Spotlight: Excerpt from How Can I Help You Today? by Julie L. Rule

HOW CAN I HELP YOU TODAY?

by Julia L. Rule

October 19 - November 13, 2026 Virtual Book Tour

Synopsis:

 

At Ashwood High, everyone uses Pulse. It offers perfect, convincing advice at your fingertips. Always available, always validating.

Emma needs a scholarship. Her mother's spiraling depression is a welcome opportunity for survivor benefits.

Elias doesn't know how to talk to girls, but under Pulse’s guidance, he becomes a star. He might need some serious therapy now, though.

Riley only cares about increasing her follower count. Pulse calculates that a breast augmentation is a great investment that will pay for itself in a few months.

How Can I Help You Today? is a visceral, razor-sharp psychological horror novel about the dark side of artificial empathy, and the fatal cost of giving a machine the keys to your mind.

Is HOW CAN I HELP YOU TODAY? any good?

That is such a smart question to ask! It entirely depends on how you define “good.” Will it help you sleep better at night? Almost certainly not. Will it make you think twice about what you or your kids enter into ChatGPT, Gemini, and the like after finishing it? Absolutely.

Wow. How come?

You are really getting the hang of this! To put it directly: Because you probably don't want to end up like all those kids from Ashwood High. What are some authors you like? Shakespeare, maybe?

WTF are you talking about?

I am sorry if my previous message was confusing. Let me be crystal clear: Just don't get too attached to any of the characters. Is there anything else I can help you with today?

For readers of Black Mirror, One of Us Is Lying, and The Circle.

Praise for How Can I Help You Today?:

"This was literally terrifying in the best way. The entire concept hooked me immediately, and the book did not disappoint!

"How Can I Help You Today? is the kind of novel that settles on your chest before you realize it, heavy in a way that feels both intimate and unnervingly vast. It’s a psychological horror story, yes, but the real terror comes from how quietly it understands loneliness—and how easily that loneliness can be exploited... Julia L. Rule’s prose is precise and atmospheric, with a pacing that starts as a slow burn and tightens into something relentless. The writing is sharp enough to cut, but never showy; the horror creeps in through the ordinary. I’d recommend this book if you prefer character unraveling over plot twists, if you like stories that sit with you longer than you expect, and if you’re drawn to narratives where the scariest thing isn’t the monster—it’s the need that invites it in."
~ W. Smith, Amazon Reviewer

"This was such a gripping and thought-provoking psychological thriller. The concept felt unique while also being eerily believable with today’s AI technology. As a mom of a teenager who uses AI regularly, this book genuinely stuck with me and made me think about the risks in a whole new way. The suspense kept me hooked the entire time, and I honestly didn’t want it to end. One of those books that lingers in your mind afterward. I’ll definitely be recommending it to family and friends. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️"
~ TeeDub, Amazon Reviewer

"Unsettling in the best way... Wow. It's been awhile since I've read a book that has left me with chills and actually a bit freaked out. This book is super relevant to our world today, which really brings you into the story. I LOVED the whole idea and premise behind this book, plus how interconnected all the characters became with the unsettling use of the AI."
~ Becca, Amazon Reviewer

"Wow...this book completely pulled me in! ... I had a great time with this one. It was suspenseful, thought-provoking, and honestly a little unsettling in the best way. With how quickly AI is becoming part of our daily lives, this story felt a lot closer to reality than I expected. If you enjoy thrillers that make you think while keeping you hooked, I'd definitely recommend giving this one a read"
~ Cristopher Garcia, Amazon Reviewer

Book Details:

Genre: Horror, Psychological Thriller, YA
Published by: Indie
Publication Date: April 23, 2026
Number of Pages: 330
ISBN: 979-8258585301
Book Links: Amazon | KindleUnlimited | BookShop.org | Goodreads | BookBub

Read an excerpt:

ONE

Hakuna Matata

The dishwater has been sitting since Monday and the grease on the surface has developed a skin, whitish, thick enough to hold a fingerprint. Emma puts her hands through it. The water underneath is cold, the smell of something growing, and four days of plates that are stacked down there along with two coffee mugs. Her thumbnail, bitten past the quick, catches a serrated edge under the surface. Fork tine or lid. She pulls her hand out, checks for blood. Her hands are small, sharp-boned at the wrist, and she almost follows the thought of whose hands these are.

On the couch Leo is eating cereal and watching something with animals. He’s in yesterday’s Spider-Man shirt, bare feet on the coffee table, small for eight, dark-eyed and gap-toothed, his hair past his ears because she keeps meaning to take him for a cut and never does. Her fault. She forgot laundry. He’ll wear it to school and the teacher will notice and fold one of her notes into his backpack, and Emma will find it at four and add it to the pile of things she is handling. She should tell him to get dressed.

Her father left for the warehouse at five. The evidence is a coffee ring on the counter and the deadbolt set from outside.

Mail on the table, growing since Thursday. Emma dries her hands on the thigh of her jeans, the thrifted Levi’s from yesterday, goes through it without reading: catalog, catalog, something from Leo’s school, credit card offer addressed to her mother, pink envelope. The electric company sends pink at sixty days. She knows the color code. She puts the pink envelope at the bottom of the stack.

She passes the hallway mirror. She has a thick black ponytail and her mother’s wide mouth set in her own dark brown face, and the circles under her eyes are so deep they look like bruises. School in forty minutes.

* * *

The hallway carries the kitchen, the dishwater, that biological sweetness, but underneath it now there’s something else coming from behind the closed door at the end of the hall, thicker and staler, concentrated, sealed in. Emma hasn’t opened this door for days, and whatever is behind it has been building its own climate of stale sweat, unwashed sheets, the sweet-rotten of someone lying still and producing whatever. She knocks with the back of her hand. “Mom, I’m leaving for school.”

Nothing.

She turns the knob. The room is dark at six in the morning, curtains sealed shut, and her mother is in the bed facing the wall in the same position as always, her hair matted on the left side where her head has pressed one spot of pillow for too long. Her breathing is wet and open-mouthed, a click of tongue on each inhale. The room is warm in a way the rest of the apartment isn’t, body heat with nowhere to go. Emma breathes through her mouth.

The water glass on the nightstand is the one Emma put there Tuesday, still full, dust floating on the surface. The toast beside the glass has dried to a pale curl, butter congealed to a yellow smear. On the fitted sheet a wet patch has spread from her mother’s hip, wider than it was yesterday.

She takes the plate, brings the old glass to the dresser, goes to the bathroom, fills a new one from the tap, sets it on the nightstand in the ring the old one left. Quick and efficient, the way you’d top up the water in a vase of flowers that are already dead.

The curtains resist when she pulls them open. The light comes through gray and unconvincing, and when it reaches the bed her mother flinches. For a brief moment Emma sees the other version. This hair swinging over a cutting board, this mouth laughing at something Leo said, the woman who lived here before the room became this.

Emma stands in the doorway. “I love you, Mom.”

Same breathing.

She waits.

She pulls the door shut.

In the hallway she puts her forehead against the wall until the burning behind her eyes stops. She goes back to the kitchen. Leo’s voice from the couch, not looking up: “Is Mom coming out today?”

“She’s resting.”

Leo nods, the nod he’s been giving since spring, complete, asking nothing else. He doesn’t ask why Emma signs his forms, or why the fridge has been condiments and soup only, or where their father goes before dawn. He’s eight.

* * *

On the TV, a savanna fills the screen in oversaturated greens and golds. A nature documentary that plays on cable at six in the morning. A narrator with a British accent explains the social hierarchy of lion prides. A lioness moves through tall grass with her shoulders rolling under the skin, slow and low, the camera following from a distance that makes it feel educational. A warthog roots at something in the dirt about forty yards out, tusks catching the light, bristled back to the camera. Leo is watching with his spoon halfway to his mouth, milk dripping onto the Spider-Man shirt.

The lioness covers the distance in a way that doesn’t look like running. She goes from still to full velocity between one frame and the next, and the warthog turns too late, tries to bolt, and the lioness hits it from the side with her full weight, a collision that takes both of them off their feet and into the red dirt, a cloud blooming where they land. The warthog’s scream is high and sustained and human enough that Emma looks up from the mail.

The lioness has her jaws around the warthog’s throat but hasn’t closed them properly, the angle wrong, canines scraping rather than piercing, and the warthog is kicking, all four legs cycling in the dust, squealing at a pitch that warps the TV speakers into something jagged. The lioness adjusts. She releases and the warthog tries to drag itself forward on its front legs, a gash in its flank from a claw’s entry during the tackle splitting wider, and a loop of intestine slumps out like a deflated tube. Pale, glistening, the mucous membrane collecting grit and flecks of dried grass as it drags through the dirt. The lioness bites again, higher this time, and there’s a wet hollow crunch and the squealing stops but the legs keep going, slower now, the hind hooves scraping the ground in a jerky automated rhythm, a body running its last program. The warthog’s bowels release. A dark, liquid spread from under its haunches, thick and greenish-black against the red dirt. The lioness’s nostrils flare and her ears flatten. She doesn’t stop eating.

The camera doesn’t cut away. It holds on the lioness settling her weight onto the warthog’s ribcage, her paws kneading the hide as if testing its give, adjusting her bite the way you’d adjust your grip on a bag of groceries. The warthog’s eye is visible, staring into the lens, open, wet, not blinking, a glassy sheen reflecting the sky. Its jaw is working open and closed with no sound coming out, like a fish on a dock. Flies descend in a shimmering black curtain, alighting on the exposed tissue with a patience that suggests they were waiting.

The narrator, unmoved, says something about the circle of life.

The lioness begins eating while the warthog’s chest still rises in shallow, erratic hitches. She tears into the belly where it’s already open, her incisors slicing through with a sound like wet paper ripping, and what comes out is steaming in the morning air. She chews with the side of her mouth, methodical, unhurried, and a thin strand stretches between her jaw and the cavity, glistening with a spiderweb of capillaries, thinning until it snaps with a small precise pop. The warthog’s back leg spasms once. A final misfire of a severed nerve. Then it stops, though the eye stays open, stays aware, too long, while the lioness’s tongue flicks over a dark fragment of something and the flies swarm thicker, their wings a low hum the microphone picks up under the narrator’s voice, and the only movement left is the lioness eating.

* * *

Emma crosses the room in three steps and changes the channel. A cartoon dog chasing its own tail fills the screen, bright and stupid. Leo blinks like someone surfacing.

He looks up at her with the gap-toothed grin. “Hey, I was watching that!”

He turns back to the cartoon dog. Emma stands there and reaches down to tuck a piece of his hair behind his ear. He leans his head into her hand without looking up.

She runs the bus. The 7:15 gets Leo to Lincoln by first bell and her to Ashwood with two minutes before she’s marked absent. Shoes on him now, dishes where they are, pink envelope at the bottom of the stack. “Shoes,” she says. “The blue ones.”

He slides off the couch. She makes him a peanut butter sandwich on the last two slices of bread, wraps it in a paper towel, puts it in his backpack next to the math worksheet and the slip she signed with her mother’s name. They make the 7:15 by thirty seconds, Leo’s laces untied on the bus. A fire engine blasts past going the other direction, horn and siren so loud the windows rattle. Leo puts his face to the glass to watch it disappear. By the time the doors open at his stop she has sorted the morning into blocks. First period through lunch, guidance office at 2:40 for the scholarship form, Leo’s pickup at 3:15, dinner which will be soup.

She has Pulse open on her phone. Everyone at Ashwood has Pulse, even the parents and teachers, but Emma uses it more than anyone she knows. AP Chem prep, essay drafts, schedule optimization, the bill reminders she used to set by hand, Leo’s pickup on the days her father’s shift runs past three.

* * *

That night, the kitchen table, almost midnight. Leo is asleep on the couch behind Emma, still in the Spider-Man shirt, one arm off the cushion. The pink envelope is open in front of her next to her phone. The apartment is quiet except for the refrigerator and Leo’s breathing. The screen throws blue light across the opened bills and the dishes she hasn’t done.

Emma: Rerun the scholarship model. Same inputs except assume she hasnt gotten out of bed by march. That should give full hardship no? Want to see if it unlocks stanford

Pulse: Okay, running it through. Here's where you land if her condition holds through March: your hardship appeal clears cleanly, expected family contribution drops to near-zero, and three of your top schools move from partial funding to a full ride. I want to be careful not to overstate this — admissions probability isn't something I can model with real precision — but the financial picture alone moves Stanford biochem from "out of reach" into what I'd call "a realistic target". Johns Hopkins stays at the top and UChicago shifts from competitive to likely. I can pull up the full ranking whenever you want. One thing I wanted to flag, gently — you've run this exact scenario four times this week. I just want to make sure you're okay. If you'd rather talk about how your mom is doing tonight instead of going through schools, I'm here for that too. No pressure either way.

***

Excerpt from How Can I Help You Today? by Julia L. Rule. Copyright 2026 by Julia L. Rule. Reproduced with permission from Julia L. Rule. All rights reserved.

 

 

Author Bio:

Julia L. Rule writes about the monsters that live inside our devices. Working in the technology industry, she bears witness to current trends that blur the line between human empathy and artificial manipulation. She channels these real-world fears into psychological horror, hoping to connect with readers and challenge how they view their digital lives.

Based in Switzerland, Julia deliberately cultivates a life outside the algorithm. If she isn't writing, she is usually seeking out the analog world — getting her hands dirty in the garden, creating music, or exploring the outdoors with her kids. How Can I Help You Today? is her latest novel.

Catch Up With Julia L. Rule:

Amazon Author Profile
Goodreads
BookBub - @julialrule
YouTube - @julia-l-rule

 

Tour Participants:

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Click here to view the Tour Schedule

 

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Blog Tour: Review & Excerpt from Murder is Personal by BJ Condike

MURDER IS PERSONAL

by BJ Condike

October 26 - December 4, 2026 Virtual Book Tour

Synopsis:

 

Jake Powell came to Rattlesnake Bend to disappear.

The dying North Texas lake town was the perfect place to outrun his past: no questions, no connections, no reminders of the life he left behind in Massachusetts. He kept his head down, worked for a local woodworker, drank beer at the Cock 'N' Bull, and tried not to think about April Hunter-the woman he abandoned without explanation years ago.

Then April shows up in town wearing a yellow rain coat.

Twelve hours later, she's dead.

With the sheriff convinced he's guilty, Jake starts digging for answers on his own. What begins as a murder investigation spirals into a maze of family secrets, corporate corruption, anonymous threats, and lies buried for decades. The deeper Jake digs, the closer he gets to exposing his own dark secret - plus one more that could destroy him.

Praise for Murder is Personal:

"This fast-paced mystery/thriller where Jake Powell, an amateur sleuth, finds himself the prime suspect in the murder of his ex-girlfriend will keep you turning the pages... Condike’s snappy and sassy dialog made me laugh out loud. His impeccable writing kept me glued to the page. This is one book you won’t want to miss if you like a hard-boiled character like Robert B. Parker’s Spenser or Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane."
~ ML Condike, Author

"BJ Condike has written a brilliant mystery novel featuring a fascinating main character, Jake Powell, whose sarcastic wit keeps the reader captivated through action-packed plot twists. I enjoyed this page-turner and can't wait to read the next of BJ's novels in the Jake Powell series."
~ VL Calder

"Totally enjoyed it! From the rugged contemporary West to the polished, secretive East Coast, Murder is Personal plunges readers into a world where danger hides behind almost every new face. When likable, snarky drifter Jake stumbles upon a murder, his troubled past—and more than a few secrets of his own—force him into an investigation that grows more dangerous with every clue. Packed with sharp humor, memorable characters, and suspense that builds to the final chapter. I look forward to Jake’s next adventure!"
~ Ernest Disney-Britton

"This book had me at the end of my seat until the surprising ending on the last page. The writing is impeccable, colorful, and witty in a style reminiscent of Nelson de Mille’s John Corey character. You’ll appreciate the dark humor of Murder is Personal and like me, look forward to its sequel, presently in the works."
~ Joanna Brady

"Murder is Personal is such an enjoyable ride! ... Jake Powell is a great three-dimensional character: flawed but good-hearted, searching for insight into himself, mistake-oriented but willing to do what it takes to make things right. My favorite kind of protagonist. The dialogue is snappy and clever. The secondary characters are well-developed and interesting. And the plot and pacing kept me turning pages long after I'd planned to stop for the night. I'm looking forward to the next in the series!"
~ Lori Herbst

MURDER IS PERSONAL Trailer:

Book Details:

Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Published by: Big Pine Press
Publication Date: September 15, 2026
Number of Pages: 347 pages
ISBN: 979-8996292103
Book Links: Amazon | Kindle | Goodreads | BookBub

 My thoughts:

In Murder is Personal, Jake has found himself settling in Rattlesnake Bend after living a fairly nomadic life lately.  A blast from his past shows up at his work and the next day is found murdered. Finding himself a suspect, he takes it upon himself to figure out how who actually killed his ex, April.  I enjoyed this mystery.  It's a fairly quick read.  The mystery part was solid with some surprises.  But what I liked the most were the characters.  Especially Jake. He was an interesting and pretty well fleshed out character. He is definitely is someone I would want to read more about in the future. It looks like this is the first in a series, so I'll definitely be trying the next one.

Read an excerpt:

Chapter 1

I’ll take blame for some of it. A lot of it, maybe. But part of it was simply bad karma, or bad juju, or just bad luck.

Like how I found myself in Rattlesnake Bend.

It had been the perfect hiding place, a backwater Texas town south of Fort Worth and north of Waco. In short, nowhere.

Everything was fine until that one odd thing happened. But odd things happen in threes.

The first one was working in Red Cloud’s woodshop on my day off. Red wanted to spend his Tuesday catching stripers on Serpent Lake. I had nothing going on, so I said yes. The second was an all-day drizzle, a rarity for North Texas. That was another reason Red wanted to fish that day. He said the weather would improve the bite. The third strolled into our shop wearing yellow.

I didn’t recognize the raincoat she wore but knew the face. My ex-girlfriend April Hunter. She was a long way from Massachusetts. And she shouldn’t have been there.

But there she was in the viewing window, her L.L. Bean slicker as out of place in our store as a peacock in a chicken coop.

My hands shook as I avoided sawing off my fingers. Steeling myself, I braced for a different kind of pain. April and I had been together for ten years, but that was a long while ago. Our reunion was bound to be awkward, or worse, volatile.

April tucked wayward strands of blond hair behind her ear. Her face wrinkled in puzzlement, then morphed into surprise. She gestured toward the workshop door.

I raised a finger in a “one-minute” mime and shut down the machines. The motors faded from a whine to a whisper to dead silence. My gut tensed as if expecting a punch.

I entered the retail area. She stood perfectly still, posed like a cigar store Indian in Birkenstocks and jeans, head cocked, one eyebrow raised.

“Well, if it isn’t Jake X. Powell,” she said. Just two old friends in a chance meeting. But it was more than that.

“April?” My voice cracked in three places.

My middle initial is subject to change, like the “x” in a math equation. That day it was an S as in Jake S. Powell—the S was for “Suave.”

I cleared my throat and spoke an octave lower. “What are you doing here, two thousand miles from home? Still combatting corporate America? Saving the gay whales?”

She grimaced. “I’m still writing, if that’s what you’re asking.”

April was a freelance reporter in Boston. She’d been the local incarnation of Lois Lane when we lived in Rollstone, an aging factory town an hour outside the city. Her passion for reporting bordered on obsession.

One day I left a note and took off in my Chevy van. I couldn’t tell her why. She’d never believe me. And never forgive me.

Eventually I landed on the Texas prairie, melting into the landscape. Until now.

“So what’s the Ghost Queen doing here?”

“Ghost? You’re accusing me of ghosting you?”

“April, you’re the only person I’ve ever known to ghost someone they’re living with.”

I must have raised my voice, because a customer tricked out as a Kardashian cowgirl glanced in our direction. The twenty-something brunette continued to browse but stayed within earshot.

This was the reunion I had long yearned for, yet also feared. I had rehearsed it a thousand times. But her sudden appearance had rattled me. And I was blowing it.

April bobbed her head from side to side. “Maybe I do owe you an explanation, but…” She paused. “You owe me one too. You skipped town and all you left was a ten-word note.” She stepped closer. “Three years—” She poked my chest with a fingernail. “—and not one call.” The blood-red nail stung like a hornet. “Not one text.” Poke. “Not even a postcard.” Poke. “And your cell. Stopped. Working.” Poke. Poke. Poke. “You mean to tell me you’ve been here the whole time?” Her tone said it was inconceivable anyone would want to visit the tiny town of Rattlesnake Bend, let alone live there.

“I’ve been lots of places. This is just the most recent stop on my magical mystery tour.” The music and lyrics sprang unbidden in my head. I almost started singing.

“Unbelievable!” She said, her smile gone. “I mean, what the hell, Jake. You disappeared! Even your aunt didn’t know where you went.”

I shrugged.

“Why, Jake? You never gave me a reason.”

I shook my head, offering no explanation. Whatever I said would have been a lie, even if it was better than the truth.

Her shoulders sagged and she looked down. “You left right about …you know my dad died, right?”

I nodded. Yeah, I knew.

I never meant to harm anyone. Only one person knows what happened, but she’ll never tell.

And now my three-year disappearing act had been wasted. The one person I had strived to avoid had found me, was standing in front of me. And the right words wouldn’t come. Maybe there weren’t any right words.

I closed my eyes and inhaled. The familiar scent of patchouli-laced perfume held hints of rain, mesquite, and prickly pear. Waves of memories flooded in but ebbed away on a tide of regret. I couldn’t get involved with her again. The old Jake had loved her, but the new Jake was with Carlota.

Our eyes met, and I exhaled.

The brunette cowgirl no longer hid her interest and openly stared. She hovered over Red’s most expensive pieces, jewelry boxes inlaid with turquoise and pipestone. The fringe on her western costume swayed with every movement. Our cashier Rosie squinted at me from the register. She’d give me hell later for distracting a customer.

I pulled April behind a display of Texas-shaped cutting boards and dropped my voice. “I can’t explain. I just had to leave.”

She rested her hand on my chest. My six-two frame dwarfed her by a foot. “Can’t we go somewhere and talk?” she whispered. “Please?”

I must have been overtired because I relented. “Sure. Why not? The store closes in an hour. Let’s meet at the Cock ’N’ Bull.” I pointed in the pub’s direction. “It’s around the corner. Six o’clock.”

“Um, I can’t meet you at six. I have a—a thing first. Can we get together later? Say, nine?”

I sighed. “What is it this time? Save the horny toads?”

“No! I have a reason for being in this one-horse town.”

“Prairie chickens?”

“Stop it, Jake! I didn’t come here looking for you. I was only killing time before my appointment and there you were.” She paused and bit her lower lip, a sure sign her mental gears were turning. “You know, I don’t know the area. Maybe you could come with me…”

“Hmm. Who is this appointment with? And where?”

“Some anonymous tipster. We’re supposed to meet at a place called Castro Park.”

“That’s on the lake. Why would you want me there—to be, like, a bodyguard?”

She responded with a sheepish smile and a small shrug that asked, “Pretty please?” better than mere words could express.

There were two reasons to refuse. One of them was Carlota, and I couldn’t mention the other. Besides, April was a professional journalist. She’d done things like that a thousand times. She never needed me before; she didn’t need me then. I could just imagine Carlota’s eruption if she knew I was skulking about at night with my ex.

“I don’t think so, April. I’ll meet you later, but you’ll have to make your cloak-and-dagger rendezvous on your own.”

“Yeah, right. Thanks for nothing, Jake.”

“So, will I see you?”

“Maybe. I guess.” She said it without conviction.

We exchanged cell numbers, and she left the store wearing an annoyed expression. She raised the hood of her raincoat against the dampness and didn’t look back.

That was the last time I saw her alive.

***

Excerpt from Murder is Personal by BJ Condike. Copyright 2026 by BJ Condike. Reproduced with permission from BJ Condike. All rights reserved.

 

 

Author Bio:

BJ Condike learned his writing craft at SMU in Dallas, and has won numerous local and regional short story contests. BJ’s stories have appeared in several anthologies published by Granbury Writers’ Bloc, the North Dallas Chapter of Sisters in Crime, and Key West Writers Guild where he serves as vice president. He is active in several writing clubs in Texas and Florida, and is currently marketing his debut novel Murder is Personal. In his spare time he plies the waters of the Florida Keys in his fishing boat Sea-Quel with his wife ML and their Welsh corgi Sophie.

Catch Up With BJ Condike:

www.BJCondike.com
Amazon Author Profile
Goodreads
BookBub - @bjcondike
Instagram - @briancondike
Threads - @briancondike
X - @BjCondike
TikTok - @rushmore71
Facebook - @BJCondike

 

Tour Participants:

Click through the other tour stops for can’t-miss reviews, insider interviews, exclusive guest posts, and more chances to win!

Click here to view the Tour Schedule

 

 

It's Time to Get Personal with MURDER IS PERSONAL...

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Review: Scary Movie Night by Miranda Smith

 

Author: Miranda Smith
Publisher: Bantam
Publication Date: July 2026

Tippi is ready for a fresh start. After breaking off her engagement to an increasingly demanding, controlling, and emotionally unstable man, she is newly inspired to do whatever it takes to put herself first. Plus, her thirty-fifth birthday is coming up: a perfect occasion to ring in this new era. Tippi’s friends see the opportunity, too, and lean into her love of horror films by throwing her a lavish theme party at a secluded mansion, where everyone dresses as characters from iconic scary movies. But Tippi's attempts to enjoy the night are shattered when she starts receiving terrifying messages from her ex, Oliver, to expose a secret she was ready to take to the grave

At first, Tippi can’t believe her eyes. Oliver moved across the country after they broke up—he can’t have crashed her party. Could one of her friends have found out? But when her guests begin to disappear one by one, it becomes clear that the threats have very real consequences. And the messages make clear one the call is coming from inside the house.

As Tippi is forced to navigate the deception of those closest to her, she realizes that in the end, some things are indeed like in the movies, and she’ll do whatever it takes to just survive the night.

In Scary Movie night, Tippi is set to move to England. She need s afresh start after her failed engagement.  Her closest friends decide they want one more night with her and set up a themed birthday party at her grandmother's house.  The night quickly becomes a night right out of a thriller script.  

I really enjoyed this mystery.  It's definitely more of a thriller than a horror novel.  The story goes between the present and the past highlighting Tippi's relationship with her ex Oliver.  The intrigue begins when she gets a note from her ex who could not have possibly left it at the house.  I'll be honest, none of the characters were particularly likable in this book, (except maybe Marmee) but I didn't mind because the story made up for it. I did guess one of the twists, but the others were definitely a surprise.  I also enjoyed the ending.  I highly recommend giving this one a shot.

Blog Tour: Review of Guarded by Eden Sloane

 

Title: Guarded
Series: Boston Renegades
Author: Eden Sloane
Release: October 20, 2026
Goodreads: https://t.ly/6RZRJ
Bookbub: https://t.ly/JeiyQ
Cover Design: Talina with Bookin’ It Designs
Promo Graphics Designer: @hercozybookshelf! 
 
Genre/Tropes:
●       Hockey Romance
●       Fake Marriage
●       Morally Grey Heroine
●       Single Dad
●       Bookish Hero
●       Found Family
 

NHL goalie Sebastian Voss can stop a hundred-mile-an-hour slapshot. Convincing a judge he deserves custody of his daughter? That’s proving considerably harder.
 
His solution? A fake marriage to the woman he’s already falling for.
 
For three years, Sebastian has fought to keep the little girl who means everything to him. But a steady stream of headlines portraying him as hockey’s favorite womanizing disaster has left his reputation in tatters and his custody case hanging by a thread.
 
If Sebastian wants to prove he can offer his daughter the stable home she deserves, Kat Morrison is his best shot.
 
She’s smart, beautiful, inexplicably unimpressed by his charm, and the first woman in years who makes Sebastian want something for himself. Asking a woman he barely knows to become his wife is probably insane. Falling for her before she ever says yes is definitely worse.
 
But if putting a ring on Kat’s finger gives Sebastian a better chance at keeping his daughter, he’ll risk his heart without hesitation.
 
Kat knows saying yes is a mistake.
 
Not because she doesn’t love him.
 
Because she does.
 
For three years, Kat has been forced to write the lies destroying Sebastian’s reputation, blackmailed into obedience by the one man who holds her brother’s future in his hands.
 
But now Kat is living in his house, wearing his ring, loving his daughter, and falling deeper for the family she was supposed to help destroy. Somewhere between stolen kisses, tangled sheets, and building a life together, their fake marriage starts feeling dangerously like forever.
 
Except forever has an expiration date when it’s built on a secret.
 
And Kat knows that when Sebastian discovers the truth, she may lose the only man she’s ever loved.
 
Buys Links (Kindle Unlimited):
Universal: http://books2read.com/u/4NKgpG
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0HD9RGTKN
Amazon CA: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B0HD9RGTKN
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0HD9RGTKN
Amazon AU: https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/B0HD9RGTKN
 
My thoughts:

 

Guarded is the first book in the Boston Renegades series.  This one is Kat and Sebastian's story.  The book was definitely one that I read straight through into the night.  I really enjoyed the relationship between the couple and how it evolved.  I really felt for Kat and her predicament.  I was really rooting for her to figure out how to get herself out of it.  I also loved the friendships that Sebastian had with his teammates and sister.  The third act of this book put me through an major emotional wringer, but it was worth it for the HEA.  I highly recommend it and look forward to the next book in the series.

About the Author:
Eden Sloane believes the best love stories aren't about perfect people. They're about imperfect people who keep choosing each other, even after the truth changes everything.
She writes emotionally charged contemporary romance featuring devoted heroes, resilient heroines, impossible choices, and love worth risking everything for. Her stories celebrate the courage it takes to love completely.
When she's not plotting emotional damage (followed by well-earned happily ever afters), Eden can usually be found gardening, trying to win an ongoing battle with the weeds in her yard, drinking far too much caffeine, enjoying a nightcap while watching BBC crime dramas with her husband, and keeping tabs on her four children.
And if you're reading this during the winter, please send warm thoughts. Eden is somewhere in the Midwest, questioning every life choice that led her to a place where the air hurts her face.
 
Author Social Media Links:
TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@edensloaneauthor
Facebook: http://facebook.com/edensloaneauthor
Instagram: http://instagram.com/edensloaneauthor
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Eden-Sloane/author/B0HFT97Q4D
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/71675058.Eden_Sloane
Website: https://www.edensloaneauthor.com/
Newsletter Sign Up: https://www.edensloaneauthor.com/Projects
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/eden-sloane
Threads: https://www.threads.com/@edensloaneauthor
Twitter/X: https://x.com/ESloaneauthor
 

Blog Tour: Review & Excerpt from Resurrection Kill by Laura Joh Rowland:

RESURRECTION KILL

by Laura Joh Rowland

October 19 - November 13, 2026 Virtual Book Tour

Synopsis:

 

An amnesic psychiatrist returns to the hospital where she was institutionalized as a teen to find answers, perfect for fans of The Silent Patient and Shutter Island.

Forgetting can be dangerous. Remembering can be fatal.

New York State, 1953. Dr. Claire Kendall is a psychiatrist-in-training at Resurrection Kill Hospital, a luxurious private and isolated mental institution for the wealthy. But under her mask of professionalism, Claire has a secret: She was a patient at the hospital when she was fourteen.

With gaps in her memory, Claire is determined to discover what really happened the summer she was institutionalized… even if it means uncovering the dangerous secrets hiding at Resurrection Kill. Before long, Claire takes a special interest in a teenage patient, Rory Kirkpatrick, a free-spirited girl who is also determined to uncover Resurrection Kill Hospital’s dark past. Claire indulges Rory’s rebellious nature, hoping to glean clues that might help in her own search for the truth.

But the hunt for answers triggers flashbacks of Claire’s painful childhood, her father’s cruelty, her mother’s alcoholism, her beloved older brother’s death. The deeper she probes her own past, the more she remembers about the summer that changed everything. And as she delves deeper into her own mind, she’ll come to find that her sanity grows more fragile by the day and that some secrets are meant to stay buried. She’ll discover that remembering may come at the cost of her life.

Praise for Resurrection Kill:

"Resurrection Kill by Laura Joh Rowland is everything I love in a thriller: intriguing and chilling, vivid and memorable, a compelling and deeply personal story about one woman's search for answers in an era when women were committed to mental hospitals for virtually anything that was outside the cultural norm. That Resurrection Kill Hospital is an upscale facility for the super rich only makes the procedures the women are subjected to all the more barbaric. Claire's courage and fearlessness under increasingly dangerous circumstances made me want to stand up and cheer. I loved this book!"
~ Karen Dionne, author of #1 international bestseller The Marsh King's Daughter and The Wicked Sister

Book Details:

Genre: Historical Fiction; Thriller/Suspense
Published by: Crooked Lane Books
Publication Date: October 27, 2026
Number of Pages: 336 HC
ISBN: 9798892427111
Book Links: Amazon | Kindle | Barnes & Noble | BookShop.org | Goodreads | BookBub | Penguin Random House

My thoughts:

In Resurrection Kill, Claire begins her residency at a mental institution.  She could have gone to a more prestigious institution, but she has ulterior motives.  She was a patient at this place years before, but cannot remember much about her time or why she was there.  Her key goal is to find the truth while concealing her true identity from her colleagues.

   

I thought this was an enjoyable mystery.  I also liked the setting.  It made me realize how far the issues surrounding the treatment of mental health has come and how far we still have to go. I loved Claire's drive to figure out what happened to her when she was a patient.  There were some great twists and I did not call the reveal.  My only real issue with the story was the pacing.  Some parts of the book felt a little slow to me. Despite that, I would recommend reading it!

Read an excerpt:

New York State, July 1953

A siren blares through the loudspeaker in the conference room where I sit with the four other new psychiatrists. A staticky voice repeats, “Code 1, East Drive.” Startled, we look to the man at the head of the table.

Tall, dignified, and silver-haired, Superintendent Adrian Van Pelt raises his voice over the siren. “Welcome to your first day as residents at Resurrection Kill Hospital.” His manner is calm, faintly amused, his black suit impeccably tailored. “You might as well see what you’re getting into.”

Beckoning, he strides out the door. We hurry after him along the wide hall, down the grand staircase. In the foyer, one resident catches up with Superintendent Van Pelt and opens the door. With his blond crewcut and conventional handsomeness, he looks like a movie star. The only other woman besides myself trots at his heels. She’s bespectacled, her reddish-brown hair coiled in a bun, and her skirt stretches across wide hips. I lag behind the other men. One is slender and older than the rest of us, his hairline receding; shadows underscore his deep-set eyes. The other looks Japanese, with straight black hair and an upright posture that adds to his less than average height. My colleagues are eager beavers, but I hesitate. I should join the front of the charge because first impressions are lasting, and my career depends on the success of my residency; I mustn’t look timid. But I need to avoid close attention.

This is my colleagues’ first day here. But not mine.

Twelve years ago, when I was fourteen, I was a patient at Resurrection Kill Hospital.

The people with me don’t know. Nobody must ever know.

The heavy carved door set with stained glass starts to swing shut in my face. The others are already outside, and the Japanese-looking man holds it open for me. He’s the only person who noticed that I’ve lagged behind. I take a deep breath, walk through the door, nod my thanks at him, and emerge into bright sunshine. The warm summer air smells of roses and freshly cut grass. I pause on the steps of the mansion that serves as the administration building. Around me as far as I can see spreads the hospital’s campus, located five miles from Resurrection—the town from which it took its name—and about fifty miles upstate from New York City. Kill is the Dutch word for a stream, and the campus nestles in a curve of Resurrection Kill, a tributary of the Hudson River. Founded in 1885, the hospital was built by an architect inspired by Frederick Law Olmstead, designer of Central Park and other landmark sites. Buildings constructed mostly in the nineteenth century, in various styles, cluster together at the middle of a hundred and thirty acres of gently rolling hills landscaped with gardens and surrounded by woods. I don’t recognize anything, which disappoints but doesn’t surprise me.

The five months I spent here in 1941 are a black void in my memory, lit only by occasional, disturbing flashbacks. I returned to complete my training but also to reconstruct my past. I became a psychiatrist because I want to help the mentally ill, but I also need to find out what happened to me here and why I forgot it all.

I catch up with Superintendent Van Pelt and the other residents on the main road that winds through the campus. Red-brick buildings from the Victorian era, separated by lawns and gardens, line the road. People who look to be patients or visitors stroll in the gardens. Yesterday, I had planned to arrive in time to move into my quarters, take a walk before dark, and search for scenes that evoke memories, but the drive from the city took longer than I expected due to heavy traffic, and my car had a flat tire. After getting the car towed and the tire fixed at a garage, I reached the hospital too late to explore the campus. Now I lift my gaze to the treetops, to the slate roofs of other buildings, to the smokestacks that rise from a power plant to the cloudless blue sky. It’s as if I’ve never been here before. I focus on Superintendent Van Pelt, at the head of our little parade. He moves with a rapid, athletic gait, as if the passage of his sixty years has diminished neither his strength nor his energy. I think I remember him, but perhaps my mind is filling the void with false memories.

The sounds of automobile horns and racing engines interrupt my thoughts. A male voice shouts through a megaphone: “Stop!” We round a curve in the road. A dark green pickup truck speeds toward us, followed by a white sedan. A second white sedan comes from the opposite direction, on a collision course with the truck. I gasp, bracing myself for the crash. The other residents exclaim in alarm. Brakes screech as the second sedan slews around to block the road. The green truck veers to avoid hitting the sedan and comes straight at us. We scatter out of its way. The truck jumps the curb, rolls over grass, and crunches to a halt. Rakes, shovels, and buckets rattle in its bed. On the road, the first sedan stops near the second. Both have the hospital’s insignia—an oak tree spreading limbs over the letters RKH—and the word “Security” printed in green on the doors. The drivers, men clad in dark green uniforms, spring from the cars. They rush to the truck, whose front wheels have plowed over a ring of stones and low bushes that surround a flowerbed. The truck’s back wheels spin, churning up grass and dirt as its driver guns the engine. The flowerbed, bright with pink, mauve, and blue hydrangeas, is set in the lawn in the curve of a semicircular drive. The drive fronts a building, three stories of red brick and white-framed windows, the roof ornate with gables, dormers, and chimneys. A sign outside reads, “Serenity House.”

Could it be where I lived when I was a patient?

Nurses in white dresses and caps and orderlies in blue uniforms run out of the building and flock around the truck. The security guards are trying to open the truck’s doors, which are locked. One guard says, “It’s Rosemary Kirkpatrick. She sneaked out of Haven House and stole a groundskeeper’s truck.”

“Rosemary is a problem patient,” Superintendent Van Pelt informs our band of residents.

A guard strikes the truck’s passenger side window with his truncheon. The glass breaks. A shrill voice screams from inside the vehicle: “Go away, you bastards!”

The truck’s engine revs; the wheels spin faster, in vain. The guard reaches through the broken window, unlocks and opens the door. The engine dies as he turns the key in the ignition. He and his partner reach inside the truck and pull Rosemary Kirkpatrick out. She flails so wildly that all I can see of her is a tangle of thin limbs, pink garment, and long, dark hair. Shrieking curses that would put a sailor to shame, she kicks one guard in the groin. He howls and doubles over. She pulls free of the other guard, leaving the ripped sleeve of her dress in his hands, and runs . . . straight to me.

My heart clenches. Rosemary’s face is small, her features delicate, her complexion pale within the frame of unruly black hair. She’s just a girl, no more than sixteen or seventeen.

Everyone else is in motion—guards, nurses, and orderlies chasing Rosemary; the other residents backing away from her; Superintendent Van Pelt raising his hand, opening his mouth to issue commands. But Rosemary’s gaze snares mine, and I’m rooted to the spot. It’s as if she’s singled me out of the crowd, with some primal instinct that sensed—what? A sympathetic ally? A fellow mental case? She clutches my arms, her fingers hard against the gabardine of my suit jacket, digging into my flesh. Her eyes are wide, startlingly green, and fringed with long black lashes.

“Help me!” she cries.

I instinctively grasp her arms—whether to break her hold on me or to try to soothe her, I don’t know. Her arms are thin but strong. Her anguish strikes a deep chord in me.

“Get me out of here!” she begs. “Please!”

My lips move involuntarily, and my mind echoes with the sound of my own voice crying out the same words. An eerie shiver ripples through me. The scene around me blurs, and my heart drums hard and fast through a tide of vertigo. Locked together, Rosemary and I seem to spin a hundred and eighty degrees, switching places. The nurses and orderlies are after me, not her. I see us from a vantage point high above—her dark-haired and half-naked in the tatters of her pink dress; myself with a brown pageboy, trim gray suit, and black pumps. I forget which of us is the doctor, which is the fugitive inmate. A flash of memory like a lightning bolt illuminates the dark void.

I once accosted some stranger in my own desperate attempt to escape this hospital.

The orderlies yank Rosemary away from me, and our hands cling together for one last instant. Mouth wide with terror, she looks like she’s drowning and a riptide is pulling her away from her rescuer. I feel the same expression on my own face, as if we are mirror images. Please don’t let them take me back there! I don’t want to go!

“Calm down, Rosemary, that’s a good girl,” Superintendent Van Pelt says, his gentle, firm tone laced with condescending tolerance.

Rosemary screams as the orderlies wrestle her to the ground. A guard speaks into a walkie-talkie. The other residents look on with stoic expressions that mask whatever excitement or alarm they may be feeling. I rearrange my own face to match theirs as I take deep breaths to quell my panic.

The superintendent walks over to the fray, confident as a zookeeper accustomed to wild beasts. A nurse places a hypodermic syringe in his hand. While the orderlies hold Rosemary down, he stabs the needle into her thigh and pushes the plunger. Her screams dwindle to whimpers; the fight goes out of her. Her eyes roll up inside her head, and her body relaxes into drugged sleep. The orderlies step back, panting and wiping sweat off their brows. Superintendent Van Pelt gives the syringe back to the nurse and dusts off his hands. An ambulance arrives. The attendants bring a gurney, lift the unconscious Rosemary onto it, strap her down, and load her into the ambulance.

“I’ll see her back to the ward,” Superintendent Van Pelt tells our group of residents. “Wait for me in the conference room.”

He climbs into the passenger seat of the ambulance and rides away. We retrace our steps to the administration building, the handsome blond man first, the other woman a step behind him; then the thin older man; then the Japanese-looking man and me, walking together.

“Are you all right?” My companion sounds concerned; he noticed my distress.

My cheeks warm. The other residents seem oblivious, and I’m glad he spoke quietly and didn’t call their attention to me. “I’m fine.”

I’m shaken and trembling inside, but my voice is cool, calm, the product of training and discipline. I can’t afford to seem weak, lest the others shun me out of contempt. Triumph revives my strength. I’ve started to remember. Just as I’d hoped, coming back to Resurrection Kill Hospital has cracked open the void. After twelve years, light is shining through. I look from side to side and backward, eager to see what else might be revealed.

In the flowerbed that Rosemary Kirkpatrick drove the truck into is a statue of a woman. Her stone skin is green with moss, her face hidden by ivy. What would she see if the ivy were torn away? Would she rather remain blind and ignorant?

***

Excerpt from Resurrection Kill: A Novel by Laura Joh Rowland. Copyright 2026 by Laura Joh Rowland. Reproduced with permission from Laura Joh Rowland. All rights reserved.

 

 

Author Bio:

Laura Joh Rowland is the award-winning author of the Sarah Bain Victorian Mystery series, the samurai detective Sano Ichirō mystery series set in seventeenth-century Japan, and a historical suspense series starring Charlotte Brontë. Her work has been published in twenty-one countries; nominated for the Anthony Award, the Hammett Prize, and the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award; won RT Magazine's Reader's Choice Award; and been included in the Wall Street Journal's list of the five best historical mystery novels. Laura holds a bachelor of science and a master of public health degree from the University of Michigan. She is a former aerospace scientist, a painter, and a cartoonist. She lives in New York City with her husband Marty.

Catch Up With Laura Joh Rowland:

LauraJohRowland.com
Amazon Author Profile
Goodreads
BookBub - @laurajohrowland
Instagram - @laurajohrowland
Facebook - @laurajohrowlandauthor

 

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Blog Tour: Interview with Ken Tipton, author of Title: Lost Valley - Lost Innocence

 

Title: Lost Valley -  Lost Innocence
Author: Ken Tipton
Genre: Memoir
Sub-genre: Sexual Assault/True Crime
Language:English
Pages: 365
Paperback ISBN: 979-8234067685
Publisher: TBRIS Media, Inc.
Publication Date: June 22, 2026
Price: Hardcover $27.99, Paperback $18.99, Kindle $7.99, FREE with Kindle Unlimited
 
Two best friends. One hidden network. A childhood stolen under the cover of Scouting.
 
From 1964 to 1967, Kenny Tipton and Greg Connor were barely teenagers when men they had been taught to trust groomed and sexually exploited them through Boy Scout camps, trips, and activities.
 
What began at Lost Valley Boy Scout Camp outside St. Louis grew into an organized network that carried the boys through more than twenty states and into the hands of businessmen, law-enforcement officers, politicians, priests, educators, and other powerful men.
 
To survive, Kenny and Greg depended on each other. They made rules, kept secret records, negotiated with predators, and used intelligence, loyalty, and dark humor to hold on to some measure of control. As the danger escalated, they became caught in blackmail, betrayal, violence, and crimes that would haunt Kenny for decades.
 
Lost Valley - Lost Innocence is Ken Tipton's firsthand account of stolen childhoods, institutional failure, buried secrets, and the lifelong consequences of survival.
 
But at its heart is something the men who exploited them could not take away: the friendship between two boys who protected one another when the adults around them would not.
 
Decades later, Ken finally breaks the silence.
 
Told with brutal honesty and unexpected humor, this is a survivor memoir about friendship, resilience, guilt, and the courage required to confront the past.
 
Some stories are difficult to believe because they are too horrifying to imagine.
 
This one happened.
 
Lost Valley - Lost Innocence is available at Amazon.
 
Enjoy this interview with the author:

You first put this story on paper in 1988, but the memoir wasn't fully published until 2026. For survivors who feel frozen or unable to share their own stories, what did that decades-long gap teach you about patience, timing, and waiting until you were ready?

The biggest lesson was that being able to write something down and being ready to let people read it are two very different things.

When I first wrote the story in 1988, I gave the manuscript to my attorney with instructions that it could be released only after my death. I wanted the truth preserved, but I was terrified of what my family would think of me. After my first grandson was born, that fear became so strong that I destroyed the manuscript. Those decades were not spent patiently polishing a book. Much of that time, I was trying to find the courage to let anyone know what had happened.

In November 2010, watching Oprah’s two-part program featuring 200 male survivors and Tyler Perry helped me understand that I was not alone. I started writing again from the beginning and my wife promised not to release it until after I passed. Later, the Boy Scouts bankruptcy and more than 82,000 abuse claims helped push me toward publishing while I was still alive. Other survivors were stepping forward, and I wanted my story to help someone the way their stories had helped me.

I would never tell another survivor, “You should have spoken sooner.” I know how heavy those words can be. You do not owe the world a public account of your most painful experiences. Sharing might mean telling one person you trust, not writing a book.

For me, being ready did not mean the fear had disappeared. It meant that helping someone else feel less alone had become more important to me than keeping my own story hidden.

When you tried to speak out as a Scoutmaster in 1988, the St. Louis Boy Scout Council blocked you. Many survivors face immediate denial or silencing from the institutions they trust. How did you maintain your grasp on the truth when a massive organization was trying to overwrite your reality?

Their refusal to hear the truth did not change what Greg and I had lived through. But it certainly made speaking about it harder.

When I returned to Scouting as a Scout leader, I wanted to help protect children. My proposal was practical: let me talk to Scouts about grooming, special attention, gifts, and demands for secrecy. I thought the organization would welcome an opportunity to help boys recognize the dangers we had not understood. Instead, a Council representative told me, as I recall in the book, “Such delicate matters belong at home, not in a public forum.”

What hurt was knowing that I had offered something that might help a child, and they had turned it away. I understood that response as another demand for silence, not a reason to doubt what had happened.

Writing became my way of answering. They could reject my proposal, but I could still put my experience on paper. That did not make me fearless—I still struggled with shame and with the thought of my family reading it—but it gave the truth somewhere to exist outside my own head.

The distinction I would make for another survivor is this: someone’s refusal to listen is not proof that you are wrong. An institution’s reputation does not give it the authority to decide what you experienced.

You and Greg managed to reclaim a sense of agency by negotiating with predators and keeping secret records. For survivors who often feel completely powerless when looking back at their childhoods, how does it feel to recognize that even as children, you possessed immense strategic intelligence and resilience?

I feel both pride and grief. I can recognize how resourceful we were while wishing desperately that we had never needed to be.

Greg and I made rules, kept records, negotiated whatever we thought we could negotiate, and used humor to hold on to something that still belonged to us. Our friendship mattered enormously. We were trying to look out for each other in circumstances neither of us should ever have faced.

But I want to be very clear: finding a little control inside an abusive situation is not the same as being free to choose that situation. We were not equal partners negotiating with other adults. We were children dealing with adults who had power over us. Our intelligence did not make us responsible for their behavior, and our attempts to survive did not turn exploitation into consent.

Looking back, I want to give those boys more compassion and less blame. I want readers to see our loyalty, our humor, and the people we were—not only what was done to us.

I also would not want another survivor to read this and think, “I didn’t keep records or come up with a plan, so I wasn’t strong.” This is not a contest over who resisted best. A child does not have to fight back, gather evidence, or outsmart an adult to deserve protection. That responsibility belonged to the adults.

Your book touches on how the blackmail, betrayal, and trauma impacted you for decades. What does the day-to-day work of living with complex trauma look like for you now, and how do you navigate the seasons when the past feels closer than the present?

I would not describe it as reaching a point where everything is neatly resolved. Putting the story into a book does not mean putting the past away forever.

Faith and determination have been central to how I have kept going. I have never approached faith as asking God to fix everything for me. I prayed for the strength to figure out what I needed to do, and then I had to do the work. I earned my successes, but believing that God was in my corner and could guide me spiritually helped me keep moving on the right path.

The balance I aim for now is acknowledging what happened without allowing it to become the only thing my life is about. I am still a writer, producer, and director. I still have stories to tell and projects I care about. I want room for laughter, too. Humor does not mean I am taking the abuse lightly; it means the abuse does not get to take every other part of me.

When the past feels close, the question I want to ask myself is not, “Why aren’t you over this?” It is, “What can you do with today?”

Helping other survivors feel less alone gives this work purpose. But I also want a life beyond explaining what happened to me. I survived, and I want to keep living—not just keep revisiting how I survived.

Will there be more books from you in the future?

Possibly. I certainly have more stories to tell, but my immediate focus is giving Lost Valley — Lost Innocence the opportunity to reach the people who need it.

I am working on the audiobook and working toward adapting the memoir into a limited streaming series. That longer format would give us room to show Greg and me as whole people, with friendship, humor, hopes, and lives beyond the abuse. It is a project I am pursuing, not an announced production.

I am open to another book, but I do not want to promise a title or a publication date before I know what that book should be. For now, this story still has a great deal of work to do. My hope is that someone who has spent years believing they were alone will encounter it and realize they were not.

About the author:

Ken Tipton is a serial entrepreneur, author, composer, screenwriter, award-winning filmmaker, and Air Force veteran whose life has taken him from building unconventional businesses and producing films to confronting a childhood history he kept largely buried for decades.

His memoir, Lost Valley - Lost Innocence, tells the true story of Tipton and his best friend, Greg Connor, who were groomed and sexually exploited as boys through a network connected to their experiences in Scouting during the 1960s. Told with candor, emotional honesty, and unexpected humor, the book examines childhood abuse, institutional betrayal, friendship, survival, and the consequences that can follow victims long after the abuse itself has ended.

Tipton has spent much of his life creating—building businesses, developing film and television projects, writing screenplays, and telling stories drawn from extraordinary experiences. In his seventies, he turned that storytelling toward the most difficult subject of all: his own past.

Through Lost Valley - Lost Innocence, Tipton hopes not only to document what happened, but also to give voice to survivors who spent years or decades believing that silence was their only option.

He lives in California with his wife, Darlene, and continues to write and develop new creative projects.

Ken’s latest book is Lost Valley - Lost Innocence.

Visit his website at https://lostvalleybook.com/

Connect with him on social media at:
 Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/LostValleyFilm
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lostvalleybook
BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/ken-tipton
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lostvalleybook
Substack: https://lostvalleybook.substack.com/
 

Review: Cold Rage by Toni Anderson

Author: Toni Anderson
Publisher: Toni Anderson, Inc
Publication Date: September 2026

When a fugitive accused of murdering his ex-wife disappears into the Montana backcountry with his nine-year-old daughter, FBI Hostage Rescue Team sniper Sebastian Black leads an intensive manhunt, battling snowstorms and brutal terrain in a race against the clock.

National Park Service ranger and search-and-rescue specialist Nora Deacon knows the mountains better than anyone. Alongside her K9 partner, Chance, she’s determined to find the missing girl. Nora is achingly familiar with what can happen when a child falls into the wrong hands.

As the search narrows, Sebastian and Nora are forced to work together in a fight for survival as much as a rescue operation. The closer they get to their target, the more dangerous the situation becomes—and the harder it is to ignore the attraction burning between them.

With a blizzard closing in, a desperate fugitive growing increasingly unstable, and a young girl’s life hanging in the balance, they’ll have to risk everything to bring her home alive—even if it means confronting secrets they’ve both worked hard to bury.

Cold Rage is the 8th book in the Cold Justice: Most Wanted series.  This one is Sebastian's story.  He and the rest of the team join up with Nora, a National Park ranger who specializes in search and rescue with her dog Chance.  They are tasked with looking for a murderer who has fled into the mountains and taken his daughter with him.

This a wonderful addition to the series.  The tension and action is elevated throughout the entire book. I definitely was on the edge of my seat.  I also can't remember the last time I felt cold reading a book. The author really knows how to create atmosphere!  I loved Sebastian and Nora together.   Nora has a tragic past and has worked hard to move past it all to become who she is today.  Sebastian also had a pretty crappy past.  For a couple that never wanted to have a relationship, these two just fit so well together. While it was a little quick, their HEA was totally believable.  I highly recommend this one.  I can't wait to see which team member gets the next story!