Category Archives: fiction

FICTION ALERT: Tom Ironsides Returns in AURELIUS

28 Monday Sep 2026

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Tom Ironsides Returns in AURELIUS

 

Imagine a world where instead of voting for, supporting, siding with, or even worshipping wicked people, someone just shoots them. You’ve just glimpsed the story on the pages of Aurelius. Tom Ironsides is back, delivering the hard action people demanded. In this short, fast novella, Illuminati and Epstein-esque types have a very bad day courtesy of our hero. Much of the action was foreshadowed in The Substitute. Buy from Shotwell/Green Altar or Amazon. 

(© Green Altar Books 2026)

A great description from the Green Altar Books:

A dark mission. A ruthless enemy. One man standing between civilization and collapse.

In Aurelius, Tom Ironsides returns to the edge of a shadow world—one that does not merely threaten reality, but breaks into it with violence, cruelty, and merciless intent.

Europe is under threat.

Forces of domination and destruction are moving with brutal purpose. Their goal is not negotiation. It is control—through fear, violation, maiming, and murder. Ironsides is pulled into a fight where hesitation means defeat and mercy may come too late.

Fans of hard-edged action thrillers will find a hero forged for the dark.

With allies old and new, Ironsides takes the fight to enemies who believe civilization is ready to fall. But justice has only one chance: his discipline, his nerve, and his refusal to surrender ground to evil.

If you like relentless pacing, moral stakes, and uncompromising action, step into Aurelius and follow Tom Ironsides into the dark.

In addition to the main title, several semi-related short stories round out the book—some you’ve seen and some you haven’t. It’s a fun ride, though not necessarily for the faint of heart. I may have a walk-through video soon, so stay tuned for that.

What’s next? Hopefully, in the coming months, I’ll have a new modern romance novel, a fun little story set in the American South. It’s not as innocent as Athena, but fans of love and life will enjoy it. After that, if I feel like it, there may be another polemical action novella somewhat similar to Aurelius. And then, I already have a rough first draft of a hefty epic unlike most anything you’ve read before. It’s a little like And Quiet Flows the Don, a little like Glory and the Lightning, and maybe even a little like Dracula. Kindly allow me a year or so; the wait will be worth it. After that, there will be more!

AURELIUS is Live

24 Thursday Sep 2026

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At long last, the wait is over. I am pleased to announce that AURELIUS is now available. I’ll have more about the book soon. For now, please read what the publisher says:

BUY FROM GREEN ALTAR

BUY FROM AMAZON

A dark mission. A ruthless enemy. One man standing between civilization and collapse.

In Aurelius, Tom Ironsides returns to the edge of a shadow world—one that does not merely threaten reality, but breaks into it with violence, cruelty, and merciless intent.

Europe is under threat.

Forces of domination and destruction are moving with brutal purpose. Their goal is not negotiation. It is control—through fear, violation, maiming, and murder. Ironsides is pulled into a fight where hesitation means defeat and mercy may come too late.

Fans of hard-edged action thrillers will find a hero forged for the dark.

With allies old and new, Ironsides takes the fight to enemies who believe civilization is ready to fall. But justice has only one chance: his discipline, his nerve, and his refusal to surrender ground to evil.

If you like relentless pacing, moral stakes, and uncompromising action, step into Aurelius and follow Tom Ironsides into the dark.

And there’s much more! I recommend buying at least 42 copies!

The AURELIUS Manuscript Looks Great!

05 Sunday Jul 2026

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Aurelius is coming soon, so set aside a few bucks and a little reading time. The manuscript proof came from the publisher and it does look great, folks. I’ve created a new page just for it, my first novella; find that “nesting” under the Books tab at the top of the site.

Now to make custom pages for the other books, those you know and those to come…

Note to self: the early July 2026 spike in WP-reported “posts” resulted from the assorted books pages. Readers: hello!

AURELIUS is Coming Soon!

15 Monday Jun 2026

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I just got the go ahead to debut the front cover, which is already on the sidebar and on the Books Page. The prequel to The Substitute, set roughly a year before that novel began, Aurelius is a hard-charging action novella with a few appended, related short stories. The title matter, along with the final story, finds the one and only Tom Ironsides blasting his way through a host of Epstein-esque baddies. They, of course, don’t stand a chance. Coming this summer from Green Altar Books.

© Green Altar Books. Cover subject to minor stylistic changes.

 

On the Art of Writing Novels and More

19 Sunday Apr 2026

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Here follows Christ Orcutt’s full interview with the amazing Danielle Hutchison.

In addition to talking about BTTA, he goes deep into the art and science of what makes a writer tick and how one can or should face the craft today. If you’re a writer and/or a reader, then this is for you. Pay close attention to what he says about writing being the only art form where outside assistance is expected. I’ve never before heard the comparisons he makes, but he is dead on the money. Some help for the author — proofreaders, artists, etc. — is beneficial. But with AI and other modern innovations, it simply is not mandatory now. And the old dinosaur ideas about “the way” to publish a book are dead and buried in a mad world without rules. Heck, the largest book retailer in the world is trying to kill books entirely. Increasingly, it’s either the author’s own way or absolutely nothing. Here’s one of the best interviews about writing around:

BTTA: The Impossible Is Done

17 Saturday Jan 2026

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Chris Orcutt has done the impossible. Bodaciously True & Totally True, Episode One, Bad Boy, debuts this coming Tuesday, January 20th! Orcutt posted a brief look at what went into writing this monumental work of literature.

For over ten years, or 3,697 days to be exact, I’ve been working on a novel about teens in the 1980s. The novel eventually became so long (over a million words, and twice the length of War and Peace) that I had to split it into nine books or episodes.

The result, Bodaciously True & Totally Awesome: The Legendary Adventures of Avery “Ace” Craig, An ’80s American Teen Epic, dramatizes the lives of Ace and his friends in a rural-suburban high school setting. (By the way, it’s much better than I’m making it sound; I’m terrible at condensing my million-plus words into book jacket copy.)

I wrote Bodaciously to be a story for and about my generation—Gen X—a generation that has long been unappreciated, marginalized, and misunderstood. I wrote it to give people my age an escape back to a simpler time, a time when all of life was ahead of us and we didn’t have the internet, AI, tracking, and algorithms in our lives. I wrote it to give the younger generations (and future generations) some idea of what it was like to be a teen in the mid-1980s. And I wrote it for readers, not critics—for people who just want an enjoyable book that keeps them reading.

Read the whole thing at Chris’s blog. Then get ready for the ride of the century!

PS: Chris recently sat down for another interview, and it is one of the best of its kind I’ve heard.

2025: The Year That Was

31 Wednesday Dec 2025

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Here’s to a happy 2026.

Traffic here at the blog has been much better this year than in the past 5+ years. Thanks! My crowning achievement of 2025 was Judging Athena, my first critically acclaimed novel. Sales haven’t been quite what I wanted, but they’ll get there.

If one reads carefully, then Athena answers a lot of questions. For instance, Laurent Guyenot recently wrote an ode to the “sun god.” Think what one will, but Athena herself explained him and all of pagan legend. Also, Athena deals with family formation; the opposite is unfolding in the US and the EU, as this story explains – VPN and translation may be required. Mine is a better alternative to postmodernity. If you haven’t already, then now’s the time to buy it and check everything out, great story and all!

Next year? Well, the next novel is already with the publisher. And I have two more finished (first/second) draft novels behind that. And then, there’s more.

See you in the new year!

Perrin

You, Yourself — The 2025 Christmas Story Encore

24 Wednesday Dec 2025

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At Reckonin’.

Long drives and long years may well augment faith, friendship, and love—memories to join the past with the present. ‘Twas three days before Christmas, and all down the road–

Near Bristol, Virginia, Friday, December 22, 1989, mid morning…

Though the snow, grime, and road salt of seven states had left their marks, all eight cylinders sang merrily as the old 1979 F-100 Ranger once again picked up a little speed down at the far southern end of Virginia’s Interstate 81. Paxton hit the wipers, clearing a few scattered snowflakes from the windshield, the remnants of what he hoped was the final dusting of his trip. And, Lord, there had been a few near-blizzard episodes over the past twenty-four hours! He took a moment to look around, now that the sun was shining brightly, scanning one side of the highway and then the other. The Shenandoah, the Blue Ridge, all of it, really, truly was God’s country. And if the fine weather held, and he hoped it did, then he’d be at the cabin in about another four hours. The very young man tapped the foot end of his Muriel Magnum into the ashtray. His eyes rolled across the speedometer—sixty-ish and holding nicely. The thirty-three-gallon tank was still three-quarters full. With one finger, he dropped his Ray-Ban Aviators into place and smiled. He took another sip of coffee, carefully replacing the styrofoam cup more by feel than by sight. He took another puff of his second cigar that morning (because, why not?) and smiled even wider. He’d been alternating between the radio, ever looking for Christmas music, and a Statler Brothers tape. At the moment, he was riding in blissful silence, the whooshing hiss from the cracked, smoke-releasing window notwithstanding. Then, right in the middle of his contentment, that lingering concern came once more upon his mind. He was, just then, reminded of what he kept forgetting.

…

Read the whole thing. Merry Christmas Eve!

Beauty Will Save The World

20 Saturday Dec 2025

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More than just a military expert, Andrei Martyanov is a very astute cultural commentator. He reiterates a point from America’s Final War:

Those Who Read My Books …

… they may have noticed that in my latest book about war I seemingly go on a strange tangent, but it is not strange. It is directly related to the issue. Here it is.

But even more has been accomplished by Russia in staring down a combined West. Modern Western culture has become recognized as ugly in every sense of the word, from freak shows at the demonstration of fashions, to people looking increasingly dirty from tattoos covering their bodies, to the body positive movement extolling unhealthy and aesthetically repulsive lifestyles, to the rampant use of drugs. The modern West has lost the understanding of beauty. The late Roger Scruton warned: “Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it did not matter.” It has almost completely vanished, pushed out by the post-modernist dystopia and perversion of the Western intelligentsia. As Dostoevsky wrote in The Idiot, “Beauty will save the world.” The West has lost the meaning of and desire for beauty, thus losing the tool for its own salvation, and the world has taken note.

While I didn’t quote that part of his work in my previous review, I did highlight it in my Kindle. It’s not strange and it’s not a tangent. The Dostoevsky quote is telling, or it was to me. A culture and its literature go hand in hand. And Andrei’s article is the third I’ve seen over the past month or so lamenting the collapse of Western (American) culture and books.

I contacted two of the three dismayed authors regarding Judging Athena, the book Emma Cazabonne called, “a novel in total defiance of postmodern trends, where the emphasis is on faith, prayer, thanksgiving, going to church, obedience to God, clean honest dating, and a genuine understanding of the real dimension of marriage, in real joy and happiness.” The Substitute isn’t as pretty, but it also defies the postmodern mess. Most of my forthcoming books, both those with the publisher or in draft form, do the same.

Americans really should turn off the TV and start reading books that uplift rather than distort. I, for one, hope they do so now. But as Chris Orcutt kind of noted in our recent interview, the better messages of today might have to wait for future audiences. If you’re reading this in 2025-30, then please get ahead of the trend.