Blog Archives
Spy. Fight. Survive.
Mission: The Figueroa Cipher follows two elite teenage spies on a mission that takes them around the globe to locate stolen nuclear launch codes before they can be used to start WWIII. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The original idea was the bad guy hacked the ICBM system to cause the missiles to self-destruct in their bunkers simultaneously, or change their targets in-flight. When I did research, I found out 1960s technology didn’t exist to perform either function. So I backtracked down the launch sequence to codes used.
James and Dakota’s chemistry really drives the story. How did you develop their dynamic, do they represent different philosophies of espionage or just different personalities?
James and Dakota are different personalities, a variation of “opposites attract.” I’ve attended, as well as performed and directed, a lot of theater since before high school. Their dynamic is probably a conglomeration of characters I’ve seen/played/directed over the years. So when I write, I put them “on stage” in my mind and see what bubbles up.
The book leans into riddles and coded clues. What makes that structure satisfying for you as a writer?
Treasure hunt books are always fun, regardless of genre!
I hope the series continues in other books. If so, where will the story take readers?
The third book takes place in London, Amsterdam, Basel (Switzerland), and the Philippines.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon | Website
James Vagus and Dakota Walker are teen agents in America’s covert MIS-X program—trained to think fast, fight smart, and trust no one except each other. What starts as a routine assignment in Rio de Janeiro turns into a global scavenger hunt when nuclear launch codes vanish, threatening to ignite a World War III.
From the streets of Marrakesh to the casinos of Monte Carlo and the deserts of Nevada, every clue draws them deeper into a shadowy world of double agents and false alliances. But when they’re forced to team up with two Soviet operatives—Nadya and Sasha—the line between friend and enemy blurs fast. Can rival spies work together long enough to stop a possible global catastrophe, or will old loyalties destroy them first?
Spy. Fight. Survive.
The Crash of Worlds
The Crash of Worlds by Alisse Lee Goldenberg is a fantasy adventure about what happens when disaster, grief, politics, magic, and family loyalty all collide. The story opens with the destruction of Coralnoss after Marcus’s warnings are ignored, then follows Zayna as she tries to save what is left of her people, Lucas as he searches for a way to reach her, and Audrina as she faces hard questions about love, duty, and whether she truly wants the throne. It’s a deep fantasy novel, with kingdoms, spells, royal conflict, sea voyages, and magical communication, but its real weight comes from human problems: fear, prejudice, pride, loss, and the need to ask for help.
I like how grounded the book feels, even when the world is full of magic. Goldenberg does not treat the disaster as a quick plot device. Zayna’s chapters linger in the mud, hunger, ruined homes, and the awful silence after a community has been broken. It gives the fantasy stakes a physical heaviness. At the same time, the writing is direct and accessible, which makes the emotional turns easy to follow. Some moments are blunt, but that plainness also works in the book’s favor. Grief is not always elegant. Sometimes it’s just one foot in front of the other, carrying supplies, calming a baby, and trying not to fall apart.
I also found myself thinking a lot about the author’s choices around leadership. Audrina’s storyline is not just about being a princess in love with Gertrude. It’s about the cost of being visible in a world that may not accept you. Her conversations with Navor are some of the warmest parts of the book, and they give the story a tender center. Then there’s the contrast with Parven, whose cruelty shows how family and power can become dangerous when pride is mistaken for principle. The book is curious about what makes a ruler good, but it’s also candid about how institutions fail people. The council ignores Marcus. Coralnoss pays for it. Later, survivors still hesitate to accept help because old fears are hard to shake. That felt painfully believable.
I would recommend The Crash of Worlds most to readers who enjoy character-driven fantasy with royal drama, found family, queer representation, and emotional stakes that matter as much as the magical ones. Readers who like sincere storytelling, big feelings, and a fantasy world built around loyalty and survival will likely appreciate it. It’s best for fans of accessible YA-style fantasy who want adventure, heart, and a reminder that rebuilding after loss is rarely clean, but it’s still possible.
Pages: 282 | ASIN : B0GY65N8BK
Thunderclap & The Fight for Sasquatch Earth
Thunderclap & The Fight for Sasquatch Earth is a speculative adventure thriller with a strong young-adult coming-of-age streak. Author T. B. Ross builds an alternate world where Sasquatch are not myth but a threatened people living behind the Great Wall of Pines in a protected sanctuary. The story begins with a violent kidnapping: Avery Sky, daughter of a tech billionaire, is taken by Thunderclap and the Sasquatch Liberation Front, setting off a rescue mission that pulls in law enforcement, family history, old friendships, and a group of brave kids who refuse to stay on the sidelines.
Ross writes with the pace of an action movie, and the chapters often feel built to keep you turning pages. The setup is bold, even wild, but the book commits to it completely. The Sasquatch world has rules, politics, wounds, and history, which gives the genre material more weight than a simple monster story. At times, the prose is blunt, especially when the violence spikes. Still, there is an earnestness underneath it that kept me engaged. The book wants to entertain, but it also wants to say something.
I found the author’s choices most interesting when the story blends adventure with questions about prejudice, sovereignty, addiction, loyalty, and inherited pain. Thunderclap is frightening, but he’s not presented as random evil. His rage grows out of a broken system, even when the book never excuses what he does. That tension gives the story its better moments. I also appreciated the kid-centered rescue thread, because Ben and his friends bring the book back to something more human and immediate. They are scared, reckless, funny, and loyal. That mix gives the story some warmth when the larger conflict gets grim. Not every emotional beat lands cleanly, but the friendship and survival elements help ground the spectacle.
I would recommend Thunderclap & The Fight for Sasquatch Earth to readers who enjoy fast, high-stakes speculative thrillers, especially ones with creature lore, wilderness action, and young heroes thrown into danger before they are ready. It’s probably best for readers who like their adventure big, loud, and a little over the top, but still want some social and moral weight beneath the chase. If you want a strange, energetic genre ride with Sasquatch politics, rescue missions, and a pulpy heart, this will likely hit the spot.
Pages: 300 | ASIN : B0FLX4HDKF
Mission: The Figueroa Cipher
Mission: The Figueroa Cipher is a young adult espionage thriller with a strong adventure streak, and it opens with a sharp hook: two teenage agents, James Vagus and Dakota Walker, go from a seemingly easy surveillance job in Rio to a race against time after stolen nuclear launch codes set off a Cold War scavenger hunt. What follows is a globe-trotting mission shaped by riddles, shifting alliances, and a moral argument about power, peace, and who gets to play god with the fate of millions.
What I liked most is that the book understands that spy fiction lives or dies on chemistry, and James and Dakota have it. Their banter gives the story a pulse. James is quick, polished, and a little theatrical, while Dakota feels more instinctive and grounded, and that contrast keeps even the exposition moving. I also appreciated how author C.W. James leans into old-school espionage pleasures without making the book feel dusty. There are coded messages, hidden gadgets, hostile pursuers, and puzzle-box clues, but the writing stays readable and direct. It never feels like the author is trying to impress me with complexity for its own sake. It feels like he wants to tell a good story and keep me turning pages.
I also enjoyed the book’s focus on ideas, especially once Eduardo Figueroa enters the picture and turns the mission into more than just a chase. His argument with James gives the novel a harder edge. Beneath the action, the book keeps circling a real question: what does moral certainty look like in a world built on mutually assured destruction? It wears its themes openly. Sometimes that makes the dialogue feel a touch staged, yet it also gives the story conviction. Later hints of uneasy cooperation across Cold War lines gave the book a wider emotional range than I expected, and I found that genuinely interesting.
Mission: The Figueroa Cipher is a brisk, puzzle-driven spy adventure with youthful energy, clear stakes, and just enough philosophical friction to keep it from feeling disposable. I would recommend it most to readers who enjoy Cold War thrillers, YA adventure fiction, and stories where friendship and wit matter as much as danger. Anyone who likes clever clues, international settings, and a more classic, clean-lined style of suspense will have a good time with this one.
Pages: 208 | ASIN : B0GL4L3K5N
Inner Space Aliens
Inner Space Aliens picks up with real momentum, taking Erik, Finna, and Kalli out of the afterglow of their earlier victory and dropping them into something murkier, stranger, and more subterranean. This time, the threat isn’t just a villain bent on conquest, but a whole hidden system of corruption under Iceland itself: Fjólsvin inherits Loki’s plans, the Morphytes dig toward geological catastrophe, and Erik, with his tetrachromacy and his ability to read Óðin’s aurora messages, is pushed into the role of leader whether he wants it or not. Along the way, the book braids together volcanic tremors, Huldufólk politics, Reme’s grief-haunted testimony about the attack on his village, and a cavern climax where Erik’s athletic discipline finally becomes destiny when he uses an arrow like a javelin and blinds Fjólsvin in the middle eye.
What I liked most is that the book understands Erik’s fear and doesn’t cheapen it. He isn’t brave in that polished, effortless way that can make young fantasy heroes feel prepackaged. He’s frightened, uncertain, analytical, often overwhelmed, and the novel lets that matter. His scenes have a nice inward pressure to them, especially when he’s trying to decode patterns in the aurora or convince himself he’s capable of carrying what Óðin expects of him. I also found the mythology unexpectedly affecting. The material around the Huldufólk, the fractured glyphics, and Queen Borghildur’s grave understanding of what Loki exploited gave the story a sadder undertow than I was expecting. Reme, too, adds a bruised human ache to the novel. His memories of seeing impossibly tall invaders with a third eye could have been handled as mere plot fuel, but they land with genuine trauma behind them, and that gives the book moral weight.
The writing itself is earnest, vivid, and sometimes wonderfully odd in ways I found charming. When it leans into landscape and atmosphere, it can be quite evocative. The northern lights as a coded language, the glittering blue caverns, the steaming grotesquerie of Fjólsvin’s lair, and the waterfall reveal near the end all have a bright storybook intensity that suits the novel’s mythic ambitions. The prose is a little overinsistent, and the dialogue can state emotions rather than letting them appear subtly. Still, I kept feeling the force of the imagination behind it. The book’s ideas are more interesting than they first appear to be. Beneath the adventure, there’s a recurring concern with inheritance, diluted power, betrayal born from resentment, and the burden of being chosen before you’re ready. I was especially drawn to the notion that lost grandeur and envy make the younger Huldufólk vulnerable to Loki’s promises. That gives the conflict a tragic contour rather than reducing it to simple good-versus-evil machinery.
Inner Space Aliens is imaginative and surprisingly tender beneath all its lava tubes and cosmic peril. It’s the kind of sequel that expands its world by making it weirder and sadder, while also giving Erik a satisfying turn at the center. I finished it feeling that the book’s heart is one of its strongest qualities, especially once the surviving characters come back together and the victory is shaded by the warning that the struggle underneath Earth is not over. I’d recommend it most to readers who enjoy YA fantasy with Nordic myth, hidden worlds, earnest heroism, and a taste for adventure stories where emotion and lore are allowed to sit side by side.
Pages: 230 | ASIN : B0GM8X2TSF
Exit Signs
Exit Signs opens with an eighteen-year-old girl, Stella Hart, being thrown out by her mother after a lie at work detonates her already precarious life. From there, the novel follows her through car-sleeping, couch-hopping, cheap rooms, fragile friendships, predatory arrangements, and the long, humiliating mathematics of survival in the Bay Area, all while she tries to hold onto the future she imagined for herself, Stanford, stability, self-definition, even as pregnancy, coercion, and family damage keep redrawing the map. It is, in plain terms, a novel about homelessness and control, but it is also about the subtler violence of being treated as temporary in every room you enter.
Author Dawnette Brenner understands that catastrophe is not only dramatic; it’s logistical, sensory, and repetitive. The novel keeps returning to money, soap, gas, laundry, parking lots, hunger, paperwork, doors, and the freighted atmosphere of other people’s houses. That accumulation gives the book its tensile strength. I felt Stella’s vigilance in my own body. I also admired the way the prose often moves in clipped, pressure-built units, then suddenly opens into a more lyrical sentence when Stella’s mind slips from survival into grief or recognition. The result is a voice that feels both young and sharply weathered. At its best, the writing has a granular honesty that refuses uplift on credit.
What I liked even more was the book’s understanding of control: how it masquerades as help, how gratitude can be weaponized, how a girl trained to be “good” can be made legible to everyone except herself. This is where the novel has real bite. Stella’s progress is not a clean ascent but a series of grim recognitions, and I appreciated that the ending leans toward clarity rather than false closure. At times the interior monologue reiterates a point the scene has already made, and a little pruning would sharpen the writing. But I never lost faith in the emotional intelligence behind it. Brenner is writing from a place of close observation, and that gives the story moral weight without turning it into a sermon.
I would hand Exit Signs to readers of contemporary coming-of-age fiction, domestic drama, survival fiction, trauma fiction, literary women’s fiction, and character-driven social realism, especially readers who want emotionally immediate prose and a heroine whose resilience is hard-won rather than ornamental. It feels closer to a more intimate, female-centered cousin of Demon Copperhead than to conventional “issue fiction,” and readers who admire authors who can braid precarity with psychological precision will find plenty here. This is a bruised, clear-eyed novel about how survival can become a way of seeing.
Pages: 600 | ASIN : B0GPPH2WKJ
Sincerely Yours…Written In The Stars And Inked In Destiny!
In Sincerely Yours, Sonia D. Hebdon drops readers into Haven Cove in 1989, where Josie, a sharp, music-soaked teenager with a gift for language, falls into a charged romance with her new neighbor Blaine while secretly writing an advice column called “Sincerely Yours.” What begins as an 80s-inflected love story of mixtapes, eyeliner, and illicit nights out steadily opens into something stranger: a paranormal narrative about writing itself, about stories that breathe, unfinished worlds, and the frightening possibility that words do not merely describe reality but conjure it. The novel openly frames itself as a paranormal love story rooted in 1980s music and in the idea that certain writers can create literal worlds, and that premise becomes the book’s true engine.
What I liked most was the book’s unabashed sincerity. Hebdon is not aiming for cool detachment; she wants feeling, and she goes after it in full view. Josie and Blaine are drawn with the kind of heightened, romantic glow that suits the novel’s cassette-tape heart, and the pages are thick with Cure songs, club lights, handwritten letters, and the intoxicating self-invention of adolescence. I found that atmosphere persuasive even when the prose grew ornate, because the book’s emotional weather is so clear: loneliness, awakening, first love, artistic hunger, the longing to be seen as oneself rather than as a role assigned by family or town. The advice-column scenes also give Josie a moral and emotional gravity that keeps her from becoming just another dreamy heroine; her anonymity becomes its own form of courage.
My reaction to the novel’s second half was more mixed, but still engaged. Once the Whitlock Society and the metaphysics of authorship move closer to center stage, the book shifts from nostalgic romance into meta-paranormal fantasy, and that turn is genuinely intriguing. I admired the ambition of a story that asks what happens to unfinished narratives and imagines rare writers as conduits who generate actual worlds. The book feels stuffed with mood, mythos, sentiment, and soundtrack, but that excess is also part of its personality. I never had the sense of a cynical machine at work; I felt the presence of a writer who loves 80s music, believes in the numinous charge of words, and is willing to let teenage feeling burn bright instead of sanding it down into irony.
I’d recommend Sincerely Yours to young adult readers, especially those who enjoy YA paranormal romance, clean fiction, coming-of-age fantasy, and music-laced stories with a gothic shimmer. Readers who love emotionally direct fiction and retro atmosphere will probably be its natural home crowd. In spirit, it sits somewhere between the swooning supernatural pull of Twilight and the mixtape melancholy of an 80s-mad Sarah Dessen alternate universe, though Hebdon’s metafictional streak gives it its own curious voltage. My verdict: this is a heartfelt, melodramatic, odd little spell of a book, and when it works, it reminds me that sincerity is not a weakness but a strength.
Pages: 170 | ASIN : B0FDWQSZLJ
Creating A Safe Space
Sista, Can You Feel a Brother’s Pain? is a compassionate, faith-centered exploration of the silent wounds men carry, revealing how childhood trauma shapes identity, relationships, and faith, while offering a biblical path toward healing, accountability, and restoration.
The phrase “Men hurt. Men hide. Men hope.” feels central. What do you think most people misunderstand about men’s emotional lives?
I believe one of the greatest misunderstandings about men’s emotional lives is the assumption that silence means absence of feeling. Many people interpret a man’s quietness as strength, indifference, or emotional unavailability, when in reality it is often protection learned behavior shaped by expectation, culture, and survival.
Men are often taught early that vulnerability is risky. So instead of expressing pain openly, they internalize it. They carry disappointment, fear, rejection, and pressure privately, believing their role is to endure rather than reveal. When men hide, it is rarely because they do not feel it is because they feel deeply and may not feel safe enough to express it.
The phrase “Men hurt. Men hide. Men hope.” captures a truth that is often overlooked: beneath guarded emotions is hope. The hope to be understood without judgment, respected without performance, and loved without conditions tied to strength alone.
What many misunderstand is that men are not emotionless; they are often emotionally unpracticed in environments that welcome honesty. When given permission to be human instead of merely strong, many men show remarkable depth, tenderness, and resilience.
Understanding men emotionally begins not by asking them to feel more, but by creating spaces where they no longer have to hide what they already feel.
Were there particular stories or patterns that stayed with you?
Yes, many stories stayed with me over the years they are, in fact, what prompted me to write the book. While the circumstances differed, the patterns were often the same. The actions that caused the trauma were similar, even though the faces of the victims changed. And in many cases, the outcomes were heartbreakingly alike.
Many men carried unspoken pain, living under the pressure to appear strong while quietly struggling within. Their hurt often revealed itself not through words, but through distance, anger, overworking, or withdrawal rather than open conversation. Beneath those behaviors, however, was a deep desire to be seen, respected, and truly understood.
One pattern I noticed repeatedly was silence not because men lacked words, but because they lacked safe spaces to speak them. Creating an environment where men felt heard and valued made all the difference. That safe space is exactly what the MITE (Men in Transformation Education) Program provided: a place where men could begin to release what they had long carried in silence and start the journey toward healing and transformation.
How can women better support the men in their lives after reading it?
Understand the power of being present without pressure; love him without trying to manage the process. Here are 5 ways women can walk alongside a man in silence and still genuinely support him, with wisdom, compassion, and strength.
1. Offer Presence, Not Pressure – recognize that sometimes the most healing words are unspoken.
- Sit with him.
- Stay emotionally available.
- Let him know you’re there without asking him to perform vulnerability.
Biblical wisdom:
“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted…” Psalm 34:18
Support looks like: “You don’t have to talk for me to stay.”
2. Create Safety Through Consistency – His silence is rooted in pain and he’s waiting to see if your love is temporary.
- Be steady, not reactive.
- Don’t withdraw just because he’s quiet.
- Let your consistency preach louder than questions.
Biblical wisdom:
“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” — 1 Corinthians 13:7
Safety says: “I’m not leaving because this is uncomfortable.”
3. Affirm His Worth Without Demanding Disclosure – Many men fear being seen as “less than” if they speak.
- Speak life into who he is not what he shares.
- Affirm his strength, character, and value apart from his story.
Biblical wisdom:
“Death and life are in the power of the tongue…” Proverbs 18:21
Support sounds like: “You matter even in your quietness.”
4. Respect His Timing While Holding Healthy Boundaries Walking alongside doesn’t mean disappearing yourself.
- You can honor his silence and still be honest about your needs. “Me Time” some say self care is important for you
- Support does not require self-neglect.
Biblical wisdom:
“To everything there is a season” Ecclesiastes 3:1
Wisdom balance: Compassion without self-abandonment.
5. Cover Him in Prayer, Not Control – Prayer reaches places conversation cannot.
- Pray for healing, not forced revelation.
- Ask God to do what only God can do.
Biblical wisdom:
“Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.” 1 Peter 5:7
Spiritual support says: “God is working even when I can’t see it.”
Pearls of Wisdom for Women supporting or walking along with someone in silence is not passive, it’s active trust.
But remember: You are a companion, not a counselor; a supporter, not a savior.
And for men: Be Silent No More. Silence may have kept you alive but love, safety, and God’s grace can lead you toward healing. Give yourself permission to be healed.
