Blog Archives
Fallible and Not Bulletproof
Jack Spetza – Flawed follows a fashion designer who uncovers her mother’s ancient secret and is pulled into a dangerous conspiracy involving lost history, time travel, advanced technology, and a mysterious soldier-author with hidden motives. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I wrote every day for a few hours just putting down ideas, and when Jack was born, the rate of words and scenarios increased exponentially.
Jack Spetza is a hero who is charming, flawed, dangerous, and unpredictable. What interested you about writing a protagonist who doesn’t fit the traditional heroic mold?
I just felt comfortable with having Jack be fallible and not bulletproof, because otherwise it wouldn’t be realistic, and with all of his experience, he could usually handle himself and most situations he ended up being in.
The novel balances action, humor, romance, science fiction, and historical mystery. Was maintaining that balance challenging, and how did you decide when to lean into each genre element?
I wrote every chapter like a short story, then as I got closer to the end of the book, I started putting each chapter in the place I thought made the most sense.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
Jack Spetza will ride again in the second and third books, with the second becoming available next year.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Drawn into a war that stretches across time itself, Jack is thrown together with Setrina La Touche, the woman he never truly got over and the heir to her mother’s research into an ancient tribe that mysteriously disappeared centuries ago.
From Parisian alleyways to hidden Moroccan caves, betrayal is constant, trust is rare, and every move sends ripples through past and future. Time doesn’t forgive, and there’s no clean way to get your hands dirty.
Jack Spetza – Flawed will keep you on the edge of your seat.
Jack Spetza – Flawed
In Jack Spetza: Flawed, A.S. Warnock sends fashion designer Setrina La Touché into the blast radius of her late mother’s buried archaeological secret: a glowing ancient tablet tied to Imhotep, missing Berber history, wormholes, corporate weaponry, and a soldier-turned-author named Jack Spetza who is far more dangerous than his book-launch charm suggests. What begins with grief, a stolen journal, and a Parisian reunion soon becomes a sprint through nanotech conspiracy, time travel, mercenaries, ancient prophecy, and the moral wreckage left behind when powerful people decide history is theirs to edit.
I enjoyed the book most when it lets its odd ingredients collide without apology. The story has the momentum of an action film that has been drinking espresso: Paris bookstores, Moroccan caves, Mech Mosquitoes, ancient Egyptian ambition, stolen artifacts, and gunfire all crowd the same stage. Setrina’s narration gives the chaos a personal sting. Her grief over Angelique is not ornamental; it’s the emotional bruise beneath the spectacle. Even when the plot is gleefully overstuffed, that mother-daughter fracture keeps the novel from floating away into pure gadgetry.
Jack is a deliberately messy hero, and that mess is part of the pleasure. He’s funny, bruised, lethal, romantic, evasive, and occasionally ridiculous in a way that makes him feel less polished than the standard thriller protagonist. The banter can be profane and broad, but it has personality, especially when Setrina pushes back against Jack’s swagger. I also liked Baya’s role as more than a historical curiosity; her presence gives the time-travel premise tenderness and danger. The book’s rough edges are visible, but so is its appetite. It wants to entertain, shock, flirt, philosophize, and blow something up, sometimes all on the same page.
This book is best for readers who like science fiction, time travel adventure, action thrillers, and conspiracy fiction with a comic, high-velocity edge. Fans of Clive Cussler’s artifact-hunting adventures or Michael Crichton’s techno-paranoia should find familiar pleasures here, though Warnock’s voice is rowdier, more Australian, and less clinically polished. Jack Spetza: Flawed is a wild and inventive ride.
Pages: 271 | ASIN : B0DJLF37RH
Lion’s Den
Lion’s Den is a work of dystopian political fiction with a strong coming-of-age thread, and it follows Johnny and Benny Salter after a brutal attack on their family dojo leaves their father dead and their lives split open. Set in a fractured Southern California shaped by earthquakes, tsunamis, secession politics, and street-level ideological conflict, the novel tracks grief, loyalty, revenge, and the question of what it means to inherit a legacy before you are ready for it. At its core, this is a story about two brothers trying to stay upright while the ground under them keeps shifting, both literally and emotionally.
Author Neil Citrin writes with real conviction about family, discipline, and belief, and that conviction gives the novel its engine. The dialogue can be direct, sometimes almost purposefully plain, but in a book like this that straightforwardness often works because the characters are living in survival mode. They do not have the luxury of being vague. I also liked how the novel keeps returning to Johnny’s interior balance, his breathing, his restraint, the way he tries to think while Benny burns hotter beside him. That contrast gives the story a human center. You feel the ache of grief in the pauses, in the small practical decisions, in the way these boys have to talk about trusts, schools, and housing while still reeling from loss.
I was also struck by the author’s choice to build the novel as both a personal drama and a broader political thought experiment. The alternate California, with its damaged infrastructure, breakaway pressures, and ideological camps, gives the book a tense backdrop that is more than decoration. It shapes how people talk, where they can travel, whom they trust, and what danger looks like day to day. I wanted the political material to breathe a little more and let the characters step out from under it, but I also understood why Citrin kept it so close. For him, it clearly is the weather of the book. Everything happens inside it. The martial arts thread helps too. It gives the novel a code, not just action. Discipline matters. Legacy matters. Control matters. Even revenge is treated less like a thrill and more like a test of character, which I appreciated.
Lion’s Den will speak most strongly to readers who enjoy character-driven speculative fiction, especially stories that blend family loyalty, civic conflict, and martial arts into one narrative line. It’s earnest, steady, and deeply invested in the moral choices its characters face. I would recommend it most to readers who like dystopian fiction that stays close to the heart, as well as to anyone interested in stories about brothers, inheritance, and the hard work of deciding what kind of person to be after loss.
Pages: 239 | ASIN : B0GKHF8NFK
Tailor-Made for Historical Fiction
Operation South Pacific traces how James A. Michener transformed wartime experience into Tales of the South Pacific—and how those stories became South Pacific, a landmark musical that dared to confront racism on the American stage. What drew you to James Michener as a subject for historical fiction?
I’ve followed the life of James Michener for over twenty years. I spent four years researching and writing his biography (2005). I have always been impressed and inspired by his dedication to his craft, and it was his duty in the South Pacific that launched his extraordinary career. Over the fifty-year span of his career and in many of his novels he explored the culture and history of the nations of the world. It was his beginnings in World War 2 to the debut of the musical South Pacific that I find the most compelling. Such a courageous ascent on his part was tailor-made for historical fiction.
What surprised you most during research about the Pacific theater?
One of the surprising things I found about Michener was the number of people he encountered during his tour of duty. He met Melanesians, Polynesians, Tonkinese, Japanese, naval personnel and civilians.
These diverse voices helped provide the depth and veracity of his first novel Tales of the South Pacific.
How did you balance documented history with imaginative reconstruction?
I was very careful to stick to the truth. Why? Because the truth in this case was far more interesting and surprising than any sensationalism I could have added to the scenes or dialogue. That is why I tried to balance the historical record of the war with the personal lives of his central characters.
What is one thing that you hope readers take away from Operation South Pacific?
Of all the writers I have studied, I have not found any backstory more engrossing than James Michener’s rise to fame. If there is one thing I would like to readers to come away with, it is this. If you want to be a writer, dive into the task, absorb as much as you can about your fictional environment, keep steady, believe in your mission, and don’t waste time worrying about becoming a best-selling writer. And who knows, you just might create something of value that readers love, and editors admire. Perhaps, like James Michener, unimaginable and wonderful results will come from your efforts.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
While attempting to write about his war experiences and fulfill his military obligations, Lt. Michener encounters several unforgettable characters: a churlish Tomkinese field worker named Bloody Mary; a patriotic French planter willing to fight for the Free French in the islands; a remarkable American nurse who will change his life; and a motley but valorous band of fighting men.
This is the inspiring account of how one man with a story to tell rose from complete obscurity to become one of the most honored and distinguished writers of the past century. Fighting self-doubt and the blanket indifference of the book industry, Michener published Tales of the South Pacific in 1946. The novel eventually attracted the attention of Broadway superstars Rodgers and Hammerstein, who adapted his prize winning account into the one of the great stage musicals of all time, South Pacific.
In this story based on true events, James Michener overcomes whatever obstacles are placed in his way by using his creative bravery, his Quaker humility, and his uncompromising search for the truth to win the hearts and minds of his readers.
Operation South Pacific is a must read for all aspiring authors and artists.
Operation South Pacific: The War Epic That Became a Rodgers and Hammerstein Sensation
Stephen J. May’s Operation South Pacific is a hybrid war-and-theater chronicle that follows James “Jim” Michener from a troopship ride into the Pacific “volcano” to the improbable afterlife of his wartime stories on Broadway. The novel opens with Michener arriving in the South Pacific on the Cape Victory, sick with dread and noticing how quickly men oscillate between childish ritual and mortal fear, then tracks his assignment under Captain Bill Stevenson, flying, inspecting, mediating, and gathering the human material that will later harden into Tales of the South Pacific. From there, the book pivots to the postwar scene: producers, contracts, rehearsals, and the long negotiation that turns Michener’s episodic war stories into Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific, including the decision to confront racism in the love stories rather than sand it down for comfort.
My strongest reaction, early on, was relief at the book’s refusal to glamorize war while still admitting its strange, intermittent beauty. May gives the Pacific the texture of a place you can almost smell, mangroves, monsoon mud, cheap coffee, and he lets Michener’s mind run in two directions at once: toward the military map and toward the sentence. A small mission, like checking on a silent Coastwatcher, becomes a neat capsule of the whole enterprise: danger, absurdity, dependence on local knowledge, and the thin thread of competence that keeps people alive. I also liked how the book keeps returning to “support” characters, engineers, medics, sailors, even the men who show up half-broken to watch a scrappy island-stage production, so the war doesn’t shrink into a single heroic silhouette.
In the second half, my enjoyment came from the whiplash: watching art get manufactured out of pain without becoming purely cynical about it. The Broadway chapters have a brisk, backstage electricity, auditions, money talk, egos, and the mild menace of deadlines, yet May keeps the moral stakes visible. When Rodgers and Hammerstein talk through the racial prejudice braided into Nellie/Emile and Cable/Liat, you can feel the gamble: not just “Will this sell?” but “Will this land without lying?” And there’s a sly satisfaction in seeing the machinery of mythmaking laid bare, how “Bali Ha’i” can be both a painted illusion and a serious attempt at truth, depending on who’s looking.
I think this will be perfect for readers who like historical fiction, war epic, biographical novel, Broadway history, and literary backstage drama, especially if you are curious about how lived experience gets alchemized into cultural legend. If you enjoy the big-sweep, place-soaked storytelling of James Michener (or the show-business saga feel of something like The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, but traded into mid-century theater), this will scratch the same itch while keeping its boots muddy.
Pages: 274 | ASIN : B0G4B365JT
Death in the Long Shadows
Death in the Long Shadows is a slow-burn, immersive novel that follows Paul Thayer, an American hunter on safari in Namibia, as he confronts dangerous game, personal fear, and the moral weight of killing. What begins as a traditional African hunting story steadily deepens into a psychological and ethical reckoning. The plot moves through camp politics, tense stalks, and encounters with buffalo, crocodiles, and men who hunt for the wrong reasons. By the end, the book feels less about trophies and more about identity, restraint, and the thin line between respect and destruction.
What I noticed right away was the way Flavin takes his time on the page. He doesn’t rush anything. He sits with moments longer than most writers would, and surprisingly, it worked for me. The opening scene under the baobab tree, with the shadows stretching across camp and the obnoxious hunter bragging by the fire, immediately sets the mood. The prose is dense but deliberate. You can smell dust and gun oil. You can hear insects and distant lions. At times, the descriptions run long, especially during travel scenes or landscape passages, yet they also ground the story in place. Africa here isn’t romantic wallpaper. It feels watchful and indifferent. I found myself slowing down as a reader, which felt intentional, like the book was forcing me to adopt safari time instead of rushing ahead.
The characters are where the book really clicks for me. Paul Thayer is not a swaggering hero. He doubts himself constantly. He second-guesses shots. He reflects on past hunts and missed kills. That internal tension made him feel real. The contrast with Dirk, the loud, cruel client who shoots a tame lechwe named Rufus, is sharp and effective. That scene bothered me in a good way. The casual cruelty of it sticks. Johan, the professional hunter, is another standout. He balances patience, anger, and duty in a way that feels earned. His quiet disgust after the hippo incident and his reaction to Rufus’s death say more than any speech could. I felt frustration alongside him.
The ideas in the book stayed with me longer than the action. Flavin keeps circling the difference between hunting and killing. He does it through dialogue, memory, and comparison. Paul’s reflection on the Idaho deer that eat human-salted grass is a small moment, but sticks with you. So does the recurring discomfort around buffalo, the so-called Black Death. The buffalo are not monsters, yet they are not symbols either. They are just there. Dangerous. Alive. When Paul finally faces them, the tension feels earned because of all the buildup, fear, and hesitation layered before that point. I appreciated that the book never rushes the moral questions or tries to tidy them up.
By the end, I felt quiet rather than thrilled. That feels right. This book isn’t for readers looking for nonstop action or easy heroics. It’s best for people who like reflective fiction, ethical gray areas, and vivid settings. Hunters will recognize the details. Non-hunters who are open-minded will still find a lot to chew on. If you enjoy novels that take their time, ask uncomfortable questions, and let landscapes shape the story, this one is worth the read.
Pages: 98 | ASIN : B0G5LFMBXG
Respect for Nature
Walk With Me follows a former park ranger and his grandson who bond through hikes and camping trips, and through their adventures learn valuable lessons about passing down knowledge, love, and courage. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Walk With Me was inspired by my three grandsons, and I dedicated the book to them. As they’ve grown, I have tried to be their window to the outdoors, and it has rounded my life in amazing ways.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Important to me in my novella is the passing of valuable information – life skills – from one generation to the other. Respect for nature is a critical concept to pass on to all who will read my novel.
What experience in your life has had the most significant impact on your writing?
Influence from my parents, especially my mother, who encouraged my passion for written expression.
What story are you currently in the middle of writing?
I’ve written books in many genres, and Walk With Me is my latest. My favorite genre to write is historical fiction, and my thoughts are trending there again. Time will tell…
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
Stone Warrior
Stone Warrior is a sweeping fantasy tale that follows Thurgan, a grizzled, no-nonsense mercenary with a hidden nobility, as he’s drawn into a web of political scheming, war, and unexpected companionship. The story begins with a deadly power struggle for the throne of Surigard and unfolds through battles, alliances, betrayals, and a quiet yearning for purpose and peace. Along the way, Thurgan finds himself aligned with Lady Erina Pannek, a ruler fighting against imperial injustice, and Aelensha Woods, a sharp-tongued Rodoan girl escaping her past. Together, they march across a world plagued by ambition, bloodshed, and the faint promise of hope.
The writing is gritty, vivid, and often brutal in its honesty. I loved how Christy doesn’t waste time with fluff. The dialogue has real weight, and the pacing keeps the reader on edge without sacrificing worldbuilding. Thurgan especially shines, and not as your typical fantasy hero. He’s rough, sarcastic, and painfully grounded. There’s a kind of stubborn tenderness to him that’s hard not to root for. The emotional core of the story, his reluctant sense of duty and reluctant acceptance of his own goodness, hits surprisingly deep. The battle scenes are raw, fast, and heavy. But it’s the quiet moments—like a cold night in a tent or a shared meal after a bloody fight—that really resonates emotionally.
The book’s depth comes in waves. It’s a long read, and while I enjoyed the prose, some chapters did wander a bit, particularly when the politics got too thick or new names flew at me faster than I could track. What really kept me reading was the way the novel balanced raw masculinity with introspection. It’s a war story, sure, but it’s also about being lost and found, about what it means to fight for something beyond survival. Christy doesn’t moralize, but you can tell there’s heart behind every brutal swing of Thurgan’s axe.
I’d recommend Stone Warrior to fans of grounded epic fantasy who crave more grit than glitter. If you like your heroes scarred, your villains complex, and your battles to feel like they matter, this one’s for you. Especially good for readers who enjoyed The First Law trilogy or The Black Company.
Pages: 252 | ASIN : B0CK7M7PFS
