Last month, I entered The Knights with No Lords: The One Called Gawain into the Reader Views Literary Awards. The entry included a professional review of the novel, and when the email arrived with the results, I almost didn’t want to believe what I was seeing. Five Stars Baby!!!
The reviewer called the novel:
⚔️ “A modern masterpiece.”
⚔️ “The most glorious prose.”
⚔️ A book with battle scenes written with “a precision rarely seen.”
And then came the line that absolutely floored me:
“Chances are, this will be the best fantasy book you read this year.”
After four years of hard work, rewrites, proofreads, second-guessing, and fighting to get this book published, I’m done waiting for permission. It’s time to show the world what I’ve got.
This is a story about Gawain a young warrior forged by captivity, war, duty, and blood. He’s forced to choose between his love for Morgan le Fay and his duty to the true heir who carries the hopes of uniting Britannia and bringing an end to an era of war.
Everyone knows the stories of King Arthur and his knights. But long before there was a Round Table, they were something far more dangerous: a generation of gifted, reckless, and hot-blooded young men trying to find their place in a world that was tearing itself apart.
If that sounds like your kind of story, I’d love for you to grab a copy, check it out, be the first to leave an Amazon Review and step into the world. But don’t just stop at Amazon.
I also built an entire website for The Knights with No Lords from scratch — full of character profiles, graphics, lore, storylines, and visuals designed to pull you deeper into the world before Camelot. It took me over a month to build and launch, and I’m honestly proud of how much it brings this story to life.
I have so many thoughts about AI when it comes to being an artist, especially as it relates to Hollywood and the publishing industry.
Recently, there were graduations where young graduates booed when the idea of AI came up.
And I get it. I think the reason why they booed was because so many companies and corporations are banking more on AI capabilities than on human beings.
At the same time…I also understand the corporations and companies.
If you have access to a tool that can get you the desired result of an employee, and it costs you pennies on the dollar compared to the yearly salary you’d have to pay that employee…I won’t go so far as to say, “Why wouldn’t you use it?” because I know we’re talking about real people’s jobs and livelihoods here.
But I would say this: they’d be foolish not to at least explore it.
And here’s my attitude about the whole thing. Maybe I’m just a different breed from some of my peers. Maybe it’s just the way I was raised in the 90s when Michael Jordan was dunking on fools and people still embraced the spirit of competition instead of acting like every challenge was some kind of injustice.
But when it comes to AI, I say: Challenge accepted.
It’s really unfortunate, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way before.
You ever look forward to something for a long time, only to slowly watch that excitement turn into concern? Then concern turns into dread? Then dread turns into, “You know what? I don’t think I can support this.”
That’s where I am with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.
For those who don’t know, Christopher Nolan — the director behind The Dark Knight, Inception, and Oppenheimer — is releasing a film adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey.
Just hearing that alone should be enough to build excitement.
The story of The Odyssey is already epic. You have Odysseus, king of Ithaca, trying to return home after the Trojan War. You have monsters, gods, temptation, shipwrecks, death, longing, loyalty, wisdom, and the brutal cost of survival. Combine that with the director of The Dark Knight and Oppenheimer, and it sounds like a no-brainer.
It sounds like, “Shut up and take my money.”
But then, little by little, you start hearing about the choices being made. The smile fades. The excitement dampens. Interest turns into disgust. Anticipation turns into apprehension.
This is a sensitive subject for me to admit because I wasn’t raised to make excuses. If I fail…the last thing I ever want is to say is, it’s because the system is rigged against me. Sounds like a cop-out, an excuse to make you feel better for your own lack of talent, determination, or ability.
But…now that it’s 2026 and becoming a best-seller isn’t my “everything” the way it used to be, I think it’s about time to speak up on an issue I’ve known for well over ten years.
With the exception of Non-Fiction Books (think self-help, biographies, books on religion, politics, and psychology, etc) the Book Publishing Industry favors Female Authors and is biased Against Men.
Some of you already know this, but there are those who don’t and those who deny it. I’m talking to those people.
Don’t get me wrong…I’m a huge fan of movie critics like the Critical Drinker, Nerdrotic, Jeremy Jahns, and even a lesser known (but super funny) critic like Thorias Unlimited…but as a fellow writer, I have to say James Gunn’s Superman was really good and I’m glad I was able to see it in theaters.
Trust me when I say, I came into this movie fully prepared to be disappointed. Henry Cavill’s “Man of Steel” is literally one of my top 5 movies of all time. I was stubborn. I went into the theaters thinking to myself, “there’s only one Superman, and it’s Henry Cavill…”
Then I saw the movie. Brace yourself…spoiler alerts are coming. And cutting to the chase, as a Christian Conservative myself, I can tell you that I don’t think this movie was “woke”.
It was on July 3rd 2005, when I left home to start a new life in Tampa Florida. Since then, July 3rd has always been my own personal Independence Day. And since today marks the 20th anniversary of my leaving the nest…I thought I’d post some reflection.
If I could go back twenty years and talk to my 18-year-old self, what would I tell him? What would I tell that jeri-curled, 310-pound big black guy with no sense of fashion, no experience, barely any knowledge of the world, and yet filled inexplicably with uncanny optimism and determination.
Easy, this is just food for thought. But it relates to relationship follies and even the characters, stories, and scripts that are written by female writers…that quite frankly, either don’t make sense or it’s not realistic.
Plainly put, the definition of Empathy is the Ability to “understand and share the feelings of another”. It’s your awareness of what the other person is feeling and why they have those feelings.
At the age of 38-years-old…I don’t think a lot of people have this ability. Not just women, but people in general. But as per the point of this essay, I think it’s an inaccurate stereotype to associate this ability with Women.
In my opinion…I’ve found that a lot of women from my generation seem to struggle to understand why or how another person is feeling what they’re feeling, unless (and only if) they’ve personally experienced that situation for themselves.
My wife and I went to see the latest Mission Impossible movie…and aside from the convoluted plot and exposition dumps where characters took turns saying one line at a time (making you fully aware that you’re watching a movie)…one thing you’ll notice about the film is the proliferation of women playing roles that were traditionally (realistically) held by men.
Seriously, the US president is Angela Bassett, the Secret Service agent who springs into action and takes down a bad guy is a petite Asian woman, the commander of an aircraft carrier is a Guile-looking white woman, and one of the main female soldiers on the submarine is a cringy tom-boyish lesbian in a tank top who acts more masculine than the men around her.
And these aren’t just background characters. Every time they’re on screen, they play the most prominent role over every other character. It’s in your face. As if, “You’re going to watch me whether you like it or not.”
I’m not saying it’s impossible for women to hold these traditionally male roles. But as I’m going to explain, it does ruin the magic of movies when you constantly have to work to suspend your disbelief.
Critical Drinker’s video about Disney’s “the Acolyte” was really impressive in so many ways. I don’t know if he’s Christian or not, but this guy definitely understands what’s happening.
In the video, Critical Drinker, a well-respected writer and film critic with over a million subscribers, questions Hollywood’s direction with their recent slew of movies. He asks:
“Why are they trying to dupe people into thinking that nothing is intrinsically good or bad, that morality and objective reality don’t actually exist, and everything comes down to what you personally feel? It’s almost like once you stop people from believing in anything, then they’ll eventually come to accept everything.”
Stage In The Sky 