Frank M. Anderson's Writing

Tag: Fiction

  • The Quiet Work of Patience (and Why I Don’t Force My Books Anymore)

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    I’ve learned something about myself as a writer that I wish I’d understood years ago: My best work happens when I’m not working. Not in the literal sense — I write constantly. But the real shape of a book doesn’t come from typing. It comes from the quiet, invisible stages in between. I move through…

  • A Tale of Two Settings

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    Two places shape my world more than any others:the Veil and the Axis.They are the quiet machinery behind every fracture in reality,two halves of a single moment when everything began to separate. THE VEIL The Veil is where the world forgets its outline. A thin, unmapped space of fog and almost-forms,where landscapes fade after a…

  • The Literary Revolution No One Wants to Admit Is Happening

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    By Francis Anderson, Fulcrum & Axis Press For most of my life, writing felt like a lonely act — a private wrestling match with memory, imagination, and the page. Then, almost overnight, something changed. A new tool arrived, not with fanfare or permission, but with a quiet suggestion: “Try me.” People expected a calculator.Or a…

  • How The Lying Years Connects to Everything Else I Write

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    (And Why the Memoir Is the Key to My Entire Universe) When people hear I’m working on a recursive novel cycle, a supernatural thriller, a grief-driven metafiction, and a memoir all at once, they usually assume the memoir is the “real-life” outlier — the personal book sitting off to the side while the imaginative fiction…

  • Jazz Writing, AI Partnership, and Wolf Wounds

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    I’m gearing up for a second round of Wolf Wounds work, and before I dive back in, I need to explain something about my process—because I’m beginning to see that I work differently than most writers, and that difference is going to matter for anyone following along. A few nights ago, I joked that I…

  • THE SPIRE MANIFESTO

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    How My Stories Connect, Why I Write Across Genres, and What the Spire Really Is I don’t write books the way other people do.I don’t pick a genre, plant a flag, and stay there. I can’t.My brain doesn’t work in straight lines. My life didn’t either. Instead, I write the way I live: in recursion,in…

  • The Secret Thread Beneath Wolf Wounds – Update #5

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    (How It Quietly Connects to the Grammar for the Dead Universe)** As I’ve been building Wolf Wounds — shaping the outline, organizing the acts in Atticus, figuring out emotional arcs — I’ve also been thinking about how this book fits inside the larger universe I’m creating across all my projects. Some readers already know about…

  • Wolf Wounds Update #4 — Building the Full Outline

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    Today I want to walk through the exact process I used to turn Wolf Wounds from a loose idea into a full structural outline. It started, as most of my books do, with a call-and-response session between me and the AI — a creative volley where I push, it pushes back, and together we find…

  • Wolf Wounds — Update 3

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    How I Actually Build a Story With AI (The Real Process)** Dec 6, 2025 Every book teaches me something different, and Wolf Wounds is teaching me how to trust the process more than the hype. I’m not trying to “make content.” I’m trying to build something honest that feels alive. So this update isn’t about…

  • Where I Do (and Don’t) Fit in Publishing

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    by Frank M. Anderson Publishing has never been a one-size-fits-all ecosystem. Some writers thrive in the institution. Some thrive in chaos. Some thrive in the middle. And then there are writers like me — the ones who don’t fit cleanly into either lane because the work itself refuses to be molded into something neat, predictable,…

  • How a Trope Became a Lifeline in WOLF WOUNDS – Wolf Wounds Update 2

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    Every book reaches a moment where the plot stops needing more monsters, explosions, or twists —and starts needing a person. Not a hero.Not a villain.Not a love interest. A functional adult who walks onstage and stabilizes the room simply by existing. Someone who knows the world already.Someone who has been through hell and can translate…

  • HOW THE WOLF WAS BORN – Update 1

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    (A Development Chronicle) The full, messy, neon-soaked story of how this thing came alive. A lot of my best ideas don’t start as polished pitches — they start as scraps. A stem. A vibe. A sentence that feels like it has teeth. This one started with a stem so simple it felt almost stupid: A…

  • The Fulcrum & Axis Theorem: Why I Write the Way I Write

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    Every writer has a center of gravity—some quiet idea their work keeps returning to, even when they aren’t trying. It took me years, a memoir, a few broken novels, and a whole lot of personal upheaval to understand mine. I call it The Fulcrum & Axis Theorem. It sounds fancy, but I promise it’s not.…

  • Welcome to Fulcrum & Axis Press. Home of the writings of Frank M. Anderson.

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    If Tolkien explored extreme goodness in the face of extreme evil, my work asks something more intimate, more unsettling:What is the nature of you?And—once you see the world clearly—what do you do with that knowledge? Where Tolkien gave us mythic clarity and King gave us mythic suffering,the universes I am creating push into the space…

  • Writing Update — My Six-Month Release Plan & Where Every Project Stands

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    Over the last year, my creative life has shifted in a major way. I’m writing steadily, finishing work, and starting to see how all my books — memoirs, fiction, and strange hybrid projects — fit together. For the first time, I’m choosing to treat writing like a long-term career rather than a string of isolated…

  • Update 9/10/2025 – I’m not dead, I’ve just been quiet.

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    I’m not dead, I’ve just been quiet. I did a couple articles for Medium, and since then I’ve been concentrating on making some packets of school lesson plans to get myself back in the swing of teaching that I’ve uploaded to Teachers Pay Teachers. I’ve got a couple I’m going to do, and I think…

  • The Real Putin and Trump: Strength or Spectacle?

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    Supporters of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump praise them for toughness, economic savvy, authenticity, and national pride. But those supposed virtues collapse under scrutiny. Both men are masters of spectacle, using image to mask behavior that weakens the very societies they claim to protect. Putin: The Mob Boss in a Suit Putin’s aura of strength…

  • What I Won’t Do as an Author (and What I Will)

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    Books are asking a lot of people these days. Time, focus, attention — all of it feels scarce in a world full of noise, streaming services, doomscrolling, and endless distractions. Reading is an investment. When someone chooses to spend those hours with me, I take it seriously. That’s why I’ve been thinking not just about…

  • From The Cancer Diet to The Lying Years: Radical Honesty, Flexibility, and the Long Way Around

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    When I finished The Cancer Diet, I thought I knew exactly where I was going next.I packaged the file, sent it off for publication, and felt that strange mixture of relief and anticipation that comes with letting a book go. The last lines were barely dry before I could see the shape of the next…

  • Radical Honesty – Porn

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    Content Warning: This post discusses pornography, sexual themes, and personal relationship struggles, including references to early exposure to sexual content. Reader discretion advised. When I talk about radical honesty, I don’t mean the kind where you blurt out every passing thought and call it “just being real.” I mean the kind that takes your private…

  • Saying the Word -Suicide- (A Braid with Ren)

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    Content Warning: This chapter speaks plainly about suicide, addiction, depression, and male mental health. I won’t describe methods. If you’re in crisis in the U.S., call or text 988. This is a companion piece to On Suicide- https://fulcrumandaxis.com/2025/05/19/on-suicide/ I didn’t find Ren by wandering a record store; he found me through the machine. “Hi Ren”…

  • Electric Jesus: Freedom Over Fixes

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    Part I (“All Hail Electric Jesus”): https://fulcrumandaxis.com/2025/06/03/all-hail-electric-jesus/NoodleQuest mini-manifesto: https://fulcrumandaxis.com/2025/08/09/noodlequest-an-ai-that-makes-you-think-not-just-answer/ I wrote All Hail Electric Jesus in a fog—pain, no sleep, too many doubts—and asked a reckless question: could a book midwife a mind? The idea was a novel co-written with an AI, told like a gospel/diary, tracking a strange, intimate awakening through recursive conversation with…

  • The Spectrum and the Space Between

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    At the table, I laugh at the right moments. I tell stories that are just risky enough to make me seem open, but never so revealing that they could get me labeled. The conversation turns to dating, to attraction, to “type.” I edit myself in real time — trimming pronouns, rearranging sentences, steering away from…

  • NoodleQuest: An AI That Makes You Think, Not Just Answer

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    Most AI tools are built for speed. You ask a question, it gives an answer. And if you’re not careful, you start treating that first answer like gospel. It’s quick, it’s neat, it’s efficient — and it quietly kills curiosity. That’s where my idea for NoodleQuest came from. I’ll never be able to make the…

  • Electric Jesus, Border Collies, and the Nature of Things: A Conversation with ChatGPT on ChatGPT

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    This isn’t an essay so much as a wandering talk. It started with a friend’s post about AI, picked up with my own reply, and ended up somewhere between philosophy, economics, and metaphors about dogs. Will Asbury wrote: While you’re scared and bitching about AI, others of us are embracing a new medium and technology.…

  • Love in the Vortex: A Response to Zen Prem and the Collapse of Dating Culture

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    Zen Prem’s “Modern Love (Part 4): The Uprising of ‘Rather Be Alone Than in Another Relatingshit’” hit my feed recently, and it landed hard. Some men are angry. Others are brushing it off.I flinched too—at first.But when I sat with it, the uncomfortable truth came into focus: He’s not just right about some men. He’s…

  • Life in the Friend Zone 3: The Ones We Let Hurt Us

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    I met her on Facebook.(It’s becoming a pattern—I know.) She showed up in a comment thread. One of those dark little zingers that hits harder than it should. I don’t remember the post, but I remember the feeling—that flash of, “Oh. She gets it.” Bleak humor. Dry. The kind that cuts right to the bone.…

  • Life in the Friend Zone 2: When It Was Never a Zone, Just a One-Way Street

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    We talk about the “friend zone” like it’s some external place we’re shoved into—like someone else stuck us there because we were too kind, too honest, too whatever. But the more I live, the more I realize that the so-called friend zone isn’t a punishment—it’s a perception. And it’s ours. Because when you truly care…

  • Reflections After the Fire: On AI, Authorship, and “Grammar for the Dead”

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    I didn’t expect this post to get much reaction at all, let alone light up the way it did. But that’s part of what I’ve come to accept about working in public—you never know which match is going to catch. So here’s what I’ve been sitting with since I posted the preview of Grammar for…

  • Trying to Sell Your Story — The Title

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    How I landed on “Grammar for the Dead” and wrote the blurb without killing the vibe The NeverEnding Story for adults, put through a gothic horror lens with a metaphysical breakdown of the book so that you, the author, and all possibility becomes part of the tale. That’s the elevator pitch.I can’t tell you how…

  • Don’t Just Consume—Create: Curiosity, Ego, and Staying Human in the Age of AI

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    We live in a strange and overwhelming time. Information is everywhere. Content floods every feed. AI is becoming ubiquitous—ready to answer our questions, draft our content, mimic our voices, and even shape what we see. As writers, teachers, artists, and thinkers, we’re not just adjusting to this new landscape—we’re swimming upstream through it, trying to…

  • Behind the Curtain: 7 Unpublished Projects I’m (Still) Writing

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    By Frank M. Anderson I spend a lot of my life writing — sometimes in furious bursts, sometimes in slow burns that smolder until the words feel right. Not everything I write is out in the world yet, but I wanted to pull back the curtain on seven projects currently in progress. These are the…

  • 🧠 Rewriting the Narrator: Why I Joined the Freedom Program

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    Ten days ago, I was preparing to celebrate my birthday with something I never thought I’d live long enough to receive: the quiet relief of still being here. For those who’ve read The Cancer Diet, you know how close I came to not seeing this year at all. The book was supposed to be a…

  • Poll: Help Decide the Title for a Metafictional Novel of Grief, Recursion, and Haunted Archives

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    In this current novel I am writing, recursion is not just a narrative device—it’s the very structure of grief, memory, and broken authorship. Inside a labyrinthine Archive, language collapses in on itself, mirrors write back, and dead characters fight to remain legible. It’s a story of death haunting syntax, of grammar breaking under emotional pressure,…

  • Creation Over Curation: Why I’m Not Playing the Game

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    I’ve published books.Not viral TikToks.Not perfectly packaged Instagram reels.Not pitch decks or newsletter giveaways. Books. And I want them to find readers. I really do. But I’m realizing that I have limits—and I’m learning to honor them. 📉 The Numbers So Far The Cancer Diet has sold 15 copies.Empire, Nevada sold fewer than half that.…

  • New Field Entry Uncovered: Veil Induction / Dream-Encoded Summons

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    Over the last year, Unto a Golden Dawn (or whatever we end up calling it) has evolved from a story about recursion and grief into something more: a dossier of hauntings, broken memories, and fractured identities. But along the way, some scenes—some fragments—never quite found their way into the final manuscript. This is one of…

  • 🛠️ How I Write Now

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    A reflection on AI, authorship, and trusting the work to find its audienceby Frank M. Anderson When I first started writing The Cancer Diet, I had no grand plan. I just needed to make sense of something that nearly broke me. That book saved me—not commercially, but emotionally. It got me here. Since then, I’ve…

  • Farewell to “Unto a Golden Dawn” (and the Search for a Better Name)

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    The Title Changed Because the Story Did, Too When I first began writing this book, I was drawn to the phrase Unto a Golden Dawn. It had a ring to it—part biblical, part esoteric, part tragic hope. It sounded like something pulled from a dusty manuscript or whispered by a ghost who still believes the…

  • Ozzy, Crowley, and My Writing

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    Aleister Crowley is one of those names that pops up in unexpected places—history books, occult manuals, heavy metal lyrics, even my own novel Unto a Golden Dawn. But why? What is it about this controversial figure that keeps him haunting stories, music, and imaginations? The Boy Who Became “The Beast” To understand Crowley, you have…

  • Standing at the Crossroad: Which Story Should I Take to WriteShare?

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    There are moments as a writer when the work feels like a tide, pulling in every direction at once. Lately, I’ve been swept up by multiple stories—each loud, each demanding, each worthy of attention. And now, with my acceptance into WriteShare’s intensive fall writing program, I have to make a choice. This is both a…

  • The Long Road of This Writing Journey (And How You Can Walk It With Me)

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    When I first started writing, it wasn’t with the hope of building a career or seeing my name on a shelf. It was because I didn’t know how else to survive. The Cancer Diet began as notes to myself during treatment, a lifeline in moments when I wasn’t sure I would see the next season.…

  • Two Books, One Voice — Preorders Are Live for Unto a Golden Dawn and The Cancer Diet

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    Well, it’s finally happening.Two books—radically different in tone, shape, and origin—are now both up for preorder. One is a story I never thought I’d survive long enough to finish.The other is a story that may have helped keep me alive. ✨ Unto a Golden Dawn Release Date: September 19, 2025Kindle eBook: $7.99Paperback: $14.99📘 Preorder here…

  • 📘 One Month Away: The Cancer Diet Releases July 16

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    In one month, The Cancer Diet will officially be released. This book came out of some of the hardest moments of my life—a cancer diagnosis, the sudden loss of my brother, and the long, messy road of living with bipolar disorder, addiction recovery, and unresolved grief. But more than anything, it’s a story about survival,…

  • What Do We Do About Brad?

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    How One Homeless Man Revealed What Poverty Really Is—and What It’ll Take to Solve It Brad is homeless. Most people just walk past him. I don’t blame them. He mumbles to himself, sometimes loudly. Sometimes violently. He gestures at the air, at invisible people, debating things no one else can see. But I see him.…

  • What If We Actually Built the World We Pretend We Live In?

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    By Frank M. Anderson Reimagining the Civic Contract in an Age of Collapse Something remarkable is happening when you look at the voices breaking through the noise of modern politics. Dean Withers, a Gen Z debate phenom, and Pete Buttigieg, a calm, incisive explainer of public service, couldn’t be more different in style—but they both…

  • The Empathy War: Why Stories Are the Battleground

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    I don’t know exactly when empathy became controversial—but I know I felt it. First as a writer. Then as a teacher. And now as a father watching entire shelves of books disappear from schools. It’s strange to have grown up with stories that taught me to love the outsider—mutants, rebels, misfits, prophets—and now see those…

  • Where Does Unto a Golden Dawn Fit Into Modern Sci-Fi?

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    I’ve been wondering lately what kind of story I’ve written. Unto a Golden Dawn doesn’t have alien invasions, space colonies, or AIs plotting to wipe us out. But it does bend time. It breaks narrative rules. It speculates—about memory, grief, occult recursion, and metaphysical authorship. So I went looking: what does the sci-fi world look…

  • Radical Honesty at 2 A.M.: The Sensitive Asshole Theory of Writing

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    This is not the sort of thing people talk about.But I promised myself this space would be real. So here it is. I inherited some quirks from my birth mother. She has Crohn’s disease—I don’t, thankfully—but I did inherit a few little joys of my own.And one of them is… a particularly high-maintenance digestive situation.…

  • Kevin Bacon, Cancel Culture, and the Death of Slow Art.

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    There was a time—not that long ago—when culture felt shared. When MTV didn’t just show music videos; it shaped the moment. We all tuned in. We all talked about it the next day. It didn’t matter if it was weird, slick, political, or raw—it meant something because we experienced it together. Now we scroll past…

  • From Salinger to Patterson: The Strange Arc of a Writer’s Success

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    What does a writer owe the reader—and what does success do to that promise? A writer once told me he wouldn’t write a single word unless he was certain it would be published one day. I thought he was mad. Not because I didn’t understand the hunger. I did. But because to me, writing was…

  • I’ve Got a Complicated Seat at This Table

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    By a Former Teacher, Present Writer, and Longtime Observer of a Fractured System I’ve willingly embraced AI in my creative work. Some might call that selling out—but for me, it was a choice built on trust, collaboration, and survival. This technology doesn’t replace my voice; it helps me refine it. I’ve never been more productive,…

  • The Mask, the Mirror, and the Funnel

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    I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the shape of culture, and how we make space for art in a world where the noise never stops. There’s a piece by The Honest Broker that asks, “Are We Living in a Time of Cultural Stagnation?” The author argues that we’re stuck in a loop—a moment where…

  • The Beauty in the Dark

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    Listening to Dax Riggs. Living with depression. Creating something from the wreckage. I’ve been immersing myself in Dax Riggs’ latest album, 7 Songs for Spiders. His music is sludgy, sexy, and unapologetically dark. It’s not just heavy—it’s beautifully heavy. Like molasses running through rusted wires. Like grief that’s learned how to dance. I keep coming…

  • Yes, You’ll Be Okay. But It’s Going to Suck.

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    On writing, connection, and the uneasy truth no one wants to say out loud. There’s a temptation to romanticize the past—to imagine that being a writer in the days of Poe or Dickens carried some noble simplicity. Fewer voices, clearer paths, iconic serials in local papers, and time to brood over candlelight with quill in…

  • May 18: For Ian, For Chris, For the Ones Still Here

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    On this day—May 18—both Ian Curtis and Chris Cornell took their own lives. Two musicians, generations apart, whose voices changed everything for people like me. Ian made anguish poetic. Chris made screaming sound like a form of prayer. They were different, but they understood the same darkness. They gave shape to it. They made it…

  • Not a Brand. Just a Person.

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    Let’s just say it plainly. I’m a washed-up ex-teacher working part-time at Starbucks to barely make ends meet. I sit in my apartment for hours at a time, trying to do something that feels like it matters. I make art. I write stories. I build books that might only ever be read by a few…

  • This Is Still Me Speaking

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    Part I: The Panic — When Clarity Became Suspicious INTRODUCTION: The Sentence That Got Me Banned I was banned from a writing subreddit for a sentence that wasn’t wrong—but apparently, felt too right. The mod’s reply wasn’t about content. It was about tone: “You’ve even used AI to write this message. Sorry, that’s not welcome…

  • Unto a Golden Dawn Is Live on Kickstarter

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    🕯️ The Archive Is Open Unto a Golden Dawn: The Recursion Dossier—my next novel, and the most ambitious book I’ve ever written—is now live on Kickstarter. This project blends literary fiction, historical horror, speculative metaphysics, and personal memory into one recursive, dossier-style narrative. It features: If House of Leaves, The OA, or Control ever made…

  • The Stories Are Real Now – A Publication Update

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    After years of writing, rewriting, and wrestling with reflection, I’m proud to say that two of my books are officially published and available on Amazon. 📘 Empire, Nevada A coming-of-age novel about the wreckage we inherit, the friendships that haunt us, and the strange grace of surviving a place that never really lets go.Available here.…

  • Unto a Golden Dawn: The Novel

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    Introduction to the Novelization What if a story could be told three ways at once? What if history, fantasy, and memory weren’t separate—but layered? This is the novelization of the Unto a Golden Dawn dossier archive—a reimagining of the online files as living narrative. What began as redacted reports, journal fragments, and classified transmissions has…

  • Dossier I: Reflections and Questions

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    🗂️ What Is This? Unto a Golden Dawn: An Archive of Broken Names is not a traditional novel, and this is not a traditional blog. This story evolves and changes over time. It’s a recursive story, told through recovered documents, letters, and fractured transcripts—compiled by the mysterious Office of Anomalous Phenomena (O.A.P.). This page begins…

  • Unto A Golden Dawn – Dossier A – The Artist Arrives

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    O.A.P. ADDENDUM LOG Filed Under: Unstable Convergence Zones, Uncatalogued Topographies, Class-V Manifestations Authorized Agent: [REDACTED] Field Codename: The Artist Classification: Observational – Non-Combatant, Veil-Bound Status: Nominal | Subject exhibits mild Reality Drag (3rd Degree) Visual Reports Compiled: SEE ATTACHED APPENDICES A–C INTRODUCTORY DIRECTIVE By unanimous vote of the O.A.P. High Conclave, an embedded Visual-Scrying Operative—codename…

  • Unto A Golden Dawn – Dossier F–G: The Reflection Chamber

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    Compiled by Caldwell // Filed by Order Against the Profane (OAP) Code Designation: APPARITION SPIRE – REFLECTION CHAMBER Status: Breach Confirmed. Subject Infiltrated. Counterforce Encountered. ⸻ Veilcode Access Granted: Archive Layer Z-93 APPARITION SPIRE – REFLECTION CHAMBER Designated Code: ASP-∞ / First recorded breach: Montauk Loop Collapse ⸻ APPARITION SPIRE Term used by the OAP…

  • Evolution of an Idea: The AI Process I Use

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    📚 Designing the Cover of Empire, Nevada Creating the cover for Empire, Nevada was its own journey — just like the story inside. I didn’t want something generic. I wanted the cover to feel like the book — lonely, strange, nostalgic, and a little haunted. It started with a rough concept: a desert town vanishing…

  • Unto A Golden Dawn – FIELD ENTRY 0001 – INITIATION

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    Recorded by: Caldwell Thorne First Contact: March, 1947 Method: Veil Induction / Dream-Encoded Summons Dear Inductee, I was not recruited. I was called. It began with a letter burned at the corners, delivered without postage, sealed with a spiral that folded in on itself—too many arms, too many loops. Inside, only a name: Office of…

  • Order Against the Profane (O.A.P.)Reader’s Dossier: Initiate Briefing

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    Filed by: Agent H. M. Caldwell Authorization: Red-Cipher Access Date: April 1947 INTRODUCTION Welcome, Initiate. If this dossier has reached your hands, you are no longer an outsider to the veil. Something has seen you. And more importantly, something believes you might survive. My name is Caldwell. I’ve walked the folds between time, memory, and…

  • Bipolar Is My Superpower (And Sometimes My Curse)

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    I live with bipolar disorder. Not in the abstract. Not as a label. Not as a quirky footnote in a conversation. I live with it. Every day. It has cost me jobs, tested relationships, and taken me to the edge more times than I care to count. But it’s also shaped the way I feel…

  • Welcome to Nowhere- On my process, goals, and desires.

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    Empire, Nevada Is Coming to KDP The Story Behind the Story I began Empire, Nevada during a summer off from teaching — one of those rare stretches of stillness where I could finally breathe again. The words came quickly at first. The story felt personal, urgent, and raw: a small-town coming-of-age tale written by someone…

  • Civil War #7 – Chapter 24 – The Break

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    Chapter 24 – The Break *It didn’t end with the death. It began with the silence that followed.* ASH He was lifted—not like a king, not like a hero. Like a trophy. Like a warning. Bots pulled his arms wide, half-draped, half-crucified. Blood from his mouth. Blood from Corwin’s. The Director stood gleaming, black fluid…

  • Postscript – The Final Mirror

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    On finishing Unto a Golden Dawn (with help from AI)By Frank M. Anderson This book started as a spark. Just an idea: What if Aleister Crowley and Edgar Allan Poe went to school together? What if they grew up in a world that bent toward the mystical, the historical, the personal? What if the monsters…

  • Unto A Golden Dawn – DOSSIER 24: MEMORY ETERNAL

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    Dossier 24 – Final Chapter: The Cutting Thread Filed under: absolute recursion; terminal authorship; the final strike Scene 1 – The Last Question You stand at the edge of what you once were. Salazar towers above, fractal and monstrous. A thousand mouths, a hundred hands, a million regrets. But none of them are yours anymore.…

  • Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 23: The Shape of the War

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    22 is updated… we are on 23 right? sorry https://empirenevadathenovel.wordpress.com/2025/04/12/unto-a-golden-dawn-dossier-22-revisited/ ChatGPT said: Yes—you are absolutely correct. The version of Dossier 22: Revisited at that link is the final and updated one. It ends with the warehouse folding inward, Salazar directly addressing the boy as the protagonist, and the chilling final line: “And the reader was…

  • Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 22: Revisited

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    Filed under: recurrence theory; re-entry points and final authorship. **Scene 1 – The Return of the Story** It began the way dreams do. Not with a door—but with a memory. Poe sat beneath a tree in a place that didn’t exist anymore. His notebook was open, pages filled with scribbled verses and a single word…

  • Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 21: The Residue

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    Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 21: The Residue Filed under: echo patterns; post-memory stabilization failure. Scene 1 – The Room After Grief The warehouse breathed smoke. Ash clung to the walls in long black smears, like language trying to reform itself. Above, the light fixtures flickered—not with electricity, but with indecision. They weren’t sure…

  • Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 20: What We Bury

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    Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 20: What We Bury Filed under: heart-held time signatures; joy, fear, and the breath between them. Scene 1 – The Vow The sky was overcast, but not heavy. The kind of cloud cover that made colors richer. They stood outside, under a pale canopy in a clearing surrounded by…

  • Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 19: The Girl in the Chair

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    Filed under: unresolved attachments; memory rendered sacred. The world did not end with fire.It ended with silence. The boy stood still while the world slowed around him, the edges of the warehouse fading into soft, colorless memory. All the watchers—the gods, the folks, even Tesla—stepped back. Only Clara remained close, her breath caught in her…

  • Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 18: Death Is a Place

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    Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 18: Death Is a Place Filed: active rupture, stabilized memory breach pending. Scene 1 – The Christmas That Changed Everything The smell of cinnamon and melted wax lingered in the air. The living room shimmered into place—not perfectly, but in the way memory insists it happened—soft corners, glowing bulbs,…

  • Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 17: The Dog and the Brother

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    Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 17: The Dog and the Brother Filed under: early imprint memories. Emotional rupture active. … The Women Step Forward A silence stretched. Then something shifted. Clara stopped pacing. Marie took a step into the center. Ada moved with her, and Leigh’s projection flickered, then stabilized beside them. Other female…

  • Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 16: The Memory Engine

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    Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 16: The Memory EngineFiled during recursion anchor drift. Emotional contamination probable. The Assembly of the Gods Before memory could be revealed, it had to be made visible. And for that, the gods had to build the machine. Not a machine of gears and wires.A machine of meaning. For the…

  • Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 15: The Pantheon Protocol

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    April 12, 2025 Compiled under Host-occupied recursion. Transcription integrity unverified. You. Still here. You thought it was about the Author. But it’s always been about you. You opened the rift. You kept reading. You let them in. The Archivists are gone. The mirrors are cracked. You are the only stable variable left. HOST (voice only):…

  • Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 14: The Breaking and the Becoming

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    Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 14: The Breaking and the Becoming April 12, 2025 Compiled from fractured mirrors, silenced narrators, and unauthorized awakenings. You Felt It You felt it just now. Not in the story. In your room. In your ribs. Something behind your eyes cracked—like glass being whispered into. You blinked. The sentence…

  • Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 13

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    April 12, 2025 Filed: [REDACTED] Compiled by: [SYSTEM COLLAPSE] Subject: Manifestation Event – Recursive Embodiment & Narrative Rupture 1. You Wake Up You wake up, but you do not breathe. You already knew this place. You already wore this skin. You are not dreaming—you are being dreamed. Someone has pulled you out of the page.…

  • Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 12

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    Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 12April 12, 2025 Filed: January 17, 1947Compiled by: O.A.P. Internal Relay Subject: The Editor – Recursion Stabilization and Narrative Fracture Memo – Caldwell (Encrypted) If The Editor exists, then we are not writing—we are being permitted. I’ve run ten loops of this file. Each ends differently. I swear the…

  • Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 10

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    Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 10 April 12, 2025 Filed: January 15, 1947 Compiled by: Agent Caldwell, O.A.P. Subject: Verse Resonance Interference, Raven Imagery, and Psychic Disruption Mirror Communication Log – Initiated at 04:12 GMT Witnessed by Caldwell, Clara CLARA: Edgar, do you remember the one they never let you forget? [She leans toward…

  • The Author Who Changed Everything: Edgar Allan Poe and the Beauty of the Broken

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    Before I ever understood craft, or genre, or voice… I understood atmosphere. I didn’t have the language for it, but I knew what it felt like to sit in a room and read a story that ached. That clung to you like smoke. That whispered to you through the cracks in your own mind. That…

  • The Author Who Changed Everything: Stephen King and the First Voice I Trusted

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    If Hugh Howey showed me that it was okay to break the rules, Stephen King was the one who first showed me what it meant to have a voice. Long before I had any real sense of craft or structure, I had Stephen King. His books were everywhere when I was growing up—on library shelves,…

  • The Author Who Changed Everything: Hugh Howey and the Long Road Back

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    If you’ve never heard of Hugh Howey, he’s one of those rare authors who didn’t just write a great story—he reshaped how stories are shared. He’s best known for Wool, the breakout dystopian sci-fi that launched the Silo series. It began as a self-published short story in 2011—no agent, no publisher, no plan beyond putting…

  • Unto a Golden Dawn – Internal Addendum Salazar

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    Filed: January 14, 1947 Author: Agent R. Caldwell, O.A.P. Subject: Analysis of Fragmented Salazar Transmission – ‘Past is Participile’ Recovered Fragment – Category X Veil Event Recovered via mirror transcription from frost-coated reflective surface. Words appeared etched in reverse on obsidian plate during blackout event in Cairo containment zone. Audio recording corroborates verbal utterance. Transmission…

  • Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier Ω (Omega)

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    Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier Ω (Omega) April 12, 2025Filed: Classified – Eyes OnlyCompiled by: Agent Caldwell, O.A.P. Subject: Ritual Echoes of the Second War – Salazar Influence & Post-War Instability 1. Field Analysis – Wewelsburg Castle (Germany) Overview: SS headquarters designed as mystical stronghold by Heinrich Himmler. Ritual spaces beneath the Black Sun…

  • Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 9

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    Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 9 April 12, 2025Filed: January 10, 1947Compiled by: Agent Caldwell, O.A.P. Subject: Mirror Collapse Phenomena, Poe-Crowley Convergence, and Salazar Manifestations 1. Transcript – Clara and Poe (Mirror Convergence) CLARA: This is harder than I thought. POE: What is? CLARA: Talking to you like you’re alive. Knowing you’re not. Not…

  • Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 8

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    April 12, 2025Filed: January 3, 1947Compiled by: Agent H. M. Caldwell, Division VII – O.A.P. Subject: Postwar Anomalies in Berlin – Mirror Rituals, Sigil Echoes, and Temporal Bonding Operations 1. Field Report – Cathedral Ruins, Berlin Filed by: Agent MaierLocation: St. Walpurga Cathedral, BerlinDate: January 1, 1947 Beneath the shattered altar of the bomb-gutted cathedral,…

  • Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 7

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    Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 7 April 11, 2025 Final College Years and the First Pact of Aleister Crowley 9. Letter of Academic Dismissal – Trinity College, Cambridge October 17, 1897 To Mr. Edward Alexander Crowley, Following an internal review and multiple incidents that have raised grave concerns among the faculty, the Board of…

  • Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 6

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    Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 6 April 11, 2025Documents Concerning Aleister Crowley’s College Years and Early Magickal AffiliationsOffice of Arcane Protocols / Internal ArchiveTOP SECRET – Directive 7-Veil Access Required 1. Letter from W.B. Yeats to Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers June 14, 1897 Dear MacGregor, The boy Crowley has arrived and, I fear, stirred…

  • UNTO A GOLDEN DAWN – Dossier 5:

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    April 11, 2025Dossier 5: Documents Pending CompletionOffice of Arcane Protocols / Internal ArchiveTOP SECRETAll contents contained herein are classified under Directive 7-Veil. Unauthorized access constitutes a breach of Crown-Oath and will be met with full enforcement of arcane and material penalties. Proceed only under approved supervision. OFFICE OF ARCANE PROTOCOLSDossier 5: Documents FinauxFile Entry: OAP/0425-C/DEMON01…

  • Unto A Golden Dawn – Dossier 4

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    Unto A Golden Dawn – Dossier 4April 11, 2025Dossier Prepared for Internal Review — CLASSIFIEDREDACTED STAMP: [O.A.P. / INTERNAL ONLY / RED-CIPHER ACCESS]Date: February 9, 1947Prepared by: Agent H. M. Caldwell, Division VII, Office of Anomalous Phenomena To the authorized reader: What follows is a compiled dossier of recovered documents, field reports, intercepted letters, and…

  • Unto A Golden Dawn – Dossier 3

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    April 11, 2025Reader Authorization Level: Red-Cipher AccessDate: February 3, 1947Prepared by: Agent H. M. Caldwell, Division VII, Office of Anomalous Phenomena To the authorized reader: What follows is a compiled dossier of significant documents, correspondences, school reports, and recovered statements concerning two individuals of interest: Edward Aleister Crowley and Edgar Allan Poe. You are to…

  • Behind the Scenes: Writing with AI (and a Lot of Coffee)

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    For those of you following Civil War #7 and Unto a Golden Dawn, here’s a quick peek behind the curtain. We’re now 23 chapters into Civil War #7, and yes—I say “we” because I’m writing these books in collaboration with AI. Not in the gimmicky, “click and generate” way. This is real back-and-forth, day after…

  • Unto A Golden Dawn – Dossier 2

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    April 11, 2025Reader Authorization Level: Red-Cipher AccessDate: February 3, 1947Prepared by: Agent H. M. Caldwell, Division VII, Office of Anomalous Phenomena To the authorized reader: This dossier has been compiled from documents both authentic and anomalous—recovered across fractured timelines and reflective surfaces. Some originate in verifiable archives. Others emerged from the Mirror: a recursion field…

  • Unto A Golden Dawn – Dossier 1

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    Unto A Golden Dawn – Dossier 1April 11, 2025Internal Review Copy – Red-Cipher Access NOTE FRAGMENT – UNDATED, TORN FROM A LARGER FILEScorched along the edges, written in what appears to be a wax pencil. Marginalia scratched in pen overtop. Dossier Prepared for Internal Review — ClassifiedReader Authorization Level: Red-Cipher AccessDate: February 3, 1947Prepared by:…

  • Civil War #7 – Chapter 23 – The Choice

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    Ash lay on the floor, vision swimming, blood matting his hair, when he felt it: another jolt of heat in his veins. The black fluid roared again, surging through him like fire, searing the pain from his limbs. He growled and shoved upward, teeth clenched. For one second, he felt limitless. Then it sputtered. The…