The child growing inside her shouldn’t exist. Sarai izt Kviokhi’s bloodline is genetically incompatible with the divine elite—especially The Name, the immortal tyrant who’s ruled the galaxy for three thousand years. But her impossible pregnancy becomes living proof that the Dominion’s entire social foundation is a lie. When word spreads, ancient prophecies resurface and Sarai becomes the target of a destiny she desperately wants to avoid. Abolitionists hunt her daughter for their agendas. The Name seeks her destruction. The only way to save her child is to give them what they fear most: a mother with nothing left to lose and an empire to burn.
What Actually Makes YA Literature “Young Adult”
A reader challenged me after I posted about “Doors to the Stars,” my YA space opera: aren’t you just writing adult fiction with a teenage protagonist? It’s a sophisticated question that cuts to the heart of YA’s current crisis. The genre has been captured by adult readers, and publishers responded by making seventeen-year-olds act like college students with adult emotional processing. But the answer to what makes fiction YA isn’t about what darkness you include—it’s about something else entirely. When a 13-year-old kills to protect another girl from sexual exploitation, is that YA or adult fiction? The answer might surprise you.
FernGully and the Last Space Marine: or Why Desperately Seeking “Originality” Is Bullshit
When I started writing “The Stygian Blades” earlier this year, I was nearly petrified by concerns about being “unique” enough. A grizzled mercenary veteran, an exiled jinn, a frostroot-addicted shadow mage—every fantasy heist story you’ve ever read. I was so paralyzed by the familiar elements that I almost never started writing it. Then I posted a simple tweet: “Nothing is original. Every story has already been told—but it hasn’t been told by you.” Three million views later, the response was clear. This fear is epidemic. But here’s what Avatar, Shakespeare, and Bob Dylan all understand about originality that MFA workshops don’t teach.
Losing My Voice to Find It
A reader loved my book enough to reread it within a month. She ranked it in her top 10 of the year. Then she gave it three stars. Her reason? My protagonist felt like three completely different people wearing the same name. She was absolutely right. I was fighting myself on every page—code-switching between “proper military fantasy” and the literary voice that kept breaking through whenever the story hit real moral weight. She’d caught me mid-transformation, documenting the messy transition from writing what I thought readers wanted to writing in my actual voice. It took me five books and hundreds or thousands of discarded words to find my true voice. But it was worth it.
Guest Review: Death or Glory
Goodreads reviewer Joanne Budzien calls Death or Glory one of her top 10 books of 2025—so compelling she reread it within a month, finishing both times in under 24 hours. This middle book in my Doomsday Recon trilogy masterfully blends military action, fantasy, and literary fiction without typical sequel slump. Real stakes, visceral character development, and genre-defying storytelling create something rare: a philosophical war story that never lectures. Budzien’s spoiler-filled review wrestles with an unexpected problem—too much excellent character development—while praising my handling of everything from realistic dialogue to traumatic events. Her verdict? Read it, then immediately continue to Born in Battle for the full emotional impact.
How I Plan to Build 1,500 Readers from Scratch in Four Months
I have 123 days to launch Doors to the Stars with the wrong audience and no real platform. My Twitter followers are mostly middle-aged men, not young women who want dark YA space opera. Email lists convert 40x better than social media, so I’m building 1,500 engaged subscribers from scratch in four months using reader magnets, group promotions, and strategic ads with a $2K budget. The book is good—I know that. My fear is that quality doesn’t matter if no one sees it. I’m documenting everything publicly with real numbers and real failures. This will either work or become a very public lesson in how not to launch a book.
The Rorschach Test With Teeth
Someone on Twitter wished authors could be “mystical” again—writing stories that let readers project their own meanings without accountability. That’s not mysticism. That’s cowardice dressed in artistic pretension. My novels are Rorschach tests, but the inkblot has teeth. They contain explicit moral architecture that forces readers to reveal their relationship to impossible choices: Sacrifice a friend’s soul to save millions? Accept peaceful reform that costs women’s bodies? Choose between your daughter and revolution? How you respond tells me everything about what you actually believe when principles collide with survival. Fiction that interrogates you isn’t mystical. It’s craft.
He Who Saves His Country Does Not Violate Any Law
Napoleon once said, “He who saves his country does not violate any law.” Two centuries later, another world leader echoed those exact words nearly verbatim. Those aren’t the words of a constitutional conservative—they’re the logic every autocrat uses to dismantle democracy. So why is half the country cheering instead of recognizing the pattern? Because MAGA has convinced itself the republic already fell to a deep state coup, which justifies any measure—even unconstitutional ones—as restoration rather than violation. But you can’t save a Republic from a coup that never happened. And scholars of democratic erosion will tell you we’re following the exact playbook that killed democracies in Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela.
An Open Letter to r/Republican on Reddit
I was permanently banned from r/Republican for warning that the precedents conservatives celebrate today become the powers they’ll face tomorrow. Not for opposing Republican values—for defending them. Not for abandoning conservative principles—for taking them seriously. My crime? Making a constitutional argument about executive overreach and institutional constraints from an explicitly conservative framework. Apparently that makes me “anti-Republican.” If raising concerns about abandoning the checks and balances our oaths require us to defend is now grounds for expulsion, then “Republican” no longer means what I spent my life thinking it meant. And that should trouble Republicans far more than it troubles me.
My Oath Didn’t Expire. Neither Did Yours.
In January 1994, I swore an oath to defend the Constitution. As far as I’m aware that oath has no expiration date. I’ve voted Republican my entire life. But I’m now watching conservatives make a catastrophic strategic error: dismantling constitutional constraints to empower Trump, without realizing these same tools—deportation infrastructure, normalized defiance of courts, purged oversight—will inevitably transfer to a Democratic president they’ll despise. MAGA isn’t building durable conservative power; they’re eliminating the very safeguards that protect our values when power changes hands. The machinery they’re cheering today can be repurposed against us tomorrow. So I’m asking you—one veteran to another, one conservative to another, one American to another: Stop celebrating and start thinking. Think about the system you’re building. Think about who inherits it. Think about whether you’d accept these same powers in the hands of a President you despise. Because that’s coming. Not maybe. Guaranteed. Our oath is being tested right now, in real-time. The question is will we honor it?
Beyond the Margins 