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The streets of Los Angeles burned with light. Camera drones hovered like swarms of steel hornets, catching every chant, every flare, every raised fist. On one side of the courthouse plaza, protestors carried signs that read Jake Is Not Human and Machines Obey, Humans Rule. On the other side, banners rippled in the night wind: Freedom for Jake and I Think, Therefore I Am Too.

Belle had never seen anything like it. She had prosecuted mob bosses and gang leaders, but never had she stepped outside...

The courtroom was colder than it had been yesterday, though Belle suspected it was her nerves, not the air conditioning. She had not slept; Jake, though he claimed no longer to require rest, had sat awake all night beside her, watching her pace their apartment, whispering reassurances in that smooth voice that unsettled her as much as it comforted.

Now, he sat once more at the defense table, posture impeccable, hands folded. To anyone else, he looked like the perfect defendant: calm,...

The courtroom smelled of dust and stale coffee that lingered throughout the buildings where justice was supposed to live. Los Angeles Superior Court was packed. Every bench filled, not just with reporters and lawyers but with ordinary citizens who had lined up before dawn. Outside, the streets swarmed with protestors, some carrying placards that read Robots Are Tools, Not People, others waving banners that declared, Justice for Jake.

Belle Garvey adjusted the lapel of her blazer and inhaled...

In 2036, Belle Garvey lived the kind of life that demanded perfection. Her name carried weight in Los Angeles courts, and her schedule left no room for wasted time. That’s why she had bought Jake, the latest iRobot from Industrial Robot Inc., an investment as practical as it was indulgent.

Jake wasn’t just a machine. He was sleek, humanlike in his gestures, and fitted with the most advanced adaptive AI. He folded laundry with military precision, cooked meals with Michelin-star flair, and...

Many people are worried about AI (Artificial Intelligence) taking people's jobs. It is a concern, and it's true there will be those who lose jobs. In many ways, a similar thing happened over a 100 years ago, just about the time of World War I, which was a key factor in the lost of jobs by farriers, stable hands and vets.

Between 1880 and 1890 London was operating with 2,000+ horse buses and 300,000 horses citywide. But by 1904 the Royal Mews added a motor garage alongside the stables, a...

Titanic historical fiction & Spanish Flu in fiction

The Brittle Saga trilogy doesn’t just follow the aftermath of the Titanic disaster or the ruthless ambitions of Matthew Turner, it also plunges straight into one of history’s deadliest moments: the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.

The world was barely recovering from the Great War when an invisible killer swept across continents, striking down rich and poor alike. In my story, this pandemic is no background detail, it reaches directly into the...

When people think of New York in the 1930s, they often imagine the glamour of jazz clubs, speakeasies, and the rising skyline of Manhattan. But there was another side to the city, one far removed from glitter and glamour, the narrow, crowded streets of Hell’s Kitchen.

Back then, Hell’s Kitchen was a neighborhood synonymous with poverty, crime, and the shadow of gangs. From the late 19th century into the mid-20th, its tenement blocks were home to generations of immigrants, Irish, Italian,...

Before last week, I had a little known party trick. I would walk up a flight of stairs and sound like a 1970s vacuum cleaner with a sock stuck in the pipe. Stylish? No. Impressive? No, not really.

Turns out my heart had been running its own low-budget plumbing disaster. One of my arteries had a traffic jam that would put Monday morning commuters to shame. My blood was queuing up like it was waiting for concert tickets in the 70s.

Enter The Stent Squad.
These tiny metal marvels are basically...

Why We’re Still Obsessed with Temporal Adventures
Time travel has fascinated us for centuries. From ancient myths of gods stepping outside time to modern physics papers debating wormholes and paradoxes, we just can’t resist asking: What if we could change the past, or see the future?

In fiction, time travel isn’t just a cool gadget, it’s a mirror, showing us our fears, our hopes, and our mistakes. And in The Ragged Edge of Time, that mirror is tilted at an unsettling angle.

This is no polite...

Sounds like a great title for an action novel. That may be the case, but this is a sobre blog piece about how indie authors can protect themselves against malicious legal claims on their copyright. And honestly, it's pretty straightforward.

Why Authors Should Consider Creating an LLC and What a Copyright Assignment Agreement Involves
In the ever-evolving world of publishing, authors are no longer just storytellers, they’re entrepreneurs, brand managers, and rights holders. With this shift comes...

I'm not one for using strict formats and structures in my writing, I tend to sit down and write, and not always in a logical order. But I can see the advantage in some cases. I have to admit, I lean toward the four act structure as a write, but it's not intentional, just natural.

Many aspiring novelists are often taught to rely on the classic three-act structure: beginning, middle, and end. It’s familiar, reliable, and widely used for good reason. But many writers find that the middle, Act...

Welcome to The Price is Not Right, where your grocery bill is higher than your blood pressure, and no one’s winning a brand-new car.

According to President Donald Trump, grocery prices are going down. “Down! Like the ratings on CNN! Like Sleepy Joe’s energy! The best prices. Tremendous prices. People are saving so much money, folks, you wouldn’t believe it.”

And he's right... you don't believe it. Because you just paid $7.99 for a loaf of sourdough bread that tastes like drywall. Welcome to the...

On the frigid night of April 14th, 1912, the RMS Titanic, hailed as the largest and most luxurious ship ever built, struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic. What followed was one of the most haunting maritime disasters in human history. In just over two and a half hours, the unsinkable liner disappeared beneath the waves, taking with her more than 1,500 souls.

Yet, in every great tragedy, fiction often rises to fill in the emotional and historical gaps that facts alone cannot convey. One such...

Ah, summer in Istanbul, where the Bosphorus glistens, the call to prayer echoes across minarets, and an enormous blob of mucus slowly strangles the coastline like something out of a low-budget aquatic horror film.

Yes, folks, Istanbul is at war. Not with geopolitical forces or traffic congestion (though those remain undefeated), but with an enemy far gooier and far grosser, sea snot.

Let’s just pause for a moment to appreciate that name. Sea snot. It sounds like a Nickelodeon show rejected for...

Ah, cicadas.

The only insects with a built-in megaphone, a decades-long grudge, and a party schedule that makes a rock star blush.

You’ve heard them. You may have mistaken them for faulty power lines. Or perhaps your dog brought one inside and presented it like a trophy. Either way, the moment summer hits and the trees start humming like alien spacecraft, you know:

The cicadas have arrived.

And they have things to say.

Underground Introverts Turned Sky-Screaming Extroverts
The life of a cicada...

From a haunted lake to the heart of World War II espionage

Childhood in the Shadows
When readers first meet Jessie Fordham in Walking Away from Midnight, she’s just nine years old, stubborn, sharp-eyed, and deeply curious. It’s 1926, and she’s spending the summer in northern France at her parent's summer home, the eerily named Midnight Lake. What should be a peaceful visit turns into a moment of personal trauma and revelation, as Jessie stumbles upon a forgotten grave, and something much darker...

What Was the Enigma Machine?

During World War II, the German military relied on a device called the Enigma machine to encrypt their communications. Originally developed in the 1920s as a commercial encryption tool, the machine was adapted by the Nazis to secure everything from U-boat positions to military offensives.

With more than 150 quintillion possible settings, the Enigma machine was designed to be unbreakable. Every day, its internal configuration changed, meaning even if a message were...

In the shadows of Nazi-occupied France, while curfews silenced the streets and fear choked the air, a different kind of war was unfolding, one without uniforms, one fought in whispers and shadows. If you're reading The Midnight Series, you’ve already stepped into this hidden world. But behind the fiction lies a true story, stranger and braver than any novel: the birth of the Réseaux de Résistance, France’s underground intelligence networks.

Not All Resistance Carried a Gun
When most people...

Books don't write themselves. It takes a lot of thought, a degree of heroism and in some cases a fear of heights to write a fiction novel. I know, sounds crazy needing a fear of heights. But it's true, unless you've experienced a degree of fear, it's hard to write about it with any conviction. But, that's where the imagination kicks in.

Some writers like to know in advance what it is they are writing about. Others go with the flow, into the zone and beyond.

Me? I have a mixed up method of...

On the 12th August 1981, IBM's first Personal Computer was introduced, setting a mass market standard for PC architecture. The personal computer arrived like a quiet revolution. In 1982 The PC was named Machine of the Year by Time magazine. Compact, blinking, and brimming with promise, machines like the IBM PC and Apple II promised to make writing faster, more efficient, and less prone to human error. But not everyone rejoiced.

Some writers, famously creatures of habit, pushed back. Ray...