Lloyd Alexander’s Westmark trilogy won the 1982 National Book Award, yet his Prydain series has 240,000 Goodreads ratings while Westmark has just 10,900—a 22-to-1 disparity. I’m a veteran who writes about war’s moral costs, and Alexander’s trilogy shaped how I understand justified violence and political revolution. When revolutionary Florian says you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, young Theo responds: “Yes. But men aren’t eggs.” Alexander never resolves that debate. Neither do I. This is why Westmark matters, why it failed commercially, why it deserves rediscovery, and why I’m trying to continue what Alexander started.
Modern YA Is Failing Teenagers—I’m Stealing it Back
I queried *Doors to the Stars* to over two dozen agents. Zero full manuscript requests. My 11-year-old daughter stayed up all night devouring it. My 19-year-old son texted me at 2 AM about plot twists. But publishing professionals? Not interested. The book features a 16-year-old scavenger who discovers alien technology, faces impossible moral choices, and carries genuine guilt for thousands of deaths. No graphic sex. Real consequences. Intelligence-driven plot. Exactly what research shows teens actually want. Traditional publishing rejected it because they’ve optimized for adult romance readers, not actual teenagers. So I’m going indie. They stole YA from us. I’m stealing it back.
Ripping the Guardrails off Literary Genre Fiction
If content warnings function as marketing copy for you rather than deal-breakers, keep reading. I write dark, pulse-pounding literary genre fiction where characters fail people they love, moral complexity doesn’t resolve into easy answers, and consequences are permanent. Jasmine survives sex trafficking with sarcasm intact. First-to-Dance carries trauma that doesn’t heal. Lenaja wakes screaming from nightmares of the woman whose consciousness she erased. No feel-good redemption arcs. No narrative assurance that everything happens for a reason. No lectures on how to think. Just hard questions, intellectual complexity, and stories compared to Gene Wolfe and N.K. Jemisin. Fair warning: guardrails are off.
Publishers Are Using AI to Screen Manuscripts—And Great Books Are Dying in the Slush Pile
Publishers are using AI to screen manuscripts before human eyes ever see them. The result? Your Renaissance fantasy gets flagged for “misgendering” because your heroine is disguised as a boy. Your PTSD story gets rejected as “gratuitous violence.” Your satire about racism gets auto-rejected as racist. AI can identify patterns—trafficking, violence, “problematic” content—but it can’t make judgments. It can’t distinguish between depicting evil and endorsing it, between satire and bigotry, between complex characters and harmful stereotypes. The books doing the most important work—exploring trauma, condemning systemic evil, trusting readers to think—are dying in the slush pile, rejected by algorithms that mistake thoughtful storytelling for risk.
Write What You Love… To Market
Asking “should I write what I love or write to market?” is the wrong question. The writing world has manufactured a false binary that’s keeping writers from building sustainable careers. It’s not about compromise. It’s about understanding what you genuinely love writing and finding readers who are hungry for exactly that. The market isn’t your enemy. Your passion isn’t a liability. Find where they meet. That’s the sweet spot.
Transcending the Strong Female Character™ Trope
Not every strong female character is “woke trash”—but the lazy Strong Female Character™ trope deserves its criticism. Lisa Kuznak’s viral defense of heroines like Ripley and Sarah Connor sparked a crucial conversation: What truly separates inspiring warriors from one-dimensional girl-boss clichés? Enter Sarai izt Kviokhi from the forthcoming Dark Dominion sequence—a psychic revolutionary who sidesteps the SFC pitfalls through hard-earned vulnerability, moral complexity, and realistic combat grounded in strategy over brute force. In a galaxy crushed under tyranny, she proves that truly empowering female characters aren’t about effortless dominance—they’re about enduring, evolving, and forging liberation through sacrifice and meaningful connection.
Using AI for Writing Feedback
Grok “beta reading” a scene from Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora is a perfect example of why you absolutely should not use AI like Grok for feedback on your writing.
Authors, Please Don’t Save the Cat
Plotting a novel using the Save the Cat method, popularized by Blake Snyder, can be inadvisable for several reasons, particularly for writers seeking originality or depth. While the structure offers a clear, formulaic approach—dividing a story into 15 beats like “Catalyst” and “Midpoint”—its rigid framework risks stifling creativity and producing predictable narratives. First, Save the … Continue reading Authors, Please Don’t Save the Cat
Beyond the Margins 