Topher Lydon

I've never done a traditional murder mystery before. I hope I did it well enough.

This one has 20 chapters. So we are closing in. I will take a break before releasing Lost in the Sand. I have a murder mystery I want to put out in this slot. Just as something new. When Vickie Morrison's body is found in the river behind Grey Harbor High, all eyes turn to Caleb Holloway—the quiet, medicated boy who can't remember what happened that night. As the town closes ranks and whispers turn to accusations, Caleb discovers the pills his mother forces down his throat aren't just controlling his emotions—they're erasing his memories. Desperate to prove his innocence, he must unravel a web of blackmail, buried secrets, and a truth someone is willing to kill to protect. But the deeper he digs, the more he realizes: in Grey Harbor, everyone is hiding something.

Granny Ryder's abuse is what broke Mickey, and Isaiah will not stand for it.

Granny Ryder And Grandfather Bell Are both being set up for the final book of the Trilogy There will be a reckoning for the horrors of these two monsters.

They are in the next chapter, not forgotten, just no need for them on the page during the past few chapters. Wylan is not under threat.

I do like that Isaiah stands up to Granny Ryder. Dimitri needs someone to do so.

one of the inspirations for this section.

Uncle Jesse can always find Mickey.

The Vega Vixen III hung in the black like a held breath, her running lights dimmed, her engines cold. She was hiding in the shadow of a dead moon, waiting for something Isaiah wasn't sure would ever come. Isaiah sat in the pilot's chair—his chair now, the one that had molded itself to his spine over months of sleepless nights and desperate searches—and stared at the sensor display. The data was hours old. Mickey's trail had gone cold again, vanishing into the vast, empty expanse of the oute

Darien is stubborn as we all know. He isn't going to let a little thing like prophecy stop him from securing a future for his Wylan. I am now picture him standing in front of st. Peter, little glasses on, and a copy of the prophecy in hand. "Pursuant to section four, paragraph three, sub-section two. I am technically not supposed to die." St. Peter sighs, "Did you have to bring Dewy, Suem, and Howe?" Darien glances up, "best lawyers in the afterlife, now resurrection please. I have a husband to get back to!"

Whether it be the Crusades, the Ottomons, Germans, British Empire, the Soviet Union. The Baltics survived, grows, and remains a proud place. I have close friends in Croatia, I lived in Kosovo for close to two years teaching. I have friends across the region. And I have found them all to be proud, fierce, and loyal.

I am using a number of TRT gifs already up on Giphy to give a bit of colour to the chat commentary. Works rather well to set the tone of some things.

That's Lloyd's job, one he is quite adept at. Fond as he is of the Newest Knight of the Vanguard.

Libbet is all kinds of Awesome. Love that character. She, Dowager Baroness Adele, the Princess of France, and the Queen are a monumental team in the "Vanguard of the Silver Boar" which is the start of a new series of books centered around Darien's son Atreus. The women that hold up the Silver Boar at home are formidable, determined, and just as loyal as the men in Palestine.

Ishan is pivotal in tomorrow's chapter. He has not been idle, just moving in his own way on the other side of the walls of Jerusalem.

The brutal, freezing deluge that had locked the Judean mountains in a prison of ice and mud finally broke in the second week of March. The bruised, iron-gray clouds that had suffocated Bethlehem for months fractured, allowing brilliant, piercing shafts of Levantine sunlight to strike the ancient limestone terraces. Spring arrived not with a gentle thaw, but with a sudden, violent burst of warmth that turned the frozen ravines into roaring torrents of meltwater and baked the mud of the southern r

That poor Veth scoutship /Mickey's Sports Car/

Well after the Glorb's tunnel boring, a fing or two might be a relief.

The hangover did not arrive with the gentle, creeping ache of a standard alcohol binge, nor did it announce itself with the dull thud of a sleepless night. It hit Mickey Ryder with the concussive, apocalyptic force of a dying star collapsing in on itself. It was the physical manifestation of a biological debt being violently called due. His brain had been running on a toxic cocktail of adrenaline, raw spite, and the frantic, buzzing electricity of a prolonged manic high for weeks. It had m

The man was mentally ill. The problem was that a certain someone sought to exploit that for his own chance at the Crown of Jerusalem.

The stench of Arqa was something Julian d’Avenel knew he would never truly wash from his skin. It was a physical, cloying entity, woven from dysentery, rotting horseflesh, and the suffocating desperation of thirty thousand starving fanatics. As Julian and Ser Lloyd rode with the practiced, frantic efficiency of men trying to outrun an impending disaster, a strange, terrifying sound began to roll through the sprawling siege camp. It was not the clash of Fatimid steel, nor the blare of a war

Things do not go to plan for Raymond of Toulouse. But mark me well, it is a set back, not a defeat. To explain what Peter Bartholomew attempted, he had the whole army gather in front of them, then claimed that the Saints had sent him a vision that the Crusader army, his own army, were full of sinners. He broke the army into groups of five men, and told one of those men to kill the other four. It was the final straw, people realized he was insane, that the horrors of eating people, fighting with no food, crawling through the frozen muck for the second year in a row. Butchering the Christian-Armenians they were supposed to save, and dying by the droves... was all on the orders of a mad man... it was too much. And he was forced to prove he was chosen of god, and the lance was real. In trial by fire. A horrific ending to a horrific man. I would say good morning, but, instead I will raise my cup of coffee and wish you well

He is present through the story, but this one is very much an exploration of Mickey, Mickey's past, and Mickey's illness.