means something different now than it did during those years of performing and recording?
I think the very concept of success is, perhaps, the biggest façade of all. Those who have never taken a big risk or pursued a dream consider me a successful writer simply for doing it. I look at any author who can make it a career and I call that successful. They probably look at mass-market authors and see that as true success. There are probably mass market authors looking at a Pulitzer prize-winning author and seeing that as true success. We equate success with happiness or fulfillment, but success has no clear metric. When we pursued our band, I had been fixated on an illusion I called “success.” After writing this, I realize that what matters has very little to do with any preconceived notion of success, and everything to do with lived experience. In that respect, I’ve grown to understand that I have been successful in filling my life with worthwhile pursuits. That said, one also has to resolve and accept the disappointment that will most often come with that.
If readers take away just one idea from A Grand Façade, what would you hope it is?
Don’t pursue the dream, pursue the experience, and embrace each moment while you live it.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website
A Grand Façade: Stories of Truth and Fiction
James L. Peters’s A Grand Façade is a wide-ranging collection of personal essays, short stories, and an extended musical memoir. Peters brings the pieces together through a recurring interest in the fronts people build around their ambitions, fears, relationships, and failures. The nonfiction moves from childhood rebellion and family memories to cancer, grief, creativity, travel, and mortality, while the fiction gives those same concerns more symbolic and unsettling forms. The centerpiece is the lengthy title memoir, which follows Peters, his wife Melanie, and his friend Tim through years of writing, recording, performing, and trying to turn a deeply personal band into something sustainable. The book’s introduction openly frames the collection as an attempt to use both fact and invention to reach emotional truth, and that idea gives the varied material a clear center.
Peters is at his best when he’s examining his younger self with equal parts fondness, embarrassment, and honesty. Essays about stealing school silverware, giving a friend the cold shoulder over a teenage party, or misunderstanding his father’s disapproval are funny at first, then gradually reveal regret, compassion, or a changed perspective. That same self-scrutiny makes the musical memoir engaging even for readers who’ve never played in a band. It’s full of shabby studios, awkward gigs, creative breakthroughs, bruised egos, financial strain, and friendships tested by competing ideas of success. Peters doesn’t turn the adventure into a simple victory or cautionary tale. He treats it as a worthwhile, damaging, exhilarating choice that helped shape his marriage, career, art, and understanding of himself.
The short fiction broadens the collection’s emotional range. “Dirty Vowels” uses an overheard couple’s noisy sex life to expose the frustrations inside another marriage, while “Rabbits in the Mouths of Wolves” turns mysterious bags of garbage into a tense parable about status, fairness, and social conformity. “Twinkle” approaches cosmic catastrophe through an intimate human relationship, and “The Muse on Your Back” captures the loneliness, addiction, and manufactured persona surrounding a rising musician. Some of the older stories show their age through heavier exposition or symbolism, and the memoir’s extensive chronology occasionally slows the pace. Still, Peters’s directness and wry humor keep the book personable. He’s willing to be the fool, the wounded son, the difficult bandmate, and the frightened patient, which gives the collection warmth without sanding away its harsher edges.
I’d recommend A Grand Façade most strongly to readers who enjoy memoirs about ordinary Midwestern lives, creative ambition, aging, family, and the complicated afterlife of youthful dreams. Musicians and other artists who’ve spent years pursuing recognition will especially appreciate its account of the work, compromise, friendship, and stubborn hope behind an independent creative life. It’ll also suit readers who like collections that move between candid autobiography and speculative or literary fiction while returning to a shared set of questions. Peters’s central insight is persuasive: a failed dream can still produce a meaningful life, and looking honestly at the façade may reveal something more valuable than the success once imagined.
Homage to the Beatles
The Word is a work of speculative fiction that presents a world in which John, Paul, George, and Ringo are worshipped as gods, and their songs are treated as scripture. What inspired you to write this book?
It was partly the result of a mildly drunken evening with an old friend, a fellow Beatle fan. The talk was of their enduring appeal and the seeming religious language that was used to describe them as they faded into history. They were often described as Gods and certainly John Lennon seemed to have been made into a secular saint in many people’s eyes. One of us remarked that it would make a good book to describe a world in which they had become an actual religion. And hey presto, I wrote the first book, Love Them Do, about a world set in the future where there was One True Religion, and it was based on the songs and ‘teachings’ of the Fab Four.
The letters between Paula and John become one of the book’s emotional anchors. Why did you choose that correspondence as the primary way to explore belief versus skepticism?
This is the second in the series, and the first featured a narrator who was somewhat sceptical of the divine nature of the Beatles. This was partly to highlight the silliness of some aspects of the religion, but also the narrator was a follower of John, a truth seeker and sceptic who famously sang in his song ‘God’, shortly after the break-up of the Beatles, ‘I don’t believe in Beatles’. I felt he therefore represented John’s own open-minded truth seeking. In this book, The Word, the narrator is a follower of Paul and a true believer in the divine nature of the four Gods from Liverpool. I felt this reflected Paul’s love and belief in the band. He was probably the most upset when they split in 1970. The correspondence is therefore between the sceptical narrator from the first book and the true believer of the second, which I felt allowed for a nice interplay between them.
The humor comes from treating everyday moments in Beatles history as profound religious events. Did writing the novel change the way you think about celebrity culture or the stories people tell about their heroes?
Yes, it was quite fun to write in terms of imagining all the religious Orders that appear that follow a particular God or saint in their story and also interpreting quite normal events through the lens of them being divine. In many ways, of course, their story is remarkable, so it wasn’t always a huge leap to give a religious slant to aspects of their story. The book is partly a homage to the Beatles (it is, after all, a nice religion, based on peace, love and laughter) but it is also about the stories we are willing to believe to make our lives bearable, however irrational they might seem to outsiders, which, it seems to me, is how religion works. If you believe my slightly far fetched stories I will give you everlasting life etc. (in Beatle Heaven in this case!).
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
You won’t be surprised to hear that my next book is the third in the series and features a follower of George. It is called Our Sweet Lord and will hopefully be out early next year.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
Saving Moses
Steve A. Twitty’s Saving Moses is a coming-of-age adventure built around one unforgettable summer in 1961. The novel follows Milty Marshal and his three friends, Mark, Davy, and Floyd, as they roam the woods, canals, and abandoned dumping grounds surrounding their South Florida mill town. What begins with bike rides, a tree house, neighborhood pranks, and clashes with local bullies grows into a plan to protect Moses, a huge alligator the boys discover in Black Creek Canal. The story is framed by the older Milton returning to the remains of Dillardtown with his daughter and grandchildren, finally ready to explain the event he’s carried for decades. The author describes the book as fiction based on actual events in South Miami, which gives the boys’ world a lived-in quality even when the adventure becomes larger than life.
The book’s greatest strength is its detailed sense of place. Twitty fills Dillardtown with terrazzo-floored company houses, backyard swimming pools, rattling model trains, comic books, bicycles, banyan trees, coral rock, afternoon storms, and the constant presence of the sugar mill. These details do more than establish the early 1960s. They show how completely the boys belong to their surroundings. The wilderness isn’t just scenery to them. It’s their private country, with its own landmarks, rules, hideouts, dangers, and legends. Twitty also spends time inside each boy’s home, so their behavior makes emotional sense. Milty’s nervousness comes from living with a bitter, gambling father. Floyd’s need to prove himself is tied to insecurity and a lingering disability. Mark’s confidence and Davy’s inventive curiosity grow out of more supportive households. Even Randy, the neighborhood bully, is given a painful family history that helps explain his anger.
Readers who enjoy Stephen King’s The Body, better known through the film Stand by Me, will recognize a similar mix of friendship, danger, humor, and adult hindsight. Both stories follow boys whose casual summer expedition leads them into experiences they aren’t emotionally prepared to handle. Twitty, like King, understands how childhood friendships can be affectionate and cruel in the same conversation. The boys tease one another, compete for status, make reckless promises, and then risk themselves when a friend is genuinely threatened. Saving Moses has a sunnier, more adventure-driven rhythm for much of its length, with plans involving alligator food, scavenged raft materials, stolen paddles, and homemade engineering. That playful energy makes the later violence land harder because the reader has spent so much time sharing the boys’ excitement.
Saving Moses is a story about the way children assign themselves adult responsibilities before they understand adult consequences. The boys believe they can tame danger through loyalty, ingenuity, and a good plan, whether they’re confronting a bully or attempting to save an alligator. When their adventure ends in tragedy, Milton turns one terrible moment into a lifelong judgment of his own character. The present-day chapters give the novel its emotional purpose, as his friends help him understand that memory has preserved his guilt more faithfully than it preserved the truth. Twitty’s storytelling is direct, visual, and often shaped like a screenplay, with plenty of action and sharply staged scenes. The result is an earnest, bittersweet novel about friendship, responsibility, and the stories people must finally tell before they can forgive the children they used to be. I recommend Saving Moses to readers who like heartfelt coming-of-age stories about friendship, difficult choices, childhood adventures, and the lasting impact of the memories we carry.
Pages: 254 | ASIN : B0B218STTK
The Word – The Second Book of the Beatles
Ian Croskell’s The Word is a playful blend of speculative fiction, Beatles history, religious satire, and coming-of-age story. Set centuries after the band’s lifetime, it imagines a society in which John, Paul, George, and Ringo are worshipped as gods, their songs are treated as scripture, and places connected to their lives have become religious sites. The story follows Paula, a student in the Order of Paul at Blossomwood, as she studies the “Great Story” and exchanges letters with John, a more sceptical student from the Order of John. Through classes, legends, pilgrimages, and personal reflections, the book revisits the Beatles’ rise while showing how history can gradually turn into mythology.
The book’s most distinctive feature is the way it transforms familiar Beatles details into sacred traditions. Managers become saints, concerts become miracles, instruments become relics, and song lyrics are interpreted as spiritual teachings. Croskell clearly knows the band’s history, and he draws on an impressive range of anecdotes about their music, relationships, public appearances, collaborators, and cultural impact. The humor often comes from the gap between the original event and the grand religious meaning later attached to it. A snowstorm becomes divine intervention, a pop television appearance becomes a revelation, and Paul’s missing bass inspires a quest worthy of medieval legend. It’s affectionate satire, driven less by mockery than by curiosity about why people need heroes, stories, rituals, and places of pilgrimage.
Paula gives the book its warmth. She’s devout, romantic, talkative, and increasingly willing to question what she’s been taught. Her letters to John create an engaging tension between belief and doubt, particularly when they discuss the love between Lennon and McCartney, the reliability of religious texts, and the human need to find meaning in coincidence and loss. Their conversations keep the novel from becoming only a collection of Beatles facts. By the final chapter, the friendships forming around Paula begin to echo the Beatles’ own origins, giving the story a satisfying sense of renewal. The book’s leisurely, anecdotal structure means that it often feels like spending time with an enthusiastic fan who keeps remembering one more story, but that conversational quality is also central to its charm.
This book will appeal most to readers who already enjoy Beatles history and are open to seeing it rearranged into an imaginative new mythology. Fans who recognize the references, quotations, supporting figures, and small historical incidents will get the richest experience, especially those interested in Lennon and McCartney’s complicated creative bond. It should also suit readers who like gentle religious satire, alternate futures, and novels that mix ideas with character rather than racing through a tightly plotted adventure. The Word is a warm, funny meditation on fandom, faith, friendship, and the stories people build around the artists they love.
Pages: 313 | ASIN : B0H1YV676X
Creative Instinct
The Canvas We Share follows four lifelong friends who rediscover the value of friendship, honesty, and being seen when they reunite for an art exhibition two decades after attending art school together. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The inspiration was really life. I’ve been a full-time artist for many years, and I’ve been part of the art world since graduating with a painting degree in 2002. Over that time, I’ve experienced many of the same challenges my characters face, and I’ve watched friends and fellow artists go through similar journeys. While the story is set in the art world, it’s really about something much bigger. It’s about life, how friendships evolve over time, the dreams we chase, the ones we let go of, and the people who are there to help us through it all. I think whether you’re an artist or not, those experiences are something everyone can relate to.”
How did you develop these four distinct voices and journeys?
“Once I had a clear picture of who each of the four characters was, their voices really began to develop naturally. Each one has their own personality, struggles, and way of seeing the world. As a writer, you inevitably draw from your own experiences, the people around you, and the life you’ve lived, but these characters are still very much their own people.
I’ve always loved creating. Whether it was writing poetry, making up lyrics to songs, painting, or now writing novels, I’ve always enjoyed imagining stories and asking, ‘What happens next?’ I remember as a kid I would make up my own words to songs because I could already picture where I thought the story should go before it got there. In many ways, writing The Canvas We Share felt like a natural extension of that same creative instinct.”
How important was it for readers to feel as though they were spending time with a real group of friends?
“Very important. I wanted readers to feel like they weren’t just reading about these characters; I wanted them to feel like they were spending time with friends. I wanted readers to laugh with Daniel, Claire, Marcus, and Julian, hurt when they hurt, celebrate their victories, and genuinely care about where life takes them.
By the end of the book, my hope is that readers aren’t just closing the final page…they’re wondering, ‘What happens next?’ That’s really what friendship is. Even when you’re not together, you continue to care about the people in your life and hope the best for them. I wanted readers to have that same feeling with these four characters.”
Do the four friends still have more stories to tell?
“Absolutely. I’m already working on the second book, which picks up a couple of years after the end of The Canvas We Share. We step right back into their world, but this time the question isn’t, ‘Can they find themselves again?’ It’s, ‘What happens after that?’ What happens after recovery? After finding love? After achieving success? Life doesn’t stop when one chapter ends; it keeps moving.
That’s what the second book explores. Daniel, Claire, Marcus, and Julian still have careers to build, relationships to navigate, dreams to chase, and new challenges to face. Their lives are still unfolding, and I think they have a lot more stories to share with us.”
Author Links: GoodReads | Instagram | Facebook | Website | Amazon
“The Canvas We Share is ultimately a story about friendship. The art world provides the setting, but the heart of the novel is four friends navigating life, love, loss, and the complicated relationships that connect us long after our paths diverge.”When an unexpected invitation reunites four former art-school friends, none of them realizes what they’ve agreed to.
The exhibition was supposed to be simple—a chance to reconnect, share their work, and revisit a friendship that once shaped their lives. But as opening night approaches, old dynamics resurface, unspoken tensions rise, and each of them is forced to confront the choices, sacrifices, successes, and regrets that have defined the years since they last stood together.
Daniel is learning how to rebuild after loss. Claire is quietly questioning the life she chose. Marcus is holding everything together with charm—and something much heavier just beneath it. Julian is creating like everything depends on it…because it might.
Through love and loss, marriage and ambition, grief and hope, The Canvas We Share explores the ways friendships evolve over time and how the people who know us best often hold a mirror to who we have become. As old wounds resurface and long-buried truths emerge, each friend begins to question not only the path they have taken, but the life they still hope to build.
What begins on the canvas doesn’t stay there.
And not all of them will walk away unchanged.
The Canvas We Share is a story about friendship, vulnerability, forgiveness, and the enduring connections that shape our lives. Set against the backdrop of the contemporary art world, it reminds us that while careers, passions, and circumstances may change, the most important masterpiece is often the life we create together.
