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There Is An Unseen World

Bob Leone Author Interview

Shadow Walkers follows a married couple who are pulled into a spiritual war in which gifted women and their paladin partners answer to an old sacred order. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

There is an unseen world, not just something whispered about in sermons, but something real, organized, and ancient. This unseen world does have rules, hierarchy, and even strategy. So, to counterbalance this I came up with the concept of gifted women and their paladins. Theirs was a blend of faith, responsibility, and partnership.

And then I asked the more personal question: what would that kind of calling do to a marriage? Because at its core, Shadow Walkers isn’t just about demons. It’s about two people who love each other deeply, trying to navigate a life that keeps asking more of them than feels fair. That tension—that “we didn’t sign up for this, but we’re here anyway”—was really the spark.

Lisa is portrayed as capable but also uncertain and burdened. What drew you to writing a leader who wrestles with doubt? 

Because everyone has flaws and strengths. Lisa’s strength isn’t that she’s fearless—it’s that she feels the weight of every decision and keeps going anyway. She knows people can get hurt based on what she chooses. She knows she doesn’t have all the answers. And yet… she still steps forward. It mirrors faith in a way. You don’t always feel certain, but you move forward because you believe you’re being called to.

The story shifts between intense action and moments of humor and tenderness. How do you approach balancing those tones? 

I’ve been in combat, in Vietnam. Conflicts don’t happen in one tone. Even in the middle of something terrifying, someone cracks a joke. Someone reaches for a hand. Someone says something completely ridiculous just to break the tension.

Jason, especially, became my anchor for that balance, and then the quieter moments—the tenderness, the marriage, the little bits of normal life—they’re not breaks from the story. They are the reason the story matters. If you don’t care about the relationship, the stakes don’t land.

Who do you most hope connects with this book—fans of fantasy, readers of Christian fiction, or both?

I wrote Shadow Walkers for readers who want action, mystery, supernatural tension, and a little pinch of romance. But they also want meaning underneath it. Readers who enjoy a good battle scene and a conversation about purpose. Readers who laugh at a well-timed joke and then sit quietly with something deeper a page later. And maybe, most of all, I wrote it for people who just want a story about love that holds steady, even when everything else gets a little apocalyptic.

Author Links: Website | Amazon

Lisa Parks is not your average pastor’s wife. Beneath the surface of her quiet life in Cloverville lies a dangerous calling: she is a Demon Hunter. Armed with a celestial sword and shield invisible to the mortal eye, she leads a secret team of “Gifted” women—miracle workers, prophetesses, and healers—on missions to police the unseen world.
But the rules have changed.
When the team’s spiritual gifts refuse to go dormant after a routine mission, Lisa knows a “great evil upheaval” is coming. The summons arrives from the regal Dorinda Fletcher: the team must deploy to Haiti. A powerful bokor named Alqadim has risen, commanding an army of the possessed, ancient demons, and a relentless horde of the undead.
To fight a physical war in a spiritual realm, the Gifted are joined by their Paladins—husbands and protectors armed with high-tech, non-lethal weaponry designed to incapacitate the possessed without taking innocent lives.

The Phoenix CODEX: 138 Palindromic Mirror Edition Complete Phoenix Chronicles: Complete Phoenix Chronicles: A Trilogy of Trilogies

The Phoenix Codex: 138 Palindromic Mirror Edition is a speculative science-fiction thriller with strong elements of conspiracy fiction, metaphysical fantasy, horror, and mythic adventure. At its center is Dr. Natori Saira Evren, a synesthetic researcher drawn into a hidden pattern of Phoenix cycles, ancient Egyptian consciousness technology, alien hunters, simulation theory, and recurring resets every 138 years. The book presents itself not just as a story, but as a codex, a puzzle box, and a ritual object, with its mirrored structure, sacred numbers, and recurring symbols shaping the reading experience as much as the plot itself.

The book is committed to its own mythology. It doesn’t ease the reader in gently. It opens with pain, blood, classified files, impossible geometry, and a heroine who is already half legend before we really know her. That choice gives the novel a charged, feverish energy. Sometimes it works beautifully. The world feels huge, dangerous, and strangely magnetic, like every room has a hidden door and every number is whispering. The book wants to explain its patterns, prove them, dramatize them, and make the reader feel implicated in them all at once. That’s ambitious, but it can also be overwhelming at times.

The writing is at its best when it trusts atmosphere and image. Copper, burnt cinnamon, cold concrete, humming frequencies, jungle silence, blood on leaves: those details make the strange ideas feel physical. I could feel the book trying to turn paranoia into texture. The author’s biggest choice, though, is structural. The palindromic design, the 138-year cycle, the ascending and descending arcs, and the central mirror are not decorative. They’re the book’s engine. Even when I questioned some of the repeated exposition, I could see the purpose behind it. This is genre fiction that wants the form to become part of the spell. It’s a story about recursion.

I would recommend The Phoenix Codex most to readers who enjoy big, strange, high-concept speculative fiction, especially people drawn to ancient mysteries, secret histories, simulation ideas, cosmic horror, and books that blur the line between novel, artifact, and prophecy. Readers who like genre fiction that swings hard, builds its own symbolic language, and treats conspiracy, myth, and science fiction as parts of the same burning machine, this book has a fierce pull.

Pages: 501 | ASIN : B0GBVLRVXP

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What Defines Us As Human

Marjorie Kaye Noble Author Interview

The Dark Side of Dreams follows a woman who resurrects her grandfather’s mind to expose a corrupted digital afterlife built on power, memory, and control. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

The Dark Side of Dreams is the stand-alone sequel to Babylon Dreams. Corporate greed and the influence of technology on government are central themes, but the most important questions are what defines us as human and how we see ourselves. The first book was a character study of Gunter Holden, who uploaded himself to his custom digital paradise, Bali Hai, only to face corporate erasure. Unlike Gunter, his granddaughter Mira never imagines a perfect world. When she learns Gunter made a copy of his mind before his deletion, she is determined to find it. Using a device that records and replays her dreams, she finds a clue leading to this hidden copy. When she uploads him to the desolate VR landscape of Shemathra’s Realm, they both risk terrible consequences. In exchange for his help, Mira promises to tell Gunter the truth about the past he never lived.

Mira is ambitious, driven, and morally complex. How did you shape her as the emotional center of the novel?

Both Gunter and Mira grew up without mothers, but while Gunter avoided those memories, Mira secretly hopes hers is still alive. Mira was a lonely child, rejected by her adopted family and neglected by her distant father, leading her to yearn for an identity based on family. Discovering her grandfather was Gunter Holden, the pioneer of the after-death industry, she becomes determined to reclaim his stolen company, VEI, from the corporation SEINI. Her relationship with Gunter is complex; she initially bullies and threatens him to get his cooperation, appearing to him as an AI through a high-tech garment. However, her love for her partner Henry and her deep yearning for connection eventually transform her relationship with her grandfather from one of threats to genuine care.

What first inspired the idea of a corporate-controlled digital afterlife, and how did you approach building a world where death is optional but still deeply unequal?

I was originally inspired by an article on mind-uploading by futurist Ray Kurzweil, which described uploading a mind copy to a VR world. Coming from a background in film production, I was already familiar with “manufactured reality”. I became intrigued by the aftermath of such technology—what happens when life (digital) goes on after the initial choices are made? In the novel, the digital afterlife is a lucrative industry with cutting-edge “paradise” add-ons for the wealthy and “economy plans” for others. This begets new laws and complications, creating a world where even death is subject to inequality.

What is the next book that you are working on, and when can your fans expect it to be out?

As I wrote Mira’s story, I wanted to know how mind-uploading technology changed the outside world. As her story resolved, I was intrigued by characters that waited quietly in the corners—androids with human mind-uploads. Will humanity stretch to meet and accept a new version of ourselves? Prejudices, fears, and conflict are inevitable, but I’m exploring what else might happen. I won’t know for sure until I’m closer to finishing Dream Voyagers, which I expect to be out in the Spring of 2027. I like to stop and look at the world I’m imagining.

Author Links: Website | Amazon

The Dark Side of Dreams is the haunting sequel to Babylon Dreams, exploring the true value of human life in a world where death has become optional.
In the high-stakes business of after-death virtual reality, who protects the vulnerable? To escape a digital hellscape of his own making, Gunter Holden—a pioneer of the industry—once chose deletion. A century later, his descendant Mira discovers a preserved copy of his mind-upload.
Mira is convinced her grandfather’s empire was stolen and is determined to reclaim it. But Shemathra is no paradise; citizens must pay tribute to a ruthless Goddess or face agonizing deletion. To expose the systemic violations of VR law, Mira re-uploads Gunter into this blighted, privatized heaven. To earn his freedom, Gunter must witness and record the unspeakable crimes occurring within the system he helped create.
As he wanders a landscape of stolen memories and digital trauma, Gunter strives for a moral awakening. In a future that feels both unsettling and deeply human, will it be enough to save them both?

The Dark Side of Dreams

The Dark Side of Dreams is a big, idea-heavy science fiction novel that still knows how to move. It drops the reader into a future where after-death virtual reality has become its own battleground of corporate greed, surveillance, inheritance, and identity, and it does so through Mira Patel, a woman trying to outmaneuver a brutal system from the inside. What makes the book compelling is that it’s not built around a single gimmick. It’s a story about who gets to shape reality, who gets erased from it, and what happens when family legacy becomes both a weapon and a burden. The setup alone, with Mira uncovering a hidden copy of her grandfather Gunter Holden and using it to challenge the nightmare realm that grew out of his lost empire, gives the novel a strong pulse from the start.

What really gives the book its identity, though, is its world. Author Marjorie Noble doesn’t treat the future as sleek wallpaper. She fills it with clutter, relics, memory tech, corrupted paradise programs, and the unnerving logic of a digital afterlife run like bad infrastructure. That contrast is one of the book’s best qualities. A closet full of artifacts can matter as much as a virtual domain, and a line like “Not every search is an adventure. Some things want to be found.” lands because it captures the novel’s whole mood: discovery here is never clean, and the past is never truly past. The world feels layered rather than decorative, and that gives the story a lived-in strangeness that sticks.

Mira is also the right center for this book. She’s ambitious, wounded, stubborn, and often sharper than the people around her, but she’s not flattened into a stock rebel heroine. Her connection to Gunter Holden gives the novel one of its most interesting tensions. She wants justice, power, and restoration, but she’s also drawn to the same force of will that made him dangerous. That family resemblance gives the story real energy. Gunter’s presence as both ancestor and digital copy turns the novel into something more interesting than a standard fight against a villain. It becomes a conversation across generations about responsibility, ego, and reinvention.

The book’s style can be dense, but in a way that suits what it’s trying to do. Noble likes layering plot threads, histories, and invented systems, and the result is a novel that asks the reader to stay alert. Still, there’s an emotional thread running under all the tech and intrigue that keeps it human. Even in the middle of all the schemes, copies, and virtual punishments, the book keeps circling back to longing, grief, and the need to be seen clearly by someone else.

The Dark Side of Dreams is a thoughtful, dramatic, highly imaginative novel about power over memory and life after death. It’s a cybernetic family saga, a corporate dystopia, and a haunted inheritance story all at once. What I liked most is that it keeps its attention on what kind of world is being built and who gets trapped inside it. Noble clearly has a lot on her mind, but the book doesn’t feel abstract. It feels personal. That’s why the novel works. For all its virtual architecture and speculative machinery, it’s really about people trying to reclaim authorship over their lives, their dead, and their dreams.

Pages: 341 | ASIN : B0FYR41ZTM

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Adventures and Missions During Astral Projection

In Adventures and Missions During Astral Projection author Steve R. Fleming walks through a lifetime of strange nighttime experiences and turns them into a kind of spiritual sci-fi memoir. The book moves from a UFO encounter in 1977 to early out-of-body episodes in shifting bedrooms, then into structured “training,” missions, and finally a psychic war with entities named Red-1, Red-2, and Rage. We get scenes of life-implantation labs on prehistoric Earth, assassinations in an in-between world, and quieter vignettes where he drifts through cities, bars, and alien landscapes before snapping back to his bed with that recurring line, “I was back in bed.”

I enjoyed the way the book is written. The prose is clean and vivid, with lots of concrete detail. I could see the rural Montana highway, the insulation in the ceiling, the row houses with angry faces in the windows. The repeated pattern of build-up, wild experience, hard cut back to the bedroom gave the whole thing a nice rhythm. It felt like reading mission reports and dreams at the same time. The flip side is that the structure leans into episodes. Many chapters end right when things get juicy. The preface warns me about that and explains why, but I still caught myself wanting a bit more connective tissue, a bit more reflection right in the moment instead of after the fact. Sometimes the fight scenes with Rage and the various “terminations” started to blur together, even though each one has a different setting.

I liked the notion of an “in-between world” where actions echo back into people’s lives and twist their futures. The idea that Rage and the narrator do not kill people but burn out the evil in them is unsettling and oddly compassionate at the same time. I felt a real tug of tension there. Part of me was cheering when a serial killer’s path gets cut short, or a corrupt commander goes down. Another part of me sat with the ethical mess of it. Is this justice, redemption, or something closer to cosmic vigilantism. I also appreciated the sections where he separates OBEs from hypnagogic hallucinations and sleep paralysis and talks about fear, emotion-feeding entities, and how staying calm can dissolve them. Those parts felt grounded and oddly practical, and they gave some balance to the more operatic astral battles.

By the end I felt like I had taken a long, strange trip with someone who genuinely wrestles with what he experiences, not just someone chasing thrills. The tone stays sincere, even when the scenes get wild or pulpy. I would recommend this book to readers who enjoy metaphysical adventure, spiritual memoirs with a sci-fi flavor, or personal accounts of OBEs and sleep phenomena. If you are open to a mix of heartfelt testimony, moral wrestling, and cosmic action scenes, it is a fascinating ride.

Pages: 205| ASIN : B0GDPK1BKS

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The Soul’s Reckoning

The Soul’s Reckoning follows Charlotte Elisabeth as she passes through the Barrier into a vivid, confusing, and emotional afterlife. She travels through stunning flower fields, meets a strange calico guide, and collides with old wounds that stretch from her family to the spiritual beings watching over her. The story shows her struggle to grasp her new form, face the truth of her first death, and confront relationships she thought she had left behind. The book blends cosmic mystery with raw memory and pushes Charlotte toward a reckoning she never expected.

Reading this felt like being pulled into someone’s dream and sitting there with my heart in my throat. The writing swings between soft, bright moments and sharp emotional punches. I found myself leaning in during scenes where Charlotte battles her own disbelief because the author captures that messy mix of fear, awe, and irritation so well. I loved the strange charm of the world-building. The cat who talks in feelings, the towering flowers, the people who know her before she knows herself. It all surprised me and made me grin even when the story turned heavy. The pacing sometimes jolted around, yet that uneven rhythm matched Charlotte’s inner chaos, so I rolled with it.

The book tackles death in such a personal way that I felt myself tensing up, then softening as Charlotte pushes through each truth she avoided in life. I was moved by the mix of grief, wonder, and unexpected humor. I also caught myself getting frustrated on her behalf when Heaven came across as bossy or confusing. That tension hooked me. I wanted her to find her footing, and I wanted the people around her to stop lecturing her. The author’s voice carries a lot of honesty, and that honesty hit hard.

I walked away feeling like I had watched someone peel back the layers of their own soul. The journey is strange in the best way. I would recommend The Soul’s Reckoning to readers who enjoy emotional fantasy, introspective stories about life after death, and character-driven narratives that sit close to the bone. If you like books that make you feel a little off balance, a little curious, and a lot reflective, this one is worth your time.

Pages: 369 | ASIN : B0G3DW3DH9

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Riddles of the Ancestors

Riddles of the Ancestors is a mythic fantasy novel rooted in Arthurian legend and spiritual fiction. The story follows Merlin and his sister Ganieda across timelines, from a magical Foretime to modern-day London, as they protect the secrets of the Round Table and work to activate an ancient star-coded template called Logres. Along the way, druids, goddesses, healers, and everyday people are drawn into a larger unfolding meant to heal the Earth and usher in a new age of balance.

This book felt less like racing through a plot and more like being invited into a long, winding conversation with myth itself. Sullivan’s writing moves gently, often lingering on gardens, sacred landscapes, and quiet moments of recognition between characters. I found myself slowing down as I read. The author seems less interested in suspense than in atmosphere and meaning. At times, the story reads like a modern-day fairy tale layered with Celtic lore, astrology, and goddess wisdom. If you enjoy mythic fantasy that feels devotional rather than dramatic, this book leans into that space.

What stood out most to me was Sullivan’s choice to center Ganieda and other feminine figures alongside Merlin. The emphasis on healing, collaboration, and remembrance gives the book a softer pulse than traditional Arthurian retellings. Some scenes feel almost ceremonial, like stepping into a candlelit room where symbols matter as much as actions. Occasionally, I wished for sharper tension or more restraint with exposition, especially when spiritual concepts were explained directly rather than shown. Still, there is sincerity here. The book believes deeply in what it is saying, and that conviction carries it forward.

Riddles of the Ancestors will resonate most with readers who enjoy mythic fantasy, spiritual fiction, and reimagined Arthurian legends infused with goddess traditions and New Age themes. It is for readers who like to wander, reflect, and sit with big ideas about time, memory, and the living Earth. If you enjoy stories that feel like modern myths meant to be felt as much as understood, this book is worth your time.

Pages: 375 | ASIN : B0FW9G2ZVN

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Fight For What Matters

Travis Hupp Author Interview

American Entropy is a collection of poetry that swings from political outcry to spiritual yearning, from queer love to existential doubt, and ignites readers’ desire to fight for what matters. What inspired you to write this particular collection of poems?

It was largely just paying attention to the news and seeing how every day, Trump is violating the Constitution, trying to force universities and museums to adopt right-wing propaganda and treat it as fact. Like all fascist authoritarians, Trump hates it when truths that contradict his lies proliferate, so I felt it important to do my part to tell those truths.

Doing it in a way that makes readers want to fight for what matters, rather than just dwelling on the darkness of modern American life, was important to me too, because if you don’t focus on what we still have, it becomes all too easy for people to give up.

The poems about love, metaphysical, spiritual topics, and queer love are all just examples of me writing what I know.

Your poetry tackles deeply emotional and politically volatile topics while also touching on hope for the future. How do you approach writing about deeply personal or emotional topics?

“Power through and write what’s true,” like it says in the poem “It’s Not Too Late.” I just get it out onto the page as accurately as I can before giving myself a chance to question how honest is too honest. I feel like if I’m too reserved in writing my poetry it won’t be as relatable, and the reader will be able to tell I’m holding something back, and it won’t foster empathy as much as I hope my work does by being unflinchingly honest.

How has this poetry book changed you as a writer, or what did you learn about yourself through writing it?

This book really crystalized for me that poetry is an important type of resistance, which is something I think my work has always been when it comes to fighting heteronormativity and homophobia and other bigotries, but this is the first time I’ve dedicated so much of any one poetry collection to raging against one corrupt administration and detailing all the ways it’s trampling our rights and waging war against the American people.

I’ve learned about myself that I really just don’t give up no matter what, and I can help others not give up either.

What is one thing that you hope readers take away from American Entropy?

That this isn’t normal, the way Trump is shredding the Constitution and speaking to our worst natures, and the way Republicans in Congress and conservative Supreme Court justices are complicit in enabling it. That it’s bigoted Nazi fascism, and we don’t have to just roll over and take it.

Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Amazon

If you’re seeking acknowledgment of the dark times we’re living in and hope for a brighter tomorrow, you’ll find both in American Entropy. This collection of poetry stands with the marginalized, finds glimpses of God amid ruins, and rages against the rise of authoritarianism in America. It presents anger as a necessity and politics as an oppressive, stupefying farce.

Through explorations of the metaphysical, religion, and relationships, the poems delve into both darkness and the light born of efforts to expand human consciousness. Despair is given unflinching witness, making the discovery of hope all the more profound. And love—raw, imperfect, and essential—is celebrated as a balm for our plugged-in yet detached modern lives.

If you’re disillusioned with an America sliding toward fascism and the strain it places on relationships, American Entropy may reignite your fire to keep fighting for what matters, keep loving, and hold faith in something greater than ourselves.