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Dollartorium
Ralph earns his living in a modest Kansas shop, frying corndogs that are undeniably good and reliably popular. The work keeps him afloat for a while. It offers routine, modest comfort, and a sense of pride. Eventually, though, the numbers stop working. Sales stall. Bills pile up. Stability slips away.
At that moment of strain, Ralph’s wife introduces him to “Dollartorium,” a tantalizing promise discovered through an infomercial. The course offers bold ideas and glossy solutions. At first, it feels like salvation. New business concepts suggest a way out, maybe even a breakthrough. Then the foundation collapses. What seemed like an opportunity quickly unravels, leaving Ralph to reckon with the fallout. With the help of his daughter, Stella, he is forced to retrace his steps and search for a more realistic way forward for his family.
Dollartorium, by Ron Pullins, is a work of fiction that probes capitalism, hustle culture, and the pressures these forces place on families. Humor runs throughout the novel, but it never fully softens the sharper insights beneath the surface. The comedy entertains; the implications linger.
Pullins shows a clear awareness of how precarious financial life has become for many people. Ralph’s anxiety feels earned. His frustration resonates. The sense that the system is tilted against ordinary workers gives the story its urgency. The Dollartorium scheme itself feels uncomfortably familiar, echoing countless real-world programs marketed to those already struggling. These promises prey on desperation, and Pullins does not shy away from exposing their ethical rot.
Stella emerges as the novel’s moral and intellectual anchor. She tempers Ralph’s desperation with reason and clarity. Her perspective restores balance and nudges the story toward resolution. Yet even as the family regains its footing, the larger problem remains unresolved. The system that cornered them still stands. Pullins underscores this truth with restraint, allowing the message to land without sermonizing.
The novel closes on a note that is satisfying, though far from idyllic. That choice feels intentional. Pullins has more to say than a neat ending would allow. Through his characters, he gives voice to frustrations that have become commonplace, about inequality, exploitation, and the illusion of easy fixes. The odds remain stacked against the little guy, and the allure of grand, risky schemes proves hard to resist. Dollartorium captures that tension with clarity, humor, and an undercurrent of quiet anger that makes it linger after the final page.
The Bent Nail
M.D. Nuth’s The Bent Nail is a dark, unflinching exploration of power, corruption, and the human cost of control. It begins in the chaos of a Delhi marketplace and spirals into a global web of political manipulation, personal ruin, and moral decay. At its center is Tau, a man born into filth and neglect who becomes both a victim and an instrument of a shadowy organization bent on reshaping the world through brutality. From street-level despair to the high offices of government, the novel draws a line between the powerless and the powerful, showing how desperation and authority twist into something monstrous.
Reading this book felt like riding a rollercoaster. Nuth’s writing hits hard. The language is raw and often brutal, but it feels right for the world he’s built. I could almost smell the filth of the streets and feel the emptiness in Tau’s heart. The dialogue is jagged, messy, and alive. It sounds like people breaking apart, trying to make sense of what’s left of their lives. The pacing is relentless. There were moments I had to pause just to breathe, especially in scenes that blended violence with eerie calm. It’s not an easy read, but it’s gripping.
What surprised me most was how much I cared for characters who probably didn’t deserve it. Tau, especially, is a walking wound, and even as he kills, I felt something like pity. Nuth doesn’t excuse evil, he shows how it’s born. The story’s ideas about government control, manipulation, and the illusion of freedom hit close to home. It’s a political thriller, yes, but it also feels like a prophecy, a mirror held up to our worst tendencies as people.
I’d recommend The Bent Nail to readers who like their fiction sharp, ugly, and honest. It’s perfect for those who aren’t afraid of dark themes or moral gray areas. If you want a story that challenges you, unsettles you, and makes you question the world you live in, this one’s worth every page.
Pages: 294 | ISBN : 1681607840
Intention and Action
Where The Winds Blow follows the rise of Path Finder, a grassroots movement born from grief and idealism, while powerful governments, criminal networks, and ordinary people collide around it. What was the inspiration for the original and fascinating idea at the center of the book?
The inspiration for Path Finder came during the COVID crisis, while I was cleaning out my garage for the third time in a week. I suddenly imagined finding the UK’s prime minister hiding in there – someone who’d simply decided he couldn’t cope any more. That image stuck, and I started writing, using it as a focal point.
It led to a simple but unsettling thought: for all their bombast and posturing, governments have only limited control over what actually happens within their own borders. The responses to the 2008 crash, COVID, and countless regional crises revealed not grand strategists, but leaders who were overwhelmed, reactive, and often out of their depth.
Lies, distraction, and obfuscation disguise their weakness and uncertainty – skills that modern power structures have perfected. Meanwhile, real influence increasingly sits with billionaires, technocrats, and the vague, unaccountable entity we call “the markets,” all of whom operate with little responsibility to the societies they shape.
Across much of the world, there’s a simmering resentment paired with helplessness – a frustration that’s often misdirected toward convenient scapegoats rather than those truly responsible. What feels missing is a spark: something that turns anger and despair into constructive action rooted in honesty, humanity, and hope.
I don’t pretend to know how that spark might happen in real life, although I believe it will. In the Path Finder series, I’ve created a world only inches removed from our own, where readers can enjoy the humour and drama in the story, recognise familiar institutions and personalities, and perhaps imagine a different future – for themselves as much as for society as a whole.
History is full of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, often accidentally or without understanding where their choices might lead. This series begins with one man deciding he’s had enough of pretending to be something he isn’t and disappearing. Three books in, even I’m not entirely sure where that decision will ultimately take him or Path Finder. I just know it’ll be fun finding out!
What are some things that you find interesting about the human condition that you think make for great fiction?
What fascinates me most about the human condition is the gap between who we think we are and how we actually behave when things stop going to plan. We like to believe we’re rational, principled, and in control, but pressure, fear, love, grief, and ambition have a habit of knocking those ideas sideways. That gap – between intention and action, certainty and doubt – is where great fiction lives.
I’m also interested in how ordinary people respond when they’re swept up in events far bigger than themselves. Most of us don’t set out to change the world, break systems, or become symbols of anything. We’re just trying to get through the day, protect the people we care about, and make sense of the noise. Yet history shows that it’s often these accidental participants – people acting from love, stubbornness, guilt, or hope – who trigger the biggest consequences. That tension between small, human decisions and vast, unpredictable outcomes runs through the Path Finder series.
Finally, there’s the absurdity of it all. Humans are capable of extraordinary kindness, bravery, and resilience, but we’re also unwittingly brilliant at self-delusion, tribalism, and panic. Put those traits under stress – mix them with power, money, ideology, or blind faith – and you get situations that are by turns terrifying, ridiculous, and darkly funny. Satire lets me explore those contradictions honestly, without pretending we’re either heroes or villains. We’re usually just flawed, emotional creatures doing our best… sometimes making an almighty mess of it… occasionally doing something amazing.
What is one thing that you hope readers take away from Where The Winds Blow?
More than anything, I hope readers come away feeling that the time they spent with Where The Winds Blow was time well spent. I want them to have been entertained – laughing at the absurdity, caught up in the momentum, and maybe a little breathless at times – but also quietly validated in the way they see the world.
If there’s a deeper takeaway, it’s the reassurance that confusion, doubt, and frustration aren’t personal failings; they’re rational responses to a chaotic system. The characters in the book don’t have grand plans or neat answers – most of them are muddling through, reacting, improvising, and occasionally getting things spectacularly wrong. And yet, meaning still emerges from those imperfect choices.
I also hope the book leaves readers with a sense that individual actions matter, even when they seem small, accidental, or misdirected. Change doesn’t always come from heroes or leaders; it often starts with ordinary people deciding to stop pretending, to care a little more honestly, or to take one step they didn’t think they were capable of taking.
If readers finish the book feeling entertained, understood, and perhaps a little more open to the idea that hope can exist without certainty, then I’ve done my job.
I hope the series continues in other books. If so, where will the story take readers?
The series will continue. As for where the story will take the reader, who knows?! I’m currently writing shorter pieces for my Path Finder newsletter subscribers that fill in some of the character back stories. One of those pieces became a major plot line in Where The Winds Blow, and I have no doubt that one or two of my current works in progress will do the same in the fourth novel.
Author Links: GoodReads | Threads | Facebook | Website | Amazon
The Path Finder movement has gone global. Millions of followers. Endless headlines. Oceans of cash.
Only one tiny snag: the founders still have no idea what the movement actually is. Now the powerful want answers – and they’ll do anything to keep control.
Meanwhile, an ex-soldier from Afghanistan crosses continents and the Mexico-US border, desperate to reach his family before the authorities catch him or local vigilantes do even worse.
Elsewhere, Simon and Pippa Pope are chasing storms, blissfully unaware that their late wedding gift could unleash consequences for humanity, the planet, and a whisky-soaked Scotsman on a collision course with destiny.
Fast, funny, and ferociously sharp, Where The Winds Blow skewers the powerful and the absurd in equal measure.
It’s the third and wildest instalment in The Path Finder Series, following Paths Not Yet Taken and Good for the Soul. Each offers satire with bite, stories with heart, and storms of every kind.
The Romanov Legacy: Ahead of the Storm
The Romanov Legacy II: Ahead of the Storm by Fred G. Baker is a sweeping work of historical fiction that imagines the escape of two Romanov children in the final days of Imperial Russia. The story follows Alexei and Anastasia after their flight from captivity near Yekaterinburg, guided by loyalists of the White Army as civil war erupts around them. Baker blends real events with imagined rescue efforts, focusing on danger, secrecy, and survival during the collapse of the old order. The book moves through military action, quiet hiding, and emotional aftermath as the children face loss, fear, and an uncertain future.
I enjoyed the pacing and clarity of the writing. Baker writes in a clean, steady style that keeps things moving without confusion. I never felt lost in the geography or the politics. The scenes feel grounded and physical. Cold barns. Dark rivers. Mud, hunger, and fear. I felt the tension early. Some descriptions were a bit longer than needed, but I did not mind. They helped me settle into the world. The dialogue feels natural most of the time, and the emotional beats land with honesty. I felt real dread during the execution revelations and real relief during moments of safety.
I liked the ideas behind the story even more than the action. This book is clearly about loyalty, moral duty, and the cost of history on children who never chose their fate. I felt angry reading parts of it. I also felt grief. Baker does not soften the cruelty of the era, but he does offer a sense of human decency through characters like Tupolev and Anna. I appreciated that balance. The book does not feel preachy. It feels mournful and stubborn and hopeful all at once. I liked that the Romanovs are treated as people first and symbols second.
I found this book to be emotional and thoughtful. I would recommend it to readers who enjoy historical fiction with emotional weight and alternative history angles. It is a good fit for anyone interested in the Russian Revolution, lost possibilities, or stories about protecting the vulnerable during chaos. When I think about this book next to other popular Romanov novels, it feels more grounded and more urgent. Books like I Was Anastasia or The Lost Roses spend more time on mystery, romance, and shifting timelines, while this one stays locked on danger and survival. It reminds me more of a wartime escape story than a court drama. The scope is narrower, but the tension is stronger. I felt closer to the characters here than I often do in historical epics, and that made the story hit harder for me.
Pages: 292 | ASIN : B0G1JDFZ7B
They Could Be Saviors
They Could Be Saviors is a wild and thought-provoking novel that blends psychological suspense with biting social critique. The story follows a group of billionaires kidnapped by a secret network of women, psychedelic therapists who believe the only way to save the world is to dismantle the egos of the men destroying it. As the captives awaken inside a high-tech facility designed for “healing,” the line between therapy and punishment blurs. It’s a heady mix of moral reckoning, hallucinatory experience, and social rebellion wrapped inside an eerie psychological thriller.
The premise sounds almost absurd at first, but author Diana Colleen sells it with conviction. Her prose crackles with sharp edges, alternating between satire and sincerity. The early chapters, especially those inside Josh Latham’s ruthless corporate mind, feel uncomfortably real. There’s a cold humor in watching a man who’s weaponized “sustainability” for profit wake up in a place that forces him to face himself. The writing feels cinematic yet claustrophobic, like being locked inside someone’s fever dream. At times, I felt disturbed, at others, unexpectedly moved. The story doesn’t let you sit comfortably, it pokes, prods, and dares you to care about people you’d rather despise.
What really grabbed me were the emotional undercurrents beneath all the sci-fi and social commentary. Mel, the therapist leading the operation, is a fascinating mess of empathy and control. Her struggle with addiction, grief, and idealism feels painfully human. I found myself torn between admiring her conviction and fearing her delusion. The women’s mission, noble on paper, curdles into something obsessive. Still, I couldn’t look away. The book doesn’t spoon-feed morals. It leaves you wrestling with big, ugly questions about power, redemption, and what “saving” the world might actually cost. The language swings from lyrical to brutal, sometimes in the same paragraph, which made it both exhausting and exhilarating to read.
If you like your fiction clean and uplifting, this one might rattle you. But if you’re ready for a raw, provocative trip into the psyche of our times, this book is worth every page. I’d recommend They Could Be Saviors to readers who crave stories that take risks and don’t shy away from moral gray zones. Fans of Black Mirror, Margaret Atwood, or Chuck Palahniuk will probably devour it.
Pages: 349 | ASIN : B0FP5X958N
Marcus Douglas Presents Dimensions of the Soul part 1
Marcus Douglas Presents Dimensions of the Soul is a fascinating mix of spiritual philosophy and high-stakes political thriller. The book dives deep into what defines the human soul, breaking it down into the mind, emotions, and will, and then wraps those ideas into a complex narrative about psychic government agencies, prophetic dreams, and the rise of a new U.S. president burdened with destiny. The story’s structure moves between theological meditations, called “Overtures,” and cinematic chapters filled with intrigue and danger. It’s both a metaphysical exploration and a modern myth, questioning how our inner selves shape the outer world and the consequences that follow when that balance is disturbed.
I found myself pulled into the book’s rhythm, first by its ideas, then by its characters, especially Natalie Massey and President Kirklin Adams. The writing is earnest and unfiltered, sometimes poetic, sometimes raw. There’s a moral sincerity that runs through every chapter, even when the dialogue leans toward melodrama. The theological reflections are surprisingly personal. I could sense Douglas’s own wrestling with faith, destiny, and the tug-of-war between spirit and flesh.
Emotionally, this book hit me in unexpected ways. There were moments when I had to pause just to think, especially during the scenes where the characters confront their inner demons or divine purpose. Douglas’s imagery, like the soul as a mediator between body and spirit, stayed with me. Some of the political plotlines felt far-fetched, yet the underlying message about corruption, faith, and the unseen battles of conscience made them strangely believable. The fusion of faith-based allegory with science-fiction ideas like “Dream Walking” is bold, and though not every concept lands cleanly, I admired the audacity.
I’d recommend Marcus Douglas Presents Dimensions of the Soul to readers who enjoy stories that challenge both heart and mind. It’s ideal for people who like their fiction thoughtful but not pretentious, and who appreciate a spiritual twist on classic suspense. If you’re drawn to tales where faith, science, and the human psyche collide, and you don’t mind a few wild turns along the way, this book will stay with you.
Pages: 245 | ASIN : B0F336CF1J
Anything Can Be Denied
Shaking the Trees follows Jake, an environmental activist, who is pushed to sabotage a coal rail line in a desperate act of protest that sets off a chain of events that can threaten his future. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
There were two inspirations: the first was climate change itself and specifically a coral reef scientist telling me how little time the Great Barrier Reef had to survive. The Reef has had a profound influence on me. That news sent me into a prolonged depression shadowed by both grief and anger. From there, the book’s initial scene of sabotage took hold.
The second was less an inspiration than an epiphany – I wanted a shadow story for the story of Jake and climate change. Out of some deep recess in my subconscious, I said, ‘The Siege of Sarajevo’. Literally, I stopped and said aloud, ‘but Jeremy, you don’t know anything about the Siege of Sarajevo.’ And that turned out to be, in good part, the point. It was a war ignored not only by those who could have stopped it, but those, like me, who thought I was paying attention. I began to realise that anything can be denied.
A significant amount of time was spent crafting the character traits in this novel. What was the most important factor for you to get right in your characters?
Two factors stand out: the need to integrate the political and the personal. Activists don’t see these as separate, for anyone. They are intimately linked even when they are not always easy to reconcile and even when the relationship between one’s personal life and political life isn’t always clear. Even withdrawal from the plethora of events in our lives that are political, is a direct and political response to a society that feels too brutal, ugly or cold.
The characters wanted to show me how much of what we face or are forced to face in the world is entangled not only in politics but in our own histories and even histories older than we are – family and community histories. Excavating these histories is not a simple or rapid task. Like an archaeologist who finds an object deeply buried, we must gently remove a lifetime of encrustations and then – equally hard – try to make sense of what this strange object from our past is, what it signifies, whether it is only a small part of a larger whole.
I began to realise that the characters, forced by circumstances and choices none of the characters could entirely control, were living out their psychological histories in new and often damaging ways. I had to listen closely to the characters, to explore how histories of love and lovelessness, trauma, fear, ambition, repression, denial were still alive in them as the story unfolded. I often had no idea what the characters would show me.
What themes were particularly important for you to explore in this book?
1 – The various faces and types of denial. Denial can be personal and a useful form of self -protection. Often, when the need for self-protection is gone the behaviour remains. Like an auto-immune disease the brain responds in destructive ways to news or information it desperately wants to be untrue. Sometimes, particularly, amongst our leaders denial has no excuse, no value except in serving the interests, usually pecuniary, of themselves or other members of their privileged class. I was particularly interested in how we – individually and as a society navigate between the necessary and the destructive? How do we face the reality that anything can be denied, just as anything can be believed? How to think about faith? Is it destructive, protective, or simply a kind of disappearing from the world? And is love, too, a kind of faith?
2 – I didn’t know when I started the novel how important the theme of love would be – its many faces, its profound power and profound capacity, if love is lost, to tear us from our moorings. I also didn’t know when I started that I would find the heart of the book to be the effort of Jake to try and reconcile his love for the planet and his love for Julie, loves perhaps too large for any single person to hold.
3 – Finally, I wanted to explore activism. How people choose to face conflicts that can radically subvert their ideas of democracy, community and shared ideals. How activists struggle with a life’s work primarily characterised by failure and in a system that at every turn makes activism and change harder. Watching a political system treat activists like criminals and corporate criminals like friends is the kind of stark reality that activists experience throughout their working lives. It’s confronting work. So many activists leave this work in order to do something more immediately rewarding and kind. That said, young activists keep coming into activism, with new energy, new ideas, and old ideas they think are new. They give of themselves in ways impossible not to admire.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?
I am completing a last edit on a manuscript that was shortlisted in 2024 for the Dorothy Hewett award in Australia. The book is called Vanishment, the story of a young man who fights to protect a species threatened with extinction. It is loosely based on the true story of the extinction of the Christmas Island Pipistrelle and loosely based on Christmas Island, often called the ‘Galapagos of the Indian Ocean’ but also an island subject to a dismal history of misery industries – phosphate mining, a massive casino for high rollers from Jakarta and finally a detention centre carved out of the Island’s unique rainforest. Love and loss are the dominant themes and like Shaking the Trees, both those themes have many faces.
I don’t have a publisher yet so I’m not sure when it will be available, but I hope next year.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website
When Jake, a passionate environmental activist, desperate for action on climate change, starts to take drastic action, he sets off a chain of events that threatens everything he holds dear—his freedom, his future, and the woman he loves. As the storm he ignited grows more violent, Jake loses control even over his own life.
Meanwhile, his father Ian—an aging academic and firm climate sceptic—faces a reckoning of his own. With the death of his wife comes the uncovering of long-buried truths, including a cache of unopened letters from his sister lost to war and trauma. Letters that speak of survival, betrayal, and a city under siege.
Spanning continents and generations, Shaking the Trees is a gripping novel about the legacies we inherit and the choices that shape us. It asks how far we’re willing to go for what we believe—and whether love can endure the fallout.
Black Pearl
From the first page, Black Pearl sets itself up as more than just another political thriller. It follows Cody Musket Jr., his family, and their network of allies as they confront an unrelenting tide of child trafficking, terrorism, and political upheaval. The story is about family, blood and chosen, fighting to survive and protect the vulnerable. There are gun battles, high-stakes rescues, secret agents, and even quiet moments of faith that cut through the noise. The novel moves quickly between firefights in Puerto Rico, clandestine rescues, and tense personal confrontations, all while keeping the theme of courage, loyalty, and redemption alive.
This book was a wild ride. The action scenes are painted with raw intensity, the kind that keeps you turning pages even when your eyes are begging for rest. But what surprised me most wasn’t the explosions or the shootouts, it was the emotional weight behind them. The author doesn’t shy away from the uglier parts of humanity: abuse, betrayal, greed. At times it felt heavy, even bleak, but then a character would step in with an act of selflessness or an unexpected flash of humor, and it pulled me right back from the edge. I admired the way Miller balanced that darkness with hope, though I’ll admit there were moments when the dialogue felt a little too on-the-nose, almost sermon-like, when I wanted it to breathe more naturally.
The writing style kept me engaged throughout. The pacing is relentless, and the action sequences play out with a sharp cinematic eye that makes the story easy to picture. The prose moves between moments of beautiful simplicity and bursts of dramatic flair, creating a rhythm that adds energy to the read. I found myself deeply invested in the characters, especially the kids, and I often wished the narrative would linger longer with them before sweeping me into the next pulse-pounding scene. The insistence that love and faith can outlast evil came through with sincerity and left a lasting impression.
Black Pearl is a book I’d recommend to readers who love high-octane thrillers but also crave an undercurrent of heart and conviction. Black Pearl reminded me of the intensity of Tom Clancy’s political thrillers and the moral conviction found in Terri Blackstock’s Christian suspense novels. Like Clancy, Miller crafts action scenes that feel vivid and urgent, pulling you straight into the heart of danger. And like Blackstock, he isn’t afraid to weave faith and hope into the darkest corners of the plot. At the same time, his focus on family bonds and the resilience of children gives the story a warmth that sets it apart from more conventional thrillers.
Pages: 307 | ASIN : B08MDDZZJC
LITERARY TITAN 