Blog Archives
Our Unconcious Mind
Operation Archer follows a grieving engineer searching for healing through hypnotherapy, who finds himself time-traveling back to 1940’s Nazi Germany, where he has to stop history from being rewritten. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The story was inspired by an incident when I was taking part in a hypnotherapy course in Birmingham in December 1998. We were doing a module called Automatic Writing. The idea was that we would all go into trance while holding a pencil over a notepad and our unconscious mind would write down useful information about the issue we had in mind. However, what happened to me was amazing. I wrote an Airman’s Diary from 1944 which extended to several pages. It featured details of being on an RAF base in 1944 and a subsequent Lancaster bombing mission over Berlin. Soon after this another person doing the course (who was a clairvoyant) carried out past — life regression hypnosis on me and discovered that I had apparently lived before as an RAF bomber pilot in1944. I had died on a mission over Berlin when my Lancaster bomber exploded after being struck by cannon shells from a German night fighter. I never forgot this incident and when I was planning my first novel I thought it would be a suitable inspiration for the plot. I thought : ‘What would happen if someone was hypnotically regressed back to 1944 and really did travel back in time and then they couldn’t get back to the present day?’ Things developed from there and I added the plot point that the hero Simon is suffering trauma caused by his wife’s death. I also added another story thread in which Simon takes part in a Special Forces raid on a German underground factory. The factory is manufacturing German flying saucers which can travel at 5000 miles an hour and win the war for Germany. Later Simon discovers that these craft can also travel in time and pass into parallel universes.
What emotional parallels did you see between bomber crews and Simon’s internal state?
RAF and USAAF bomber crews in WW2 often suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD), now called simply post-traumatic stress, because of the dangers involved in flying a poorly- defended bomber over enemy territory against massive opposition from enemy fighter planes and anti-aircraft fire. Simon is clearly suffering from PTSD as a result of his wife’s preventable death and he has treatment from a hypnotherapist in Glasgow. So there are indeed parallels between bomber crews and Simon’s mental state.
Operation Archer moves between historical fiction, sci-fi, and psychological drama. Did you ever worry about fitting into a single genre?
Operation Archer is a unique book because it straddles several genres. There is World War Two action adventure rather like the Alistair MacLean thriller ‘Where Eagles Dare.’ There is also a time travel element, plus a love story at the core of the book and also Simon’s journey to recover from his grief. I was aware that this is a multi-genre book but that is what makes it so interesting.
Do you see Simon’s journey as healing, redemption, acceptance, or something more ambiguous?
Simon is on a personal journey during the book. When we consider the plot it could be described as boy meets girl, boy loses girl because she dies , boy meets girl again by going back in time into a parallel universe. Boy then loses girl, but he subsequently returns to the near past and meets girl again. He then manages to save the love of his life from a preventable death but unfortunately this action has tragic consequences for Simon but in the last sentence of the book there is a surprise ending which I think ties up all the loose ends and will leave all readers with a smile on their face.
Author Links: Amazon | Website
It is 1940s Europe, and Nazi Germany is close to deploying the Haunebu, a secret flying-saucer weapon capable of 5000 mph, technology that would hand Hitler victory. Recruited into a daring commando raid behind enemy lines, Simon must help destroy the Haunebu in its underground base before it changes the course of history.
As he fights SS soldiers, deadly air attacks and a dangerous escape across enemy territory, supported by Susan, a courageous woman who becomes his ally and unexpected love, Simon must survive long enough to save Britain and find a way home.
A gripping blend of military action, WW2 intrigue and time-travel sci-fi, Operation Archer delivers high-stakes suspense for fans of Where Eagles Dare, The Guns of Navarone, and alternate-history war thrillers.
A Motif of Connection
Passages follows a man from his childhood in Greece through the challenges of his family’s history to his career as a physician caring for veterans. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The factual history of a naval combat vessel active in the Vietnam conflict provided a motif of connection between principal characters, neatly laying down a plot line that would intertwine their rites of passage. The aging naval combat veteran and the young psychiatrist encounter one another under duress at parallel crossroads in their lives as their therapeutic relationship unfolds.
Can you share with us a little about the research that went into shaping your storyline?
My own training in medicine and the military provided a firm floor for a realistic representation of the formative milieu of the two protagonists. Structured interviews with sailors who were in the fight provided supportive resources on events, equipment, and tactics, and helped sharpen the context of combat events as well as the personal aftermath on the return to civilian life. Drawing on contemporaneous events in the news of Tulsa, Oklahoma served up a scenario for the make-or-break challenge that sets the story line in motion.
What was one scene in the novel that you felt captured the morals and message you were trying to deliver to readers?
Of many scenes that make a statement of conviction, an epiphany for many readers will arise from AJ’s description of the ramifications that the hyperfocus of battle can have on a young man much later in life.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
The likely next release involves four women growing up together on Staten Island and lessons of empathy learned through their deep bonds. Look again in 6-12 months for Four Corners!
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook
Miko, the precocious son of a Greek fisherman, has weathered an indecisive path to adulthood in medicine and psychiatry. . . or has he? Dormant in his soul is a muse for writing and a smoldering guilt of abandoning his father. His training trajectory finds him in Tulsa, USA, of all places, where a 2 a.m. hospital admission, the aging, drunk, and potentially violent Vietnam veteran AJ becomes the young physician’s patient. A metaphysical quirk awaits them.
Unwitting confidants in the quest to understand what each is missing, the two trade insights best borne from meeting the other where he is. AJ is a prisoner of the exhilarating echoes of a confusing war; Miko suppresses his own psychological turmoil while exposing that of others.
A chance meeting of their wives leads to a bond kept hidden under norms of confidentiality. Each woman finds something of themselves in the other and the moxie to withstand battles in their own marriages, on their own terms.
Why AJ was brought to the hospital by the police that night pits a sense of duty against self-destruction. Why was there but a single round in his Luger that night?
In Passages, the author takes aim at our enigmatic humanity. Each of us is the hero in his or her own life, a contrast of magnificence and flaws, navigating the complexity of principles and barriers as best one can.
At once philosophical and deeply human, Passages explores identity, trauma, loyalty, and the invisible threads that tether us to the people we least expect. With poignancy and grit, it reminds us that healing often comes not from having the answers, but from simply being seen.
Soldiers in the Sandbox
Soldiers In The Sandbox by Scott G. A. Metcalf follows Sergeant Alex Vance through a deployment to Iraq, opening with an immediate immersion into the physical weight of gear, heat, and dread before violence snaps the “sandbox” into focus. Early chapters lean hard into sensory, boots-on-the-ground realism like dust, diesel, and muzzle flashes, and the book doesn’t flinch from the suddenness with which a unit’s routine becomes a fight for survival, or from how quickly loss can hollow out a squad’s shared life.
What gives the novel its emotional spine is Vance’s private notebook: a secret practice that becomes both a coping mechanism and a moral ledger, capturing not just firefights and procedure, but the quieter aftershocks like grief, numbness, guilt, and the way beauty (like sunsets) can feel almost offensive against the day’s brutality. Metcalf repeatedly returns to the idea that war is fought twice, outside and inside, and the writing foregrounds “invisible wounds,” blurred ethical lines, and the need to remember the fallen as more than statistics.
The book’s strengths are its sincerity and its insistence on complexity: it pushes back against a tidy hero narrative and instead emphasizes messy psychological reality, including anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and survivor’s guilt, while also making space for small acts of kindness and the bonds that keep people upright. Stylistically, it often aims for a lyrical, reflective voice, and it even acknowledges the tug between spare, report-like directness and more poetic description, an approach that I think fits the subject matter.
By the later portions, the focus widens to what happens after the deployment: the disorienting return, the struggle to translate experiences to civilians, and the long, uneven work of rebuilding a sense of self, framed less as a neat recovery arc and more as an ongoing practice of meaning-making. The inclusion of a glossary and supplementary, veteran-support-oriented material underlines the book’s clear aim: not only to tell a war story, but to build understanding and offer a handrail for readers who’ve lived some version of it. For readers interested in reflective military fiction centered on camaraderie, loss, and reintegration, Soldiers In The Sandbox is earnest, intense, and impactful.
Pages: 403 | ASIN : B0G7MZCHR2
The Red In The Wrong Profession
When I first opened The Red in the Wrong Profession, I thought I was in for a fairly straightforward piece of Cold War spy fiction. What I got instead was a lively blend of small-town drama, suspicion, and the slow unspooling of secrets hiding in plain sight. The story follows widowed history teacher Spencer and his sharp, curious twelve-year-old daughter, Cecily, as they stumble into a possible espionage plot involving Spencer’s glamorous colleague, Zinnia Tepper. One hidden coded note in a used bookstore sets off a string of unsettling discoveries, drawing Spencer’s FBI-agent brother Preston into a mystery that settles uneasily over the quiet suburb of Halliwell, Virginia.
I liked how the author leans into the ordinary. The setting feels familiar. A bookstore. A cul-de-sac. After-school gossip. The tension grows not because of high-tech spy tricks but because these characters live close together and know each other a little too well. I found myself unexpectedly drawn in by the rhythms of their daily lives. Quinn writes in a way that lets you feel Spencer’s discomfort and Cecily’s excitement without making either of them larger than life. Even Zinnia, who seems over-the-top at first with her dramatic entrances and designer shopping bags, becomes more intriguing each time the facade slips. I liked the way the book let suspicion creep in through small, almost mundane moments.
I also appreciated the choices the author made in shaping the Cold War atmosphere. Instead of drowning the reader in jargon or long political explanations, the book lets the fear and confusion of the era filter through conversations and tiny observations. Characters talk about the Soviets the way people really talk: half-informed, emotional, and sometimes a little dramatic. The coded note Cecily finds becomes a symbol of how fragile normal life can feel when you start wondering who you can trust. I enjoyed that the story didn’t lean too hard into action or spectacle. It stayed grounded, almost domestic, which somehow made the spy elements feel more believable. At times, I wished for a deeper exploration of Zinnia’s inner world, but maybe her opacity is part of the point. Spies, suspected or real, rarely let you all the way in.
By the time I finished the book, I realized it works best for readers who enjoy character-driven suspense with a nostalgic touch. It’s spy fiction, but filtered through the lens of family, community, and the messy edges of intuition. If you’re someone who likes mysteries that build slowly, or stories where a simple moment at a bookstore can set off a chain reaction, you’ll enjoy this novel.
Pages: 200 | ASIN : B0GF76DCW3
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
The Little Girl’s Mother
The Little Girl’s Mother drops us straight into a police station that turns into a battleground and then never really lets the tension slip. It follows a family whose daughter witnesses a murder and suddenly becomes the target of a powerful criminal syndicate. The parents, both former military with heavy pasts, step back into a world they hoped to leave behind. The story twists from procedural chaos into a dark rescue mission, something between a thriller and a raw look at what parents might do when no one else can keep their child alive. It moves fast. Sometimes brutally fast. And it carries a steady drumbeat of fear and determination.
Reading it, I felt myself leaning in, almost holding my breath. The writing hits with a kind of straight shot energy. There is no drifting around. The scenes move with hard edges and sharp turns. I liked that. It pulled me right into the panic, the cold choices, and the way the parents shift from frightened to focused. I cared more than I expected to and sometimes caught myself rooting for them in ways that surprised me. The emotional weight lands strongest when the parents talk to each other or when they steady their daughter. Those moments feel real. They cool the fire just enough to let the story breathe before it kicks off again.
Some scenes in the workshop are rough. Not because they are gory but because of the calm way they unfold. The tone made me uneasy in a way that felt intentional. I could sense the author pushing me to sit with the question of what desperation does to good people. I liked that the book did not try to pretend those choices are clean or noble. The pacing can feel intense. Yet the emotional through-line keeps things grounded and stops the story from tipping into pure action for its own sake.
I would recommend this book to readers who like high-tension thrillers and stories about families under extreme pressure. It fits readers who enjoy military backgrounds, tactical problem solving, and moral knots that do not come undone easily. If you want a story that grabs you by the collar and refuses to let go, then this will absolutely hit the mark.
Pages: 217 | ASIN : B0FHSHXY18
My Own Life Experiences
This Time follows a Marine pilot and a recent divorcee who rekindle old sparks at their ten-year high school reunion. Where did the idea for this novel come from?
I built the structure of the novel around my own life experiences … and the fictional story from an active imagination. I grew up in a small-town community much like Tartan Springs, and I served in the military as a Navy pilot.
I enjoyed the romantic relationship between Ty and Siena. How did their relationship develop while you were writing it? Did you have an idea of where you wanted to take it, or was it organic?
I maintained my original concept for Seeney’s and Ty’s relationship … a strong female in the lead consistently pushing her less aggressive male partner along.
What is the most challenging aspect of writing a romance novel?
I’m not really sure, because I don’t usually write in this genre. I found keeping the dialogue “real” a challenge, as well as keeping the growing romance from interfering with the serious nature of the other conflicts occurring in the novel
Can we look forward to more work from you soon? What are you currently working on?
I hope to follow up my popular crime-thriller novel, Pedaling West with a sequel entitled, Pedaling East.
Author Links: Website | Facebook | Instagram
Ty is a decorated Marine Corps combat pilot, carrying the weight of duty and distance. Siena has stayed close to home, where memories linger and reputations stick. As their paths cross once more, the chemistry is undeniable—but so are the obstacles.
Can love survive the turbulence of Ty’s deployments and the shadow of Siena’s past? Or will the road they travel together prove too steep…this time?
A heartfelt story of reconnection, resilience, and the kind of love that dares to try again.
The Moral of the Story is the Story
The Tilted Palace: Weeds of Misfortune follows a retired Green Beret haunted by Vietnam and marooned in the quiet of small-town Massachusetts, who meets a disheveled paster with whom he forms a bond as they struggle to survive. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Righting the narrative around Vietnam had been simmering inside me since before I returned from that war in 1968. Discovering and writing an essence of the real story, beyond the general impression of the presumed feckless French in the French-Indochina War, got the ball rolling with Weeds of War: Those Who Bled at Dien Bien Phu, the first in the trilogy.I understand there are something over three thousand books on Vietnam, from text-like to raw and unending visceral adventure. While each may have a distinct target audience, I needed something that speaks to my neighbor, my ex-wife, and a general audience. Ingesting human interest story with historical “corrections” is what I came up with in Weeds of War, and carried forward with Irish Weeds and now The Tilted Palace.
What are some things that you find interesting about the human condition that you think make for great fiction?
Our assumptions about others — almost always wrong. Our mistaken belief in knowing what is best or not knowing, much less understanding, the entire story. The too late epiphany between characters. The “Plan B” that each of us comes up with when life goes south.
Was it important for you to deliver a moral to readers, or was it circumstantial to deliver an effective novel?
In large part, the moral of the story is the story. Imparting my truth has been the point. Being able to do so in a manner that touches the mind or the heart or the soul of the reader is, of course, an effective novel.
Where do you see your characters after the book ends?
There is potential for all of them going in different directions, either together or separately. Trinity and Jilly could easily be lesbian or bi-sexual, or seen to be, then discovered so by the communist government — oh my! Chang may be “turned” by a CIA operative — oh my! Jimmy Ray? Who knows? Perhaps a pathetic effort to replace Jezz or he may be saved by the need of the other characters to be saved by him. Or another story could begin with Jimmy Ray’s headstone and epitaph. Patrick and Thuy? They may simply die on the vine, aged and with memories that have either sustained or killed them — what could have been, perhaps. Or, Jimmy Ray’s mother could easily return to be the classic character she is in Irish Weeds. Old, yet fiery, Bess could be a main character in The Troubles of Northern Ireland, with Jimmy Ray either assisting or trying to redirect her.
What fun it all is.
Author Links: Amazon | GoodReads
The reality is strongmen with militias pressing for power, and multiple politicians and political factions with sharp elbows eyeing the Presidential Palace and affecting its balance.
Supported and directed by communism, a guerilla force called Viet Cong is recruiting and stirring things up for the government. Patrick and Thuy did not expect another war, nor to be engaged in it to the bitter end and beyond.
Now, fifteen years after it ended, that American-Vietnam War is seldom spoken of other than when an isolated veteran messes up real bad. Then Vietnam vets are referred to as “drug-crazed baby-killers.”
Jimmy Ray Crandall served years in the war. “It ain’t right,” he would grind out, revealing a hint of his trauma. Just in time he meets the dog. Her owner is a young woman with her own troubles. There is sharing, drinking, and bickering until insight begins to perform little miracles.
Can a return to Saigon be healing?
Old friends with new stories come to the fore. Regardless of it all, the war was lost years ago—no change there. Perspective on the past, however, can change a great many things.
LITERARY TITAN 