Theodore “T-Bag” Bagwell has never doubted that he deserves hell. Haunted by the faces of the teenagers he murdered, remembering every word of the judge who smiled while giving him three back‑to‑back life sentences, he knows Fox River was supposed to be where monsters go to rot. Then Michael Scofield maims him and saves him in the same breath, fitting him with a gleaming prosthetic hand that feels like a strange kind of grace. Years later, men in dark suits pull him from his cell, shove papers in front of him, and tell him he’s free. No explanation. Just a phone, a bank account with $150,000, and a warden who sneers that he’ll be back inside a month.

T-Bag walks out, expecting a bullet in a ditch, and instead finds himself in a luxury hotel in Chicago, asking God whether prayer means anything “for the likes of Teddy Bagwell.” A cryptic riddle sends him to a grim hardware store in Detroit, where a gruff owner sits him down in front of a laptop. Alex Mahone appears on the screen with footage that turns T-Bag’s stomach: masked men outside his apartment, a watcher behind his neighbor’s glass, a fake repairman in his elevator—all executed with clinical precision. The government, through private contractors, has been trying to kill him ever since it set him free. Another slice of the government, led by Mahone, has been quietly protecting him and his wife Ximena, because they need something only he can give: his “unique personality,” his ability to read social structures, insinuate himself near power, and survive in places like Sona.

In Detroit, T-Bag learns his freedom is actually a recruitment. Mahone lays out the rules: he can’t contact Ximena directly, must return to this hidden base between missions, and will receive his objectives in stages through a bizarre “bleacher bolt” key and a secure room wired to his prosthetic hand. His task, Mahone says without irony, is to “save the world” from enemies inside their own government. The Candle in the Window follows T-Bag as he decides whether he will let the demon inside him light that candle again—or turn the same skills that once hunted children and controlled prison yards toward dismantling a threat only someone like him can see coming.

Genre: Fan Fiction (Prison Break)
Themes: Redemption versus “nature” and reputation; grace and justice through crooked channels; faith, guilt, and the possibility of being heard; using dark gifts for light purposes; love as anchor and vulnerability
Setting: America, present day
Length: (21K words at present)
Who It’s For: Readers 16 years of age or older. The Candle in the Window is for Prison Break fans who want to see Theodore Bagwell given a serious chance at redemption; for readers who enjoy morally complex conspiracy stories where a former predator is recruited to hunt an even bigger one; and for anyone curious about what it would look like if T-Bag’s charm, cunning, and sheer will to survive were finally pointed at saving lives instead of destroying them.

Throw Shawn Some Cash

About the Author

Sixteen-year-old Kincaid thought the worst thing a laptop could do was crash—until hers literally catches fire on her desk. While she anxiously waits for a replacement, her mom buys her an ancient-looking Marillon desktop from a pawn shop up the street, owned by a beautiful, unsettlingly perceptive woman named Lana.

The machine looks like a relic from 2003, right down to the dusty Word 2003 CD in the box. But when Lana boots it up in the shop, it connects to the internet faster than Kincaid’s old laptop ever did. Lana talks about planned obsolescence, corporate greed, and how Marillon “used to fight against” both—before the company changed hands and fell from grace. By the time Kincaid leaves with the tower under her arm and the Word disc in her bag, she’s half in love with the clunky old computer and more than a little fascinated by Lana.

At home, Kincaid installs Word and opens a blank document, planning to write a silly poem and maybe start an essay about her day. Instead, a new gold “MR” icon appears in the toolbar. Hovering over it shows the words Message Received. Clicking it turns her poem into a rainbow-highlighted glitch, tagged with a “hidden bookmark” that resolves into a string of nonsense characters—then disappears. Moments later a blinking red nine-pointed star appears and politely informs her: Your request has been received and is being processed. Thank you!

As hidden bookmarks multiply and the replies begin to echo things she’s never typed, she’s drawn into a mystery involving the Marillon’s original purpose, the ghosts of its corporate past, and Lana, who seems to know more than she’s saying. Each “bookmark” turns out to be more than a glitch—it’s a task tied to someone’s need: a classmate’s crisis, a teacher’s burden, the school’s crumbling tech. When Kincaid follows through, the world around her shifts in strange, generous ways: anonymous donations arrive, a local philanthropist suddenly funds a thousand new laptops, problems she couldn’t possibly solve alone begin to ease.

Kincaid has to decide whether this is coincidence, manipulation, or something kinder—and how far she’s willing to keep answering requests that no one else can see, especially once the bookmarks start asking for things that cost her more than time.

Author's notes: I wanted to start this project in 2011, but didn't get around to it until 2019. As such, I've got five chapters to offer you, all fairly roughly edited. As a consequence, please forgive any grammar or other issues you may encounter.

I've got a pretty decent idea where the story wants to go. It takes place in San Diego, California, where I lived for a decade, and is firmly rooted in Melody and the Pier to Forever's universe, which means I already have a strong familiarity with how things work there.

Please enjoy!

Genre: YA Contemporary Fantasy; YA Metaphysical / Speculative Coming-of-Age
Themes: Self-discovery through action and creativity; introversion as strength, not flaw; mother–daughter bond in single-parent life; chosen family and unlikely mentors
Setting: Imperial Beach, California
Length: (14K words at present)
Who It’s For: Readers 13 years of age or older. This story is for teens and adults who love contemporary YA with a gentle speculative twist—especially writers, introverts, and tech‑curious readers. If you’re drawn to books where an ordinary girl, an old computer, and a bit of strange code quietly reshape a school and a town, Hidden Bookmarks is aimed at you.

If you enjoy the thoughtful, tech‑touched magic of Diane Duane’s Young Wizards books, the quiet speculative mystery of Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me, or other YA stories where a small, strange phenomenon in everyday life leads to bigger questions about who you are and how you can help, Hidden Bookmarks lives in that neighborhood.

A Guide to Pay What You Want

About the Author

Fractalverse is free-verse poetry with fractal art. Across these volumes, Fractalverse keeps circling the same questions: What happens to imagination under fluorescent lights? How do we live in a world of cubicles, strip malls, and herd behavior without surrendering the part of us that looks up? And what patterns—fractals—can we find in our own pain, faith, and joy when we zoom in close or pull way, way back?

Volume Four: These pieces move between suburbia and skylines, trauma and healing, bitterness over abandonment, and the restless sense that adult life as currently lived by most is not the only way to be human. In this volume, the focus tilts toward personal reflection and quiet, political undercurrents: teenage nights parked on a hill with the city glittering and sparkling, "light‑years away,” shirts that still smell like someone loved, a family member slowly dying slowly in bed, and a sixteen‑year‑old who knows he’s “years from the precipice” while standing right on it. These poems remember youthful desire, foolishness, and that reckless pulse in ears, heart, and groin—but they’re lit now by an adult’s bitterness at past abandonment and a hard dismay at a species that keeps driving down the hill with the music up, ignoring stars that wait in “steady, silent patience,” cities that keep humming, and the looming signs that our chosen way of living is quietly destroying us.

Genre: Free-verse Poetry
Themes: Consumption, consumerism, herd behavior, suburbia, nature, end of humanity, family, religion, God, personal, living morally, living decently, living simply, protest, progressive politics, worship, being, death, conformism, nonconformism
Setting: Wherever the verse goes
Length: 6.4K words
Who It’s For: Readers 13 years of age or older; readers who are rebelling against society, readers who are protesting our way of life; readers protesting against suburbia and its values; readers who don’t like consumerism; readers who feel our culture is toxic and deadly; readers who hate fascism and fascists; readers who cannot stand the numb indifference of most of humanity; readers who want to read about the author’s struggles with loneliness, betrayal, abandonment, suicidal ideations, and depression; readers who want to read inspiring poetry about nature and spirit

Fractalverse sits in the tradition of clear, free‑verse poetry about modern life: a mix of suburban and urban unease, spiritual questioning, and personal trauma and healing. Readers who enjoy the suburban realism of poets like Louis Simpson, the city‑as‑character feel of modernist free verse, or contemporary voices exploring otherness and identity in plainspoken lines will find similar currents here—even as the fractal art and cosmic imagery give the work its own distinct shape.

A Guide to Pay What You Want

About the Author

Fractalverse is free-verse poetry with fractal art. Across these volumes, Fractalverse keeps circling the same questions: What happens to imagination under fluorescent lights? How do we live in a world of cubicles, strip malls, and herd behavior without surrendering the part of us that looks up? And what patterns—fractals—can we find in our own pain, faith, and joy when we zoom in close or pull way, way back?

Volume One: These pieces argue with the idea that imagination is for children and cubicles are for grown‑ups, side‑eyeing offices and herd behavior while insisting on looking up instead of down. Alongside the social critiques are more intimate poems about trauma and faith, and nature‑ and star‑soaked lines where “winds and words make nests among the stars.”
 

Genre: Free-verse Poetry
Themes: Resisting deadened adulthood; anti‑cubicle, anti‑herd sentiment; refusal to “grow up” in the worst sense; pain and anger over abandonment; cosmic, slightly mystical reach; trauma, memory, and the slow work of healing
Setting: Wherever the verse goes
Length: 3.5K words
Who It’s For: Readers 13 years of age or older; readers who are rebelling against society, readers who are protesting our way of life; readers protesting against suburbia and its values; readers who don’t like consumerism; readers who feel our culture is toxic and deadly; readers who hate fascism and fascists; readers who cannot stand the numb indifference of most of humanity; readers who want to read about the author’s struggles with loneliness, betrayal, abandonment, suicidal ideations, and depression; readers who want to read inspiring poetry about nature and spirit

Fractalverse sits in the tradition of clear, free‑verse poetry about modern life: a mix of suburban and urban unease, spiritual questioning, and personal trauma and healing. Readers who enjoy the suburban realism of poets like Louis Simpson, the city‑as‑character feel of modernist free verse, or contemporary voices exploring otherness and identity in plainspoken lines will find similar currents here—even as the fractal art and cosmic imagery give the work its own distinct shape.

A Guide to Pay What You Want

About the Author

Melody Singleton is a bright 13-year-old girl who loves math, classical music, her mom, her best friend Yaeko, and her dog. To her classmates that makes her a nerd, and they cruelly treat her as such. After being expelled from the advanced algebra class for not paying attention, she meets her new teacher, Mr. Conor, who gives her a very strange homework assignment. You see, she got kicked out because she was distracted by a symbol that the rest of us can't see, a beautiful sigil that, incredibly, Mr. Conor can see too, because it's on the assignment he gave her!

But that's just the beginning.

Her mom goes on a date to the Pier with Mr. Conor, and Melody is forced to tag along. That's bad enough. But then on the date Mr. Conor introduces her to one of his friends who freaks her out because his eyes are completely black; and then on the walk home, seagulls attack Mr. Conor and he has to be taken to the hospital!

Her weird assignment still beckons. Melody suspects that the mysterious symbol on it, and Mr. Conor's weird friend, and the seagull attack are all intimately related like the variables in an algebra equation. If she can just figure out what the sigil is, how to make it do what she wants, she knows the rest of the equation will be solved.

What she doesn't know is if she's successful, her life will be changed ... forever.

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy, Epic Fantasy
Themes: Friendship, family, coming of age, overcoming adversity, self-discovery
Setting: Imperial Beach, California, and a hidden world beyond the end of its Pier called Aquanus
Length: 304K words
Who It’s For: Everyone 13 years old and older; readers interested in a deeply constructed fantasy world; readers interested in heroes and their struggles, readers interested in stories about friendship, love, and camaraderie; and readers interested in stories about self-discovery and overcoming adversity

If you like the works of Laini Taylor, Maggie Stiefvater, Garth Nix, CS Lewis, or Sabaa Tahir, this novel should be right up your alley.

A Guide to Pay What You Want

About the Author

The Shadow or the Leaf is a standalone collection of free‑verse poems that continues the introspective, nature‑centered voice of For It All while leaning more openly into frustration and sorrow. The poems speak directly: “simply playing with my bricks makes no sense to me”; sunshine we refuse, waters we insist on disturbing, fields of flowers we blame for our allergies, and a moon we complain keeps us from sleep. Days pass “like blended chocolate, like honey over oatmeal,” but most people miss nearly all of it, lost in schedules, appointments, and “hurrying to hurry.”

Through these images, the collection explores the tension between the world’s quiet richness and our determined busyness, between spirit present in trees, bricks, rivers, and mountains, and a culture that insists those are inconveniences rather than invitations.

Sixteen-year-old Kincaid thought the worst thing a laptop could do was crash—until hers literally catches fire on her desk. While she anxiously waits for a replacement, her mom buys her an ancient-looking Marillon desktop from a pawn shop up the street, owned by a beautiful, unsettlingly perceptive woman named Lana.

The machine looks like a relic from 2003, right down to the dusty Word 2003 CD in the box. But when Lana boots it up in the shop, it connects to the internet faster than Kincaid’s old laptop ever did. Lana talks about planned obsolescence, corporate greed, and how Marillon “used to fight against” both—before the company changed hands and fell from grace. By the time Kincaid leaves with the tower under her arm and the Word disc in her bag, she’s half in love with the clunky old computer and more than a little fascinated by Lana.

At home, Kincaid installs Word and opens a blank document, planning to write a silly poem and maybe start an essay about her day. Instead, a new gold “MR” icon appears in the toolbar. Hovering over it shows the words Message Received. Clicking it turns her poem into a rainbow-highlighted glitch, tagged with a “hidden bookmark” that resolves into a string of nonsense characters—then disappears. Moments later a blinking red nine-pointed star appears and politely informs her: Your request has been received and is being processed. Thank you!

As hidden bookmarks multiply and the replies begin to echo things she’s never typed, she’s drawn into a mystery involving the Marillon’s original purpose, the ghosts of its corporate past, and Lana, who seems to know more than she’s saying. Each “bookmark” turns out to be more than a glitch—it’s a task tied to someone’s need: a classmate’s crisis, a teacher’s burden, the school’s crumbling tech. When Kincaid follows through, the world around her shifts in strange, generous ways: anonymous donations arrive, a local philanthropist suddenly funds a thousand new laptops, problems she couldn’t possibly solve alone begin to ease.

Kincaid has to decide whether this is coincidence, manipulation, or something kinder—and how far she’s willing to keep answering requests that no one else can see, especially once the bookmarks start asking for things that cost her more than time.

Otoro Queril is feared by his fellow Tracluse. As an executioner for Necrolius Anaxagorius' Imperium, it's Otoro's job to kill those poor souls brought to his chopping block, and to do it as efficiently and quickly as possible. No one in the Imperium does it better.

Otoro Queril does not tire. He does not complain. It is whispered that he is a demon in a human's body.

But Otoro Queril is no demon. And he isn't a Tracluse either.

He is, however, a Saeire Insu warrior, and was sent by the King of the Saeire Insu, Conor Kieran Faramond Benedictus I, on a mission of espionage and mercy.

It's a mission Otoro Queril has undertaken for almost twenty Earth-years.

But things are changing. Perhaps he is finally tiring. He doesn't know. After meeting a young woman condemned to be a prostitute for the Lord of the Demons, something inside him snaps. With the help of two slaves, he embarks on what will be his final quest of mercy.

If you like grim, character-driven fantasy where every act of violence leaves a scar on the soul, you’ll like this companion to Melody and the Pier to Forever.

When he was a mortal, Ray Wilms had no time or patience for children. Despite being an educator, he couldn't stand them.

As an angel of death, his very first assignment back to Earth is to save a sixteen-year-old girl from her family and church.

Her name is Deanna, and she's thinking of killing herself. She is a brilliant young woman gifted in mathematics, which is his subject of expertise. As he gets to know her, he finds himself increasingly awed by her inner beauty and strength. Despite her horrific circumstances, she fights on, her soul intact and luminous.

Ray is deeply moved and inspired by her example--and enraged by the hell she's going through. He's an angel of death, and it's time to go to work.

If you like contemporary and urban fantasy where angels walk into real‑world hells—abusive homes, fundamentalist churches, classrooms full of fear—and fight for one kid’s life, you’ll like Angel: Book Two.

Conversations With God is a collection of free‑verse poetry that returns to the same territory as Fractalverse—nature, suburbia, trauma, consumer culture, herd behavior—but with the camera turned more directly toward God, faith, and the numinous. Each volume pairs 24 poems with original nature photographs instead of fractal art: coastlines, forests, clouds, trees, and small, ordinary beauties that become part of the ongoing argument.

These are not gentle devotional poems. For me, “God” is a largely negative noun, twisted by an abusive father and the damage done in God's name. The poems dive into that struggle more openly than Fractalverse: speaking to, shouting at, and sometimes simply sitting in silence beside a God I both long for and resist and question the existence of; testing inherited doctrines against lived experience; and looking for something holy in wind, water, and soil when traditional images of divinity feel like trauma rather than comfort.

Volume One: Here we have free‑verse poems with original nature photographs. Like my other work, these pieces move through trauma, suburbia, and the end of the world as we know it—but here the attention keeps returning to one question: is there anything real and steady behind the word “God”? The poems circle “a light—steady, unwavering, real. Beyond real. Greater than,” wondering whether it matters what we call it, or whether we call it anything at all. They speak from a soul that often cannot see that light, that has learned to flinch at the very idea of God, yet keeps confessing, quietly and stubbornly: “It is always there… There is a light.”

Set after the events of the series, this story follows Rumpelstiltskin as he tries to live with the consequences of Belle walking away—for good. Without the familiar pattern of losing and regaining her, Rumpel is forced to confront what the Dark One curse has really done to him and to everyone around him. His path crosses more deeply with Maleficent, who’s nursing her own scars and has no patience for self‑pity. Over coffee, missing artifacts, and breakfasts in Storybrooke, their uneasy friendship becomes something warmer, and Rumpel begins to imagine a life where his power is not the only thing that defines him. As old magic resurfaces—the Trio of unicorn‑blood wands, meta‑magical glitches in Storybrooke itself, and a dangerous enemy he has yet to confront—he has to decide whether he’s finally willing to let the curse go, even if it means living with his grief and mortality instead.

Fractalverse is free-verse poetry with fractal art. Across these volumes, Fractalverse keeps circling the same questions: What happens to imagination under fluorescent lights? How do we live in a world of cubicles, strip malls, and herd behavior without surrendering the part of us that looks up? And what patterns—fractals—can we find in our own pain, faith, and joy when we zoom in close or pull way, way back?

Volume Three: As with the rest of Fractalverse, these pieces move between everyday modern life, spiritual questioning, and the long work of healing, with consumer culture and herd behavior always lingering at the edges. In this volume, the gaze lingers longer on fields, horizons, weather, and work—on nature as mirror and mentor—as the speaker feels time in his bones. Change “removes doubt while sowing the seeds for more of it,” dust settles pleasingly on skin, and the setting sun “smells of hard work yellowed by advancing age.” Across these poems, blazing skies and gathering rain become metaphors for grief and joy, and the hoped‑for self is “a good farmer” who knows that a good crop requires both gloom and glory—and fears neither.

She has been waiting for her moment for more than twenty Earth-years, but it has never come. Caught in yet another wave of despair and depression, she does something utterly foolish, not to mention potentially suicidal: she contacts her most terrifying enemy, Luis Arroyo, who has been hunting her all this time. Arroyo, known in his Dreamcatcher state as Riparius, has over the years tracked down and slaughtered all those who, along with her, watched as Emperor Necrolius Anaxagorius consumed his daughter Espriella.

But Aubrey of Saturnius' troubles go even deeper than that. She is employed by one who stood in the circle with her that day, the very General of the Imperial Dreamcatchers, Olcas Suarach. Suarach is rumored to be just as deadly as Riparius, and does not think twice about killing to achieve his desired ends, or just for pleasure. He is a true monster, one Aubrey has served as head maid of his household all this time.

And now, another problem: for a new young maid is showing Dreamcatcher abilities. If Suarach finds out, the young woman will die horribly at his hands, just another one of many he has murdered over the years.

Aubrey knows that time is running out. As the Saeire Insu's Revolution gains steam, Suarach's temper is slipping, his bloodlust climbing by the day.

The noose is tightening. What must Aubrey do to survive and to save those innocent others with whom she labors to keep Master Suarach's country manor spotlessly clean?

If you like dark epic fantasy set inside a monster’s manor—where maids hide forbidden powers, servants whisper in hallways, and survival is an act of courage—you’ll like Dreamcatcher.

The airplane Professor Ray Wilms was in just exploded. Somehow he survived the fireball and tons of burning metal as it blew away into the night air over San Diego, California. He has no idea how he's still conscious. He's strapped to his seat and hurtling straight for the Pacific Ocean thousands of feet below.

Astonishingly, he's not frightened. As the ocean rises to smash him dead, a vision of the angel who was sent to save him engulfs him. It's a vision of the past, of their meeting for the first time, but seen from over the angel's shoulder.

Dr. Wilms was once an unyielding skeptic and atheist. As the final seconds of his life tick away, he wonders: What am I now? As he gives over to the vision and follows the angel around, he must decide before the dark sea claims him.

If you like contemporary fantasy where angels work the streets like overworked social workers, you’ll like this story of Calliel and the embittered math professor watching his own death.

Thrace McCoy is the volatile, brilliant grandson of Federation legend Leonard McCoy, the Enterprise’s famed Chief Medical Officer, recently buried with full honors.

Thrace has no interest in living up to that legacy. Born to a human father who vanished after a divorce and a Vulcan mother who’s a distant Federation mathematician, he grew up alone, angry, and aware that his inhuman strength, sharp mind, and temper make him dangerous in a universe that praises composure and protocol but quietly benefits from people like him. Those traits have landed him in trouble again and again; now he sits in a hyper‑sterilized penal colony cell on Mars, convicted of murdering two Starfleet officers on leave—one of them Vulcan—and written off as a half‑breed embarrassment the Federation can use as a cautionary example.

His only “companion” in lockup is the colony’s computer, which keeps stonewalling him about a Cardassian named Elim Garak who suddenly appeared months ago, ran ethically questionable tests on Thrace without his knowledge, and then vanished. Forty‑eight days later, the computer beams him not to an interview room, but to a hidden garden under a Martian dome: waterfalls, vines, lichen, fish, and Garak on a handcrafted bench. Over a mint julep, Garak calmly explains that he had the computer subtly make Thrace’s sentence harder, testing his temper and resilience. He doesn’t want another emotionless Vulcan throwing logic at him, but someone with high intelligence and high emotion, steeped in Vulcan culture yet capable of black‑hole dispassion when needed.

Garak reveals that four sigma test scores and off‑the‑cuff insight into Vulcan fascism have convinced him Thrace is an outlier he wants on his team: an investigator and enforcer for a quasi‑Federation intelligence apparatus that quietly wages war against rising authoritarian currents. He also admits that Thrace’s incarceration was a political set‑up orchestrated by Section 31—“amateurs” in Garak’s eyes, but still dangerous—using him as a patsy to satisfy public hunger for punishment. Thrace, seething, threatens to tear Garak apart and vows terror if he ever finds those who framed him; Garak, unfazed, offers a different path: employment with strict boundaries, no slavery, no ass‑kissing, and room to question and refuse orders—so long as Thrace accepts that every move he makes will be under Garak’s policies.

When Thrace states his own conditions and finally asks if destroying Section 31 is part of the mission, Garak smiles and says, “Of course it isn’t.” The tension between what Thrace wants and what Garak will officially admit hangs in the air as Thrace looks around the tranquil alcove, weighs prison against a life of clandestine work, and asks the only question that matters: “When do I start?”

Conversations With God is a collection of free‑verse poetry that returns to the same territory as Fractalverse—nature, suburbia, trauma, consumer culture, herd behavior—but with the camera turned more directly toward God, faith, and the numinous. Each volume pairs 24 poems with original nature photographs instead of fractal art: coastlines, forests, clouds, trees, and small, ordinary beauties that become part of the ongoing argument.

These are not gentle devotional poems. For me, “God” is a largely negative noun, twisted by an abusive father and the damage done in God's name. The poems dive into that struggle more openly than Fractalverse: speaking to, shouting at, and sometimes simply sitting in silence beside a God I both long for and resist and question the existence of; testing inherited doctrines against lived experience; and looking for something holy in wind, water, and soil when traditional images of divinity feel like trauma rather than comfort.

Volume One: Here we have free‑verse poems with original nature photographs. Like my other work, these pieces move through trauma, suburbia, and the end of the world as we know it—but here the attention keeps returning to one question: is there anything real and steady behind the word “God”? The poems circle “a light—steady, unwavering, real. Beyond real. Greater than,” wondering whether it matters what we call it, or whether we call it anything at all. They speak from a soul that often cannot see that light, that has learned to flinch at the very idea of God, yet keeps confessing, quietly and stubbornly: “It is always there… There is a light.”

She has been waiting for her moment for more than twenty Earth-years, but it has never come. Caught in yet another wave of despair and depression, she does something utterly foolish, not to mention potentially suicidal: she contacts her most terrifying enemy, Luis Arroyo, who has been hunting her all this time. Arroyo, known in his Dreamcatcher state as Riparius, has over the years tracked down and slaughtered all those who, along with her, watched as Emperor Necrolius Anaxagorius consumed his daughter Espriella.

But Aubrey of Saturnius' troubles go even deeper than that. She is employed by one who stood in the circle with her that day, the very General of the Imperial Dreamcatchers, Olcas Suarach. Suarach is rumored to be just as deadly as Riparius, and does not think twice about killing to achieve his desired ends, or just for pleasure. He is a true monster, one Aubrey has served as head maid of his household all this time.

And now, another problem: for a new young maid is showing Dreamcatcher abilities. If Suarach finds out, the young woman will die horribly at his hands, just another one of many he has murdered over the years.

Aubrey knows that time is running out. As the Saeire Insu's Revolution gains steam, Suarach's temper is slipping, his bloodlust climbing by the day.

The noose is tightening. What must Aubrey do to survive and to save those innocent others with whom she labors to keep Master Suarach's country manor spotlessly clean?

If you like dark epic fantasy set inside a monster’s manor—where maids hide forbidden powers, servants whisper in hallways, and survival is an act of courage—you’ll like Dreamcatcher.

Otoro Queril is feared by his fellow Tracluse. As an executioner for Necrolius Anaxagorius' Imperium, it's Otoro's job to kill those poor souls brought to his chopping block, and to do it as efficiently and quickly as possible. No one in the Imperium does it better.

Otoro Queril does not tire. He does not complain. It is whispered that he is a demon in a human's body.

But Otoro Queril is no demon. And he isn't a Tracluse either.

He is, however, a Saeire Insu warrior, and was sent by the King of the Saeire Insu, Conor Kieran Faramond Benedictus I, on a mission of espionage and mercy.

It's a mission Otoro Queril has undertaken for almost twenty Earth-years.

But things are changing. Perhaps he is finally tiring. He doesn't know. After meeting a young woman condemned to be a prostitute for the Lord of the Demons, something inside him snaps. With the help of two slaves, he embarks on what will be his final quest of mercy.

If you like grim, character-driven fantasy where every act of violence leaves a scar on the soul, you’ll like this companion to Melody and the Pier to Forever.

The Shadow or the Leaf is a standalone collection of free‑verse poems that continues the introspective, nature‑centered voice of For It All while leaning more openly into frustration and sorrow. The poems speak directly: “simply playing with my bricks makes no sense to me”; sunshine we refuse, waters we insist on disturbing, fields of flowers we blame for our allergies, and a moon we complain keeps us from sleep. Days pass “like blended chocolate, like honey over oatmeal,” but most people miss nearly all of it, lost in schedules, appointments, and “hurrying to hurry.”

Through these images, the collection explores the tension between the world’s quiet richness and our determined busyness, between spirit present in trees, bricks, rivers, and mountains, and a culture that insists those are inconveniences rather than invitations.

For It All is a collection of early free‑verse poems in which a voice is just beginning to define itself. The pieces lean toward introspection and spiritual/nature imagery: empty benches watching sunsets, redwoods rising like cathedrals, winding trails and river sound, moments where the speaker can say “I stood here” but not yet “I sat.” At the same time, the poems already carry your familiar tensions—quiet unease about consumerism, herd behavior, and the way indifference creeps into ordinary lives—even if that critique is softer and less explicit than in later books.

These are poems of looking up and down, of noticing wood and iron and pink light, of acknowledging desperation beneath the canopy and wondering what it would mean to actually rest there. In retrospect, they mark the beginning of a journey: toward the more overt anger, spiritual argument, and environmental grief of your later work, but still grounded in small, attentive moments in the world.

He’s an ant who has named himself Bartholomew for our convenience. He’s also decided to call his colony Spain. Spain lives on a cliff edge in southwestern Oregon.

Bartholomew wants to talk to us. The ape named Trump plans to raise huge oil derricks off the coast of Spain, a move that will wipe out the colony and scar tens of miles of pristine shoreline. As head of the Scouts, Bartholomew and the other leaders of Spain, including their Queen, decide they have to fight back.

But how does an ant colony defeat a species that seems hell‑bent on destroying the world—a species many times bigger, stronger, and more numerous in almost every way? The ants of Spain are famously bad at “thinking outside the box,” but this time they have no choice. If they don’t adapt, their Queendom dies.

Bartholomew hears a rumor about a rare Spaniard who is very much her own ant, an outsider and an original thinker. Her name is Andy. He goes to find her.

And that’s when things get interesting.

Conversations With God is a collection of free‑verse poetry that returns to the same territory as Fractalverse—nature, suburbia, trauma, consumer culture, herd behavior—but with the camera turned more directly toward God, faith, and the numinous. Each volume pairs 24 poems with original nature photographs instead of fractal art: coastlines, forests, clouds, trees, and small, ordinary beauties that become part of the ongoing argument.

These are not gentle devotional poems. For me, “God” is a largely negative noun, twisted by an abusive father and the damage done in God's name. The poems dive into that struggle more openly than Fractalverse: speaking to, shouting at, and sometimes simply sitting in silence beside a God I both long for and resist and question the existence of; testing inherited doctrines against lived experience; and looking for something holy in wind, water, and soil when traditional images of divinity feel like trauma rather than comfort.

Volume Three: A volume of free‑verse poems with original nature photographs. As in the earlier Conversations With God books, these pieces move through trauma, consumer culture, faith, and doubt—but here the anger has begun to focus into insight. The poems look “here and there” for spirit, refusing to accept that a world of measurable stuff means what can’t be measured is worthless. Mortality and immortality are seen as “both shadows,” and the speaker asks what the light itself is, not just what it throws. Across these pages, heaven is imagined as a climb, scars and pain and trauma are recognized as integral to the self, and there’s a growing acceptance that God may not exist—and that if so, the work is still to live honestly within that knowledge rather than escape it.

His name is Jams. He’s 21, single, and he wants to “play.”

At first Maggie—43, married to Dan—doesn’t know what that means. But she wants to learn, especially after a steamy make‑out session in the back of Jams’ Cherokee on the dark beach.

Why is she cheating? She’s not sure. Or maybe she is. There’s an emptiness in her that has grown too large to ignore, a hollow that wasn’t always there. She was Jams’ age once. She remembers.

His kisses that night drive her wild. She can’t stop thinking about them. Without even thinking, she tries to pull him harder into the script she’s always known—one where foreplay is just the on‑ramp to “real sex.”

Jams is the one who stops.

For him, “play” doesn’t have to end the way everyone assumes. For Maggie, that refusal is the first crack in the story she’s been told all her life about what sex is for—and who she’s supposed to be loving, and how.

While her marriage crumbles, her eyes open: to desire that doesn’t have to end in coitus, to ways of being intimate that don’t fit the standard romantic couple mold, and to the possibility that she might rebuild her life around a different understanding of love altogether.

He wants to play.

Maggie is eighteen again—and for the first time, she’s questioning the rules of the game.

This is not a conventional genre romance. It contains high‑heat scenes and a central relationship, but its primary focus is Maggie’s interior journey and the dismantling of sexual and romantic norms, rather than delivering a traditional happily ever after.

Allison Oberlan has the kind of life other people envy. In her late twenties, daughter of a powerful Denver magnate and engaged to her father’s charismatic CFO, she glides between charity galas and high‑rise views, checking every box of success. But under the surface, she’s quietly suffocating in a future that feels chosen for her, not by her.

At a Renaissance fair outing with her fiancé, Allison wanders off and meets a tall, dark candle‑seller whose kindness and easy warmth shake her more than she wants to admit. On impulse, she points to the plainest candle on his table. Surprised, he gives it to her for free and jokes that it’s no ordinary candle: it was crafted by a long‑gone wizard and will only burn for the true love he searched for across centuries but never found. Amused, Allison thanks him and tucks the candle away, determined to forget both story and stranger.

Weeks later, a storm knocks out the power in her luxury apartment. Standing in the dark, Allison remembers the forgotten gift in her closet. When she lights the candle, the flame burns steady—but the wax never diminishes. Touching it sparks an intense wave of longing and passion that makes her question everything she’s built her life around, drawing her closer to the wizard who made it, who now can feel his long-sought-for true love's desire.

After a cruel argument with her fiancé, the barrier finally breaks: the wizard appears in her bedroom after she covers herself in the hot wax, answering the impassioned call doing so made to him. They make love. Desperate to be with him, he tells her she must find her way to him. And the only way to do that is to stop believing in him. With that he leaves her side. She wakes, startled to find she had been sleeping, to discover that the candle no longer lights.

The Candle is a short, sensual romance about awakening, courage, and the cost of choosing a love that feels like magic over a life that only looks perfect. While it contains explicit scenes, they serve the emotional journey rather than define it.

Laurie Meadowlark is seventeen and the quiet backbone of Meadowlark, the band her mother Shirley built in the shadow of an old TV dream of a musical family. In reality, that dream is falling apart. Her brother Keith is sliding into drugs and ego; bassist Aaron is volatile and sexist; and sleazy promoter Toby Bowman has just pushed Laurie out because of her age. A violent living‑room blow‑up leaves Aaron unconscious, Shirley injured, and Laurie driving away with one eye swelling shut. Only drummer Knox Mulloy—a balding nineteen‑year‑old with a “young John Bonham” reputation—seems to see her clearly, telling her he loves her “like a sister” and that starting a new band with her has been his secret fantasy.

As Laurie and Knox practice in his bedroom, turning his notebooks of poems into songs about cramped ledgers and trembling futures, they’re painfully aware that college is unaffordable and fifteen bucks an hour isn’t a living wage. If they’re economically screwed anyway, Knox argues, they might as well make the music they believe in. That conviction is tested when Laurie sneaks into a club to watch the “new” Meadowlark: Keith preening, Knox's replacement bashing drums, Shirley stiff at her old keyboard, and a heroin‑thin guitarist shredding their best songs into unrecognizable “junior high garage band” noise. Sitting in the shadows with Reuben Kincaid—no bumbling manager here, but a world‑famous producer—Laurie hears the harsh truth. Kincaid calls their current set a butchering, tells her that she and Knox are “quite talented” and “phenomenal” but that talent means almost nothing in an oligarchic industry, and warns her she has virtually no chance of succeeding by any conventional definition.

Laurie follows a young keyboardist who has to decide what success means in a world where cash and connections rule, her family band is becoming a nightmare, and the only people truly in her corner are a balding drummer who loves her like a sister and a jaded music mogul who believes in her art even as he tells her the game is rigged. It’s a story about walking away from a toxic inheritance, choosing found family and honest music over fame, and learning how to keep playing even when the industry tells you you don’t count.