Indie Spotlight: Kevin R. Andrade

 

Welcome to our Indie Spotlight series, in which TNBBC gives small press authors the floor to shed some light on their writing process, publishing experiences, or whatever else they'd like to share with you, the readers!

Today's spotlight shines on Kevin R. Andrade, who released In For a Dime on August 5th. 

Origin Story

The origin story behind In for a Dime and the first book of the series, Ten to the 405, was a bad beat in the first game of the 2011 college football season between USC and Utah. A blocked field goal and a returned touchdown overturned by an erroneous penalty call caused millions of millions of dollars to switch hands. From that game, began the origins of Jake Hansen. Out of that moment of frustration emerged the idea of a man whose whole life had become a bad beat- someone who had once possessed talent, ambition and promise but had squandered it. Jake devolved into a disgraced former journalist, a man damaged by his sins, vices and proclivities and found himself searching for redemption.

 

The world of Jake was created in Ten to the 405, the first book of the series. Many of the short stories that occur in the South Bronx were inspired by real stories and my own experiences as a journalist, although some poetic license was used to reshape and serve the novel. That mixture of truth and invention is central to the way I write. I begin with something real - a person, a neighborhood, an anecdote I might tell in a bar and then I ask how a similar experience might affect the characters inhabiting the world of In for a Dime and Ten to the 405.

 

By the time I began writing In for a Dime, Jake, as well as Pete, Lamar, Sophie, Danny and a few of the ancillary characters had developed their own histories, flaws, loyalties and voices. I have a relationship with these characters and it’s not simply to move the plot forward. I wish to convey what each of them wants, what they fear, what they regret and what lines they will, or will not, cross. I believe the most revealing moments occur not during the violence or mystery, but in the quieter conversations between people who have survived together and have found salvation in each other.

 

Loyalty is paramount in these books. Jake and the people around him are imperfect, reckless and compromised. But when someone they love is threatened, they are there. Their loyalty is what saves them and it is also what puts them in dangerous situations and forces them to make choices that challenge their morality.

 

Above all, In for a Dime, is a love letter to Los Angeles. It’s not a postcard version but a missive to the sprawling, divided, beautiful, unforgiving city beneath it. Its bars, streets, freeways, neighborhoods and people, shape every decision. Los Angeles is more than the setting for the Jake Hansen series. It is one of its most important characters.

Former journalist turned reluctant PI, Jake Hansen, alongside Pete Mills and Lamar Wagner, is hired to track a missing accountant and $2 million in stolen funds. But when their investigation leads to a dangerous web of corruption and a sex trafficking ring tied to the city’s elite, the case becomes personal.

When Sophie, their bartender and closest ally, is targeted by a predator from her past, the stakes escalate. With bodies dropping and the law closing in, Jake and his crew must uncover the truth before everything they care about is destroyed.

In for a Dime delivers a dark, cinematic look at loyalty, corruption and the cost of digging too deep.

Kevin R. Andrade is the author of the Jake Hansen Mystery series, including Ten to the 405 and In For a Dime.

A Mexican American raised in Ohio, Kevin earned degrees in English and Political Science from Bowling Green State University before building a career as a speechwriter, music journalist, travel writer, and novelist. He has lived in Los Angeles, Mexico City, Boston, and New York City, experiences that continue to influence the authentic settings, dialogue, and characters throughout his fiction.

Before writing novels, Kevin crafted speeches for politicians, interviewed music legends, and explored destinations around the world as a travel writer. Those experiences taught him that every person has a story worth telling, a philosophy that continues to shape the characters and investigations at the heart of the Jake Hansen Mystery series.

Blog Tour: CRIMSON IN QUIETUS by Eugen Bacon

 

We're happy to help Meerkat Press support the release of their latest title CRIMSON IN QUIETUS by Eugen Bacon by participating in their blog tour. 

For our portion of the tour, Eugen has decided to participate in our indie spotlight, sharing some insight into fear... fear of writing, fear of rejection, and overocming imposture syndrome.

Confessions of a literary magpie

I had a lot of fear writing this book. My fear was about rejection—how would the audience receive this book? I was nervous, why? Because it was the first time I was writing such a big work set in the Afrocentric Sauútiverse.  

 

True, I’d already written stories set in this universe, including award winners, as in The Nga’phandileh Whisperer: A Sauútiverse Novella that recently won the Foreword Indies Book of the Year, was a finalist in the same award for the Fantasy category and was a finalist in the British Fantasy and Aurealis Awards. It also made the preliminary ballot for the 2025 Bram Stoker Awards. 

But, as writers, we only feel as good as the last book. We tell ourselves: The publisher is expecting… The audience is expecting… Awards are expecting… And we are also expecting…

 

There was already so much expectation for this book, the development of which was supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund as part of the University of Tasmania’s three-month Hedberg Fellowship. I spent three whole months in Tassie researching the novel, whose fiction borrowed from the island’s natural beauty of rocky outcrops, stalactite and stalagmite caves, cascading waterfalls, rivulet trails and fiery auroras that now found themselves in an Afrocentric Sauútiverse novel.

 

In writing it, I connected with the characters, found order in their disorder. I worried if my new kind of speculative literary mystery where the investigator was not a detective, but a sound magic specialist held. The opening of the book was reassuring, as were the publisher’s comments: “This is such a wonderful book!”

 

The story opens with the afterlife, a dimension of the dead, where the souls of our ancestors lurk:

Prologue: Crossing to Eh’wauizo

 

The crossing to Eh’wauizo, the spirit realm, is in the backwaters of a black river. Put a pinch of shadow and blood salt in your pocket, or sew it in a hem. Slip a button, a tooth, a chicken bone, a crystal or a small, shiny thing under your tongue for Ze-ne to collect. The ear of a ghost orchid, or the twig of a dragon-no’s blood tree is also good. It will ward off omens.

 

Tie a blindfold with a spotless garment—ebony or crimson—and listen for light. You will see silver specters in nondescript shapes turning to wine colors. Don’t mind them. Tend away from echoes and negotiate towards ripples of gentler waters whose lick at your calf then your waist then your chest then your neck especially frightens you as you submerge. Keep treading underwater even as your lungs swell.

 

Resist an urge to scream. Don’t struggle or hold your breath, even as your arms and legs begin to feel laden with rocks. Relax your body, think of the potential. Your chest is tearing, everything inside burning, but it isn’t. Your head will feel light, lighter still as you recognize the approaching Ze-ne-nazala, dear Ze-ne—the demigoddess of death—who will float you to a place of no fear.

 

This is Eh’wauizo, the dimension of our ancestors.

 

Protagonists Muso’mi and Fin’Lei each reminds me of myself in their own different way. Muso’mi is gifted and sometimes wishes she wasn’t. She’s not consumed with vanity and doesn’t like confrontation. She doesn’t need a mirror to tell her what she looks like, because she’s studied many mirrors and decided she likes her jaw, she doesn’t like her jaw. She likes the shape and fullness of her lips, she doesn’t like the shape and fullness of her lips… It varies with moods, how she feels about herself.

 

Like Muso’mi, Fin’Lei is curious about the world, she’s exploratory. She’s had the best and the worst of worlds. She’s had Granmaé, someone to look up to, clear-eyed, honest-faced Granmaé whose entire being said trust me, because you can. On the other hand, Fin’Lei has never known familial love. Her parents are hardworking, doing the best they can as humans would in a world where robots and enhanced humans perform better. Such is the iron of life—Fin’Lei didn’t choose it.

 

It’s natural, then, that these two misfits, Muso’mi and Fin’Lei, find kindredhood in each other. But the universe is warped and has other ideas.

 

I wrote this novel as stories-within-stories. It’s a creative composition that’s both spontaneous and researched. My writing was discovery, lived experience and more. I layered the novel story by story, creating a longer piece of work using a discipline of short story writing already familiar. I paid attention to the short story and embedded vignettes and tales that could be continued, carefully placed within the novel, interlinked them and layered with characters, events, motifs and interplays—a sum of the parts.

 

In hindsight, I can say imposter’s syndrome be damned! The reviews are coming and they affirm that, in Crimson in Quietus, I did something right.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Crimson in Quietus 

Release today!

Science Fiction | Horror | Afrofuturism

From the queen of genre-bending speculative fiction, comes the newest Sauútiverse offering, a mystery like no other, where the investigator is not a detective, but a sound scientist. 

In a world where sound is a tangible force, Muso’mi is a maadiregi—an expert in the art of consuming it. At the prestigious Mahadum, she researches the language of silence, seeking to master the gift her mother calls theft. But academic intrigue turns to deadly peril when her friend vanishes after unearthing a hidden truth. Pursuing clues through pools of quietude across worlds, Muso’mi stumbles upon a horrifying discovery: a pattern of carnage left in fields of harvested silence. Now, the hunter becomes the hunted, as her unique expertise draws her into the orbit of a serial killer who understands the power of sound all too well. 

Includes a glossary of Bantu, Afrocentric and made-up words from this cross-cultural tale written in gorgeous lyrical language packed with emotion. 

Meerkat Press | Bookshop.org | Amazon

“Bacon has one of the most unflinchingly unique voices in modern fiction, be it in the speculative field or anywhere else. Crimson in Quietus is her most lyrical, ambitious work to date.” 

—Keith Rosson, author of Coffin Moon

“Eugen Bacon has crafted a unique and utterly fearless literary mosaic that gleefully defies genre traditions and rejects all conventional standards of classification. Unflinching and written with such powerful poetry and lyricism, Crimson in Quietus is raw, intense, and captivating. One of the most extraordinary, mesmerizing, and magnetic novels I've ever had the honor of reading.”

—Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“Bacon’s prose is as rich as the worldbuilding, studded with neologisms derived from African language and legends (a helpful glossary provides both meanings and derivations).

—Publishers Weekly

 

 

Eugen Bacon is an African Australian author. She is a Solstice, British Fantasy, Ignyte, Locus, Foreword Indies and BSFA Award winner. She’s also a twice World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson Award finalist, and a finalist in the Philip K. Dick Awards and the Nommo Awards for speculative fiction by Africans. Eugen is an Otherwise Fellow, and was announced on the honor list for ‘doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction’. Danged Black Thing made the Otherwise Award Honor List as a ‘sharp collection of Afro-Surrealist work’. Visit her at eugenbacon.com.

 

Indie Spotlight: Eugene Costello

Welcome to our Indie Spotlight series, in which TNBBC gives small press authors the floor to shed some light on their writing process, publishing experiences, or whatever else they'd like to share with you, the readers!

Today's spotlight shines on Eugene Costello who released Puta Madre on August 5th.

Why I Made a Colombian Migrant and Former Sex Worker the Heroine of My Novel

I arrived in Spain to begin my new life just a couple of weeks before the country entered one of the strictest pandemic lockdowns in the world. Arrangements to connect the electricity, water, gas and Wi-Fi in my rented apartment ground to a halt. For weeks, I was permitted to leave only to walk the hundred metres to my nearest grocery store for essentials.

 

Shortly before lockdown, I had decided to employ a cleaner and, through word of mouth, found a Colombian single mother then in her late thirties, with a four-year-old son.

It proved a wise decision for reasons that had little to do with cleaning. We became immediate friends, her infectious laughter and singing filling the apartment like sunlight. When restrictions permitted, she welcomed me into her home, where I could take my laptop and work in her son’s bedroom using her Wi-Fi. Love is as love does, and she made me feel at home when I was far from my own family.

Valencia is compact enough to feel less like a metropolis than a collection of barrios and interconnected villages. It is also home to sizeable communities from Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America. As I applied myself to learning Spanish, my friend introduced me to people, stories and food that revealed lives very different from my own.

There was always food.

Somebody died? We’ll cook.

Won the lottery? We’ll cook.

A son scored a goal at his football match? We’ll cook.

Food marked sorrow, celebration and all the ordinary moments between them. The voices, jokes, anxieties and ambitions I encountered began crowding my imagination. Over time, elements of them were made flesh in the characters I tried to create—not as portraits of particular individuals, but as fictional people shaped by the world in which I was now living.

The story of the world is the story of migration. People leave because they are hungry, frightened, ambitious, trapped or simply convinced that another life must be possible somewhere else. Usually, it is a mixture of all five. They arrive carrying recipes, memories, obligations and expectations, and begin the exhausting business of constructing a new life.

Daniela emerged from that world, but she was never intended to represent every Colombian woman, every migrant or every mother. No character could bear that burden, and no writer should impose it. She is one woman confronting a particular set of circumstances and making choices that are sometimes courageous, sometimes questionable and always her own.

Through Sofía — whose name I have changed — I met several women whose circumstances had led them into sex work. They were among the warmest, funniest and most generous people I encountered. What also struck me was how little moral judgement they faced within their own communities. Migrant life can mean badly paid work, insecure housing, uncertain legal status and almost no employment protection. People do what they need to do to survive, and their friends understand that.

I did not want sex work to define Daniela, still less to present her as either a fallen woman or a helpless victim waiting to be rescued. It is something she does during a difficult period of her life; it is not the sum of who she is. She remains a daughter, sister, mother, friend and, eventually, entrepreneur.

That is why I gave her the idea for Empanadas de Puta Madre, the food business through which she transforms her life. She does not escape poverty through luck or the intervention of a benevolent man. She builds something from the skills, recipes and determination she already possesses. Her son’s eventual literary success extends that story into the next generation: the child of a migrant woman who was denied an education becomes an acclaimed writer.

I wanted to celebrate the contribution migrants make to the societies in which they settle without pretending that migration is easy or that every struggle produces a triumphant ending. Above all, I wanted Daniela to be permitted the same complexity that fiction has traditionally granted more privileged characters: to make mistakes, take risks, survive compromises and create a life larger than the one circumstances appeared to have allotted her.

I hope I have done her justice.

 

 

You can buy the English paperback of Puta Madre here and the Kindle version here.

The sequel Beyond Puta Madre is available in paperback and Kindle.

 Daniela Arango arrives in Valencia from Colombia with little money, limited choices and a determination to create a better life.

After surviving through sex work and cleaning jobs, she becomes a mother and begins building something of her own: Empanadas de Puta Madre, a food business rooted in the recipes, resilience and communal spirit she brought with her from home.

As Daniela’s fortunes change, so does the life of her son, Daniel, whose literary ambitions carry the family’s story into another generation.

Set against the streets, neighbourhoods and migrant communities of Valencia, Puta Madre is a novel about motherhood, migration, friendship and the stubborn human capacity for reinvention.

Eugene Costello is a British-Irish journalist and author based in Valencia, Spain. During a career spanning more than thirty years, his work has appeared in numerous British national newspapers and magazines. He is the founder and editor of Valencia Life and writes about Spain, migration, public health and the glorious absurdities of everyday life. His novels Puta Madre and Beyond Puta Madre follow a Colombian migrant who rebuilds her life in Valencia through motherhood, friendship, food and formidable determination.

Indie Spotlight: Kaitlyn Bankson

 

Welcome to our Indie Spotlight series, in which TNBBC gives small press authors the floor to shed some light on their writing process, publishing experiences, or whatever else they'd like to share with you, the readers!

Today's spotlight shines on Kaitlyn Bankson who just released her novel Nest on July 6th. 

Why I Wrote Nest: The Quiet Psychology of Motherhood

When most people imagine pregnancy, they picture joy: baby showers, tiny clothes, decorating a nursery, a growing family.

What interested me was everything happening beneath those moments.

I wanted to write about the invisible work of becoming a mother—the endless calculations, the quiet fears, and the desire to make the world safe for someone who has not even arrived yet.

That desire has a name. We call it nesting.

On the surface, nesting looks simple enough: painting walls, folding tiny clothes, organizing drawers. But I began wondering whether those rituals are really about furniture and blankets at all. What if they're an attempt to create order when life suddenly feels unpredictable? What if preparing a nursery is, in some small way, preparing yourself?

Those questions became the heart of Nest.

My protagonist, Winnie Amato, desperately wants to become a mother. Alongside that hope comes what she simply calls "the Fear"—an anxiety that follows her through every decision, every doctor's appointment, every ordinary day. Her husband, Thomas, wants the same future, but each of them experiences uncertainty differently.

I wasn't interested in writing a thriller where danger comes from outside the home. I was interested in the quieter tension that many people recognize: the way our own minds can magnify uncertainty until it becomes difficult to distinguish genuine caution from imagined catastrophe.

Literary fiction gives us room to linger in those interior landscapes. It allows ordinary moments to carry extraordinary emotional weight. A nursery can become a symbol of hope. A routine conversation can reveal the distance between two people who love each other deeply. A single choice can echo for months.

Anxiety is rarely defeated by one inspirational speech or one dramatic breakthrough. More often, it is navigated through thousands of ordinary moments—moments of noticing, choosing, trusting, and continuing forward despite uncertainty.

Perhaps that is what nesting really is.

Not simply preparing a room but preparing yourself to love someone enough that every ordinary object suddenly feels important.

If Nest encourages readers to look more closely at the emotional landscape of pregnancy, motherhood, and the quiet courage required to embrace an uncertain future, then it has accomplished exactly what I hoped it would.

 

“I, Winnie Amato, have had sex today with my husband, Thomas Amato.”

 

Winnie and Thomas Amato have decided to have their first baby together. Although the excitement levels are high, Winnie, especially, is also full of dread. Already prone to being an anxious person, the fluctuating hormones and nauseous waves aggravate her fears. In fact, she calls it “the Fear” because sometimes it becomes so loud that there is nothing else.

 

After Winnie becomes fed up with her suffering and feelings of madness, she finds that her new desire to nest runs deep into the very marrow of her bones. She cleans and preps and spends countless hours preparing a nursery for their baby. And somewhere within the frantic nesting, Winnie finds moments to breathe and discover peace.

 

But can these minor moments of noticing and slowing down really stop “the Fear” from reappearing? Can Winnie make it through her pregnancy without losing the baby? Will Thomas and Winnie remain together as man and wife? Nine months turn into eons for a woman who is holding a growing baby inside her body for that long. Every day brings unfamiliar sensations and new ways of exploring the world, as if both soon-to-be parents were only babies themselves.

Kaitlyn Bankson is an American literary novelist who writes psychological literary fiction for the individualist. Influenced by Objectivism and the tradition of Romantic Realism, her novels explore the individual mind under pressure. She is the author of five novels—The Paper Pusher, The Dormant Age, A Man of Silence, A Man of Action, and Nest. She lives in Dubuque, Iowa, with her husband and daughter.

You can find her on:

 X   |   Instagram   |   Goodreads   |   Facebook   |    LinkedIn   |   Substack   |  Patreon   |   YouTube   |   Spotify

 

Indie Spotlight: Jon O’Bergh's serialized story The Yōkai

 

Welcome to our Indie Spotlight series, in which TNBBC gives small press authors the floor to shed some light on their writing process, publishing experiences, or whatever else they'd like to share with you, the readers!

Today's spotlight shines on Jon O'Bergh and his novel The Yōkai, which is being serialized for free through substack. 

Climate Change, a Horror Novel, and the Dragon Ichimokuren

 

Just west of Nagoya in central Japan lies Mount Tado, legendary home of Ichimokuren, a one-eyed dragon god with the ability to control the weather. He appears as a giant serpent with either a single eye or one good eye and one destroyed eye. Sometimes he is depicted as a single floating eye in the sky, surrounded by winds and rain. At other times he wanders around Mount Tado in the form of a hinotama—a floating ball of fire. According to yokai.com, an illustrated database of Japanese supernatural folklore:

 

“When he leaves his shrine, black thunder clouds skirt the top of rooftops, and heavy rains fall and winds blow all around. These can swell into powerful storms which cover land and sea. His storms are powerful enough to topple trees and break boulders, fling people into the air, knock down houses, and capsize boats.”

 

Over 1,500 years ago, Shinto priests founded Tado Taisha Shrine at the foot of the mountain. In the superstitious past, when clouds formed around Mount Tado, locals believed that Ichimokuren was moving about. They became fearful of the damage he might do. In order to pacify him and minimize destruction, they enshrined him in Tado Taisha as an incarnation of the one-eyed Shinto deity of blacksmithing, Amenomahitotsu no kami. His shrine was built with no door in order to allow him to come and go as he pleases.

 

Ichimokuren represents a type of yokai with powers that bring both blessings (in the form of rainfall needed for crops) and dangers (destructive, frightening storms). Yokai (sometimes spelled yōkai) is the collective name for a wide range of supernatural occurrences that includes ghosts, goblins, witches, demons, anthropomorphic household items, strange hybrid animals, mysterious lights, and more. Dual characteristics—alternately helpful and sinister—are emblematic of many yokai, similar to creatures of legend in other cultures.

 

Among the more well-known yokai are the kappa (human-like turtles or reptilians that inhabit rivers and ponds and have a reputation for luring people to be drowned), the yurei (ghosts that appear as ethereal figures with long, dark hair, which Western audiences will recognize from The Ring and The Grudge movies), and the yamauba (a witch similar to Baba Yaga that Hayao Miyazaki incorporated into the character Yubaba in his anime feature Spirited Away).

 

With Ichimokuren’s connection to weather, he offered an ideal character to make an appearance in my novel The Yōkai as a frightening harbinger of climate change. The main character, Asami Watanabe, is studying yokai for her college thesis. A gang of demons, upset over the degradation of their environment, appears one day and demands a ghost story nightly to spare her life. However, each story must include an actual person who dies. Asami confronts a moral dilemma, forced into choosing who lives and who dies, until she teams up with a group of college friends, a female wizard, and a shapeshifting yokai cat to fight back. I’ve drawn on Japanese legends for many of the locations, characters, and background elements in the novel. The horror stories that Asami creates also become part of the plot.

 

At its heart, The Yōkai is about a shy young woman who learns to tap into her inner strength and overcome her adversaries. By the end of her journey—which is a classic epic with obstacles, trials, and descent into a demonic underworld—she has a moment of realization, a profound insight about herself and the nature of good and evil. I’m currently publishing chapters for free in weekly installments on Substack at https://jonobergh.substack.com/p/the-yokai-story-index. Readers can subscribe to receive the short chapters by email, or read them online on Substack.

 

I recommend that you immerse yourself in the world of Japanese yokai such as Ichimokuren. These strange, scary, entertaining entities have much to reveal to us about the human condition.

 

Jon O’Bergh is a musician and author of horror novels. Out Front Magazine described his novel Shockadelica as “a book that must be on your to-read list,” and Aurealis Magazine named it “Reviewers’ Pick of 2022.” He has also released over a dozen albums in a variety of styles, including the critically acclaimed album 13 Witches. You can find more information about Jon at https://obergh.net.

 

 

 

 

 

Indie Spotlight: How Ori Gersht Came to Write Ham's Heaven

Welcome to our Indie Spotlight series, in which TNBBC gives small press authors the floor to shed some light on their writing process, publishing experiences, or whatever else they'd like to share with you, the readers!

Today's spotlight shines on Ori Gersht and their recently released novel Ham's Heaven. 

On how Ori Gersht, a world-renowned photographer, came to write Ham’s Heaven

A writer I had collaborated with on a VR project encouraged me to write a short biographical story each day—about whatever happened to come to mind. One morning, I came across a story about apes sent into space. It was a strange tidbit from history, but I became interested in soon researched more about this strange chapter in space exploration.  I  found myself delving into the astonishing real-life account of the NASA program’s first chimpanzee astronaut. The further I researched, and since the whole process started as a creative writing prompt, the more I became convinced that only fiction could capture the emotional depth and ethical complexity of this story. So I invented Bradley, a young man, partly incorporating some of my own childhood memories but a fictional character on the whole, who is charged with the care and training of the chimpanzee. The story then grew on its own, and became an account of the deep bond between a human and an animal, where the human is charged to take care of the animal that is really being exploited by other humans for their plans. In some way, Bradley’s and Ham’s relationship is also a story about free will and destiny—about two beings caught in the storm of human ambition for progress.

My work as a photographer has always been rooted in careful preparation and in seeking, through meticulous slowness and attention, something that lies just beyond what the world offers readily to our eyes. In writing this novel, I found a similar discipline is required—a patience and honesty to search for something like the truth that even the best factual account cannot capture. This book became a meditation on the costs of progress, the blurred line between human wonder and the equally strong pull of hubris and ambition, often for its own sake, and the ways we often sacrifice other ways of being in the world (here in the figure of a remarkable intelligent, intuitive and feeling animal) for the sake of our own imagined or real advancement.

At its core, the novel wants to put in front of readers the question of how we remember or ignore those we elevate only to cast them aside when their usefulness is spent. Writing the book has made me becoming more mindful of struggles for animal rights, and how those debates are often strange inflections of other ethical dilemmas we face in our interhuman struggles. I also wanted to come close to letting the reader feel what Ham may have felt, without overstepping the line and thinking I can know and represent an animal's experience. In this way, perhaps the book is a bit like my images: through meticulous, imaginative depictions of Ham’s training, space flight, and consequential destiny, I try to lead readers to the edge of what they can normally see—to make them realize that the world is far more mysterious, in both beautiful and troubling ways, than we usually assume.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Released September 2025

https://warblerpress.com/hams-heaven

“A taut, well-written tale of the tragic, innocent victims of technological advancement.”

—Kirkus Reviews

 

“An extraordinarily intense debut novel. Its subject matter—the true story of the ‘training’ forced on chimpanzees to become astronauts—is all the more deeply affecting for the matter-of-fact tone of its telling. This is fiction that vividly documents a pivotal moment in the history of primates—the history of humans as well as of chimpanzees. It deserves a wide audience.”

—Don LePan, author of Animals and Lucy and Bonbon

Before Armstrong took his first step, another pioneer blazed toward the stars: Ham, a young chimpanzee seized from the forests of Cameroon and trained by his devoted handler, Bradley. As the U.S. space program races toward the future, their extraordinary bond is tested in perilous experiments, culminating in Ham’s harrowing journey beyond Earth’s atmosphere. He becomes a living symbol of human ambition, and its staggering cost. Finally, Bradley must acknowledge the limits of compassion and takes drastic action. Inspired by real events, Ham’s Heaven is a deeply moving exploration of friendship, sacrifice, and the uneasy alliance between man and animal. Named one of the best books of 2024 by Ha’aretz and best debut fiction by the radio show Under Cover, Ham’s Heaven is a testament to the bonds that define us—and the quest for progress that so often divides us.

Ori Gersht is an internationally acclaimed artist known for his innovative photography and video works. A graduate of the Royal College of Art, London, he has served as Professor of Photography at the University for the Creative Arts in Rochester, England. His work is in major collections, including the New York Guggenheim; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Tate, London.

 

JOANNA CHEN translated Ham's Heaven. She is a British-born writer and literary translator from Hebrew to English whose translations include Agi Mishol’s Less Like a Dove, Yonatan Berg’s Frayed Light (finalist for the National Jewish Book Awards), and Meir Shalev’s My Wild Garden.

Indie Spotlight: Katherine Pickett

Welcome to our Indie Spotlight series, in which TNBBC gives small press authors the floor to shed some light on their writing process, publishing experiences, or whatever else they'd like to share with you, the readers!

Today, we are joined by Katherine Pickett talks a bit about her just released debut novel Debra Lee Won’t Break.

The Surprising Truth About “Write What You Know”

 My debut novel, Debra Lee Won’t Break, centers on Debra Lee, a 38-year-old mother and widow living with MS who undertakes a two-day, 150-mile cycling challenge. Along the way, she must face the ghosts from her past and reconcile with her onetime best friend, Caroline.

The ride at the heart of the story is based on the Bike MS Chesapeake Challenge. As I was crafting the scenes leading up to the ride, I realized it would help if I had ever done the Chesapeake Challenge myself. Was I really going to ride 150 miles just to get to know my character better? Of course I was!

Before then the longest ride I had ever completed was the 100-mile Beer and Brat century ride in 2005 in a small town outside of St. Louis. Some 18 years later and living in Silver Spring, Maryland, I was back on my bike training for Bike MS.

Having participated in that earlier ride I probably could have done a reasonable job describing Deb’s experience on the route for the Chesapeake Challenge. But during my training and the event itself, I had several realizations and interactions, and I used many of them in the novel.

While it’s possible to get out into the world and experience many things firsthand, when writing fiction you may choose to include elements that you can’t or don’t want to experience. Getting shot at and leaving the Earth’s atmosphere are but two examples that come to mind.

When it came to Debra Lee, I used a combination of research, interviews, and beta readers to address those areas I couldn’t speak to firsthand. It’s been fifteen years since I worked in an office, and I’ve never worked for a nonprofit, so one of my beta readers was someone with expertise in that arena. (Deb works at a nonprofit connecting support dogs with the people who need them.) My direct experience with support animals is limited to the times I’ve seen them out in public, so more research went into that aspect of the book as well.

When I decided my main character would have multiple sclerosis (MS), I knew it carried some risk. Although I live with chronic illness (epilepsy), and cared for my father through his Parkinson’s disease, I don’t have MS and, at the time, I didn’t know anyone personally who did. Certainly MS falls into the realm of experiences you can’t train for. Could any amount of research fill that size of an experience gap?

I was somewhat familiar with the disease from popular culture and from having edited a memoir about it years ago, but not to the point of being able to capture the life of a person who lived with it every day. In fact, I was sure someone with MS would have a very different life from mine. I dug in to the MS manuals, self-help books, memoirs, and websites. I even had the privilege of joining an MS support group, with permission from the coordinator to sit in and join the conversation for a few months.

The big surprise was that I actually have a lot in common with Debra Lee. I learned that the tests someone with MS must undergo to get a diagnosis overlap with the tests someone with epilepsy undergoes. Even some of the medications are the same. And the pain and stiffness that accompany MS are not entirely unique from the muscle spasms that attend Parkinson’s disease. While my life experience wasn’t identical to someone with MS, it did give me a head start in understanding it.

To make absolutely sure I was portraying the disease correctly, I enlisted the help of five beta readers who live with MS, including four people from the support group and one medical doctor. They pointed out problems ranging from word choice (e.g., a walking stick and a cane are two different things) to medical accuracy (when someone with MS has a flareup, they usually have to change medicines) and helped me to fine-tune my portrayal. By the end of the process, one reader said if they didn’t know differently, they would’ve thought I had MS. Achieving that level of realism was a point of pride for me.

In another surprise, which really shouldn’t have been so surprising, once I started talking about MS and showing my interest in the subject, I found more and more people who live with it or know someone who does. What’s more, they were pleased to know I was writing about it.

I had been nervous about representing someone else’s lived experience, but what I found was that by and large, people were glad to have another book available that depicts life with chronic illness and to meet an author interested in learning about their worldview. It’s been a privilege.

People often tell writers to “write what you know.” It’s good advice, but it’s only half the story. The better advice is: Write what you know—and don’t be afraid to learn new things.

In the end, my research broadened my understanding of myself and bridged the gap between me and the MS community. And that is the real beauty of fiction.

 

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Debra Lee Won’t Break published May 15, 2025. 

Available in print and ebook editions from 

Bookshop, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and anywhere else books are sold.

About Debra Lee Won’t Break

Debra Lee's life is overflowing—widowed at 38, raising a son, supporting a daughter in college, and caring for a mother with dementia, all while managing her multiple sclerosis. Determined to seize the moment, she sets out to conquer the 150-mile Chesapeake Challenge bike ride before her MS slows her down.

But just as she gathers the courage to push forward, ghosts from her past resurface. Caroline Cook—the friend who once betrayed her—wants back in her life. And the man who shattered her world as a teenager is suddenly appearing in unexpected places.

As old wounds reopen, will she find the strength to cross the finish line, or will the past derail her journey?

 

“An electrifying tale of grit, heart, and unshakable resolve. . . . [Pickett’s] words don't just tell a story—they pull you in, wrap around your heart, and linger long after the last page.”

—Suzie Housley, Midwest Book Review

 

Katherine Pickett is the author of the debut novel Debra Lee Won’t Break and the award-winning guide for authors Perfect Bound: How to Navigate the Book Publishing Process Like a Pro. Her work has appeared in Lowestoft Chronicle, Voice of Eve, and more. An avid cyclist, she completed the Chesapeake Challenge in 2023. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her husband and two daughters.

Indie Spotlight: William Luvaas

 Welcome to our Indie Spotlight series, in which TNBBC gives small press authors the floor to shed some light on their writing process, publishing experiences, or whatever else they'd like to share with you, the readers!

Today, we are joined by William Luvaas, who shares some insight into his forthcoming collection. 

THE THREE DEVILS AND OTHER STORIES

My first story dealing with climate change, “Season of Limb Fall,” was published two years before Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” was released.  The reality and horror of global warming struck me hard, and I felt I needed to write about it, which I’ve done ever since in my short fiction—not exclusively but imperatively.

            My forthcoming collection, The Three Devils And Other Stories, is a work of Climate Fiction (Cli Fi), as it’s known, like my 2013 collection Ashes Rain Down: A Story Cycle (the Huffington Post’s 2013 Book of the Year and a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards).  While I dislike genre labels and the formulaic approach to subject matter they imply, I embrace Climate Fiction’s use of magic or grotesque realism to bring a future threatened by climate disaster and its accompanying social upheaval to life—creating a world that is at once both recognizable and grossly distorted.

In The Three Devils, the apocalypse comes to Southern California in the form of a worldwide pandemic of mythological proportions and the ravages of climate change that imperil the economy and social order and wreak havoc in people’s lives in a nearly-unrecognizable near future.  Call it a work of dystopian or apocalyptic fiction, as well as Cli Fi.

Climate Fiction is intrinsically political since it assumes that global warming will seriously impact our lives.  Climate change skeptics consider this a partisan stance, but most of us who write such works see it as inevitable given our undeniably warming planet: tomorrow will be a rough ride.  We consider it our writerly duty to enter the fray rather than leave the vision of our collective future to politicians, corporate executives, and right wing pundits.

            While some works of Climate Fiction have been well received, such as Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry For the Future, many publishers, especially big ones, eschew Cli Fi, as do some literary magazines, seeming to consider it unfashionably political at a time when most fiction focuses on personal and identity politics—what Don DeLillo calls “around-the-house-and-in-the-yard” fiction—rather than on the larger dramas that impact us all.  Joyce Carol Oates also bemoans current American fiction’s avoidance of political themes, which is a departure from the recent past.  Consider the many impactful, even prophetic socio-political novels of the last century: The Jungle, Invisible Man, To Kill a Mockingbird, Grapes of Wrath, Fahrenheit 451, Catch 22...to name a few.  Since then, fiction’s scope has narrowed.

            Perhaps understandably, Cli Fi is often conflated with Sci Fi.  This puts off some editors and readers, especially of literary fiction.  While both genres are speculative and hyperbolic, the two are quite different.  Cli Fi is earthbound and set in the near-future, while Sci Fi often looks far ahead and far away to extraterrestrial realms.  The monsters in Cli Fi are not two-headed Cyborgs but earthly, natural forces spinning out of control.  I might also suggest that while science fiction regularly challenges current scientific knowledge, Climate Fiction is predicated upon global warming being settled scientific fact. 

            Cli Fi writings that make readers uncomfortable are doing their job well.  While such works, like all good fiction, should be engaging, dramatic, colorful, even entertaining, they are meant to wake readers up rather than lull them to sleep.  Now, as we face what is likely the greatest existential threat humans have ever known, likely to end our civilization and drive many plants and animals we love to extinction, we need to have our eyes wide open and not turn our heads away.  For publishers, readers, and writers to ignore or avoid this most critical issue of our time is akin to ignoring racism and gender inequality as American fiction generally did prior to the last half of the Twentieth Century. 

 

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https://www.amazon.com/Three-Devils-Other-Stories/

From acclaimed writer William Luvaas comes a new collection of dark and devastating tales.  With grit and grace, chaos and compassion, angst and absolution, The Three Devils makes us reckon with the maelstrom, all while wrestling with the longings of the busted and beautiful human heart.

  

Praise for The Three Devils and Other Stories

 

 “William Luvaas, my friends, is a wild-eyed genius.”

—Lauren Groff, National Book Award Finalist

 

“Wildly imaginative and always engaging.”

 —Kim Barnes, Pulitzer Prize Finalist

 

“A rare read, a post-apocalyptic odyssey that’s fun.”

 —George Michaelson Foy, author of The Last Green Light

 

“A nightmarish vision of the inevitable conclusion of the world we’ve created today.”

 —Chase Dearinger, author of This New Dark

 

“The apocalypse may be no fun to live through but in fiction it can offer thrills and chills—

and insights into the human condition at the intersection of resilience and evil.  William Luvaas’s The Three Devils delivers these and more.

 —Mark Brazaitis, author of The Incurables

 

“The Three Devils is one of those masterpieces that is hilarious until it isn’t—

a window into the human psyche and the destiny of our species.”

 —Jacob M. Appel, author of Einstein’s Beach House

 

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William Luvaas has published four novels: The Seductions of Natalie Bach (Little, Brown) Going Under (Putnam), Beneath The Coyote Hills (Spuyten Duyvil), and Welcome To Saint Angel (Anaphora Lit. Press); plus two story collections: A Working Man’s Apocrypha (Univ. Okla. Press) and Ashes Rain Down: A Story Cycle (Spuyten Duyvil), which was The Huffington Post’s 2013 Book of the Year and a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards.  His new collection The Three Devils And Other Stories is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press at the Univ. of Wisconsin.  His honors include an NEA fellowship, first place in Glimmer Train’s Fiction Open Contest, The Ledge Magazine’s 2010 Fiction Awards Competition, and Fiction Network’s Second National Fiction Competition.  Over one hundred of his stories, essays, and articles have appeared in many publications, including The Sun, North American Review, Epiphany, The Village Voice, The American Literary Review, Antioch Review, Cimarron Review, Short Story, and the American Fiction anthology.  He has taught creative writing at San Diego State University, U.C. Riverside, and The Writer’s Voice in New York and has also worked as a carpenter, craftsman, community organizer, and freelance journalist.  He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Lucinda, an artist and filmmaker, and their headstrong Akita, Mimi.

https:///www.williamluvaas.com