Behind the Stories

Honor His House: Taking Care of the Temple God Gave Me grew from a concern that we do not always give children enough guidance about caring for every part of themselves. We teach them to look after their physical health, but their mental and spiritual well-being deserve attention, too.

Through an inviting story and memorable illustrations, young readers are encouraged to see themselves as whole people: body, mind, and spirit. The book opens the door to conversations about healthy choices, self-respect, gratitude, faith, and the responsibility of caring for the remarkable gift of life.

At its heart, Honor His House is also about recognizing that each of us is wonderfully individual, while sharing a common human worth. It is written to encourage children and the adults who guide them to nurture healthy habits, embrace differences, and treat themselves and others with care.

By the Dawn’s Early Light is more than a historical novel. It is a story about the universal human experience of leaving one life behind in the hope of building another—and about the family ties, sacrifices, memories, and acts of faith that endure across oceans and generations.

Rooted in my own family’s Polish immigrant history, the novel follows people navigating unfamiliar languages, cultures, work, separation, and the uncertainty of beginning again. As I explored our family story, I kept seeing echoes of other migrations: Vietnamese families fleeing by sea, and Latin American families making difficult journeys north. Their circumstances and histories are not identical, but the longing for safety, dignity, opportunity, and a future for the people we love is deeply familiar.

The book asks readers to look past the labels that so easily divide us. Immigration has often been met with suspicion, prejudice, and harsh judgment. Yet the people behind these journeys are not abstractions or headlines. They are parents, children, siblings, and neighbors carrying hopes and fears much like our own. I hope this story invites a little more understanding, common ground, and grace.

Its creation was itself a journey of more than thirty-five years. I began writing it when I was twenty-one, inspired by our family’s history and encouraged by the unfinished literary ambition of my Uncle Jerry. He shared a gift for writing and dreamed of writing the next great American novel. Life, as it often does, took him in another direction, and the story eventually passed to me. In my early twenties I completed a rough draft and saved it on a 3.5-inch floppy disk. I even imagined publishing under the name Spencer J. Foreman. That draft disappeared, and the years moved on. I married, became a father to four children, and focused on the work of living, providing, and raising a family.

When I returned to the novel, I rebuilt much of it from memory, supported by the research and historical records that the internet now makes easier to access and verify than they were in the early 1990s. The calling to write Honor His House, and what I learned through that experience, helped bring me back to this long-delayed promise.

I wish I had finished the book while my mother was still here. She passed away two years ago, and I carry the sadness that she did not get to see it completed. I am grateful, though, to be able to share it with my Aunt Carol, and to honor the family members whose stories helped shape it. This novel is, in many ways, a bridge between generations—and a reminder that the stories we inherit can become the stories we pass on.

The seed of The Mantle came to me about fifteen years ago: a modern Robin Hood story with a different target and a more complicated question. What if someone took money not simply from the wealthy, but from the drug dealers and criminal networks that profit from addiction—and redirected it toward treatment, shelter, and recovery for the people those networks leave behind?

At the center is Martin Reid, a decorated Army veteran and former homicide detective whose life has been shaped by service, loss, and the death of his daughter. Unable to accept the suffering he sees repeating across his city, Marty begins taking from those who exploit the vulnerable. He takes nothing for himself. He wants to give people a chance to reclaim their lives.

But a noble intention does not erase the law, and mercy can become dangerous when one person appoints himself judge of what justice should look like. As Marty’s actions grow bolder, public attention follows. So do the people who stand to lose—and the former colleague who knows him well enough to see both the good he hopes to do and the lines he is crossing.

The story is personal in its concern for families affected by addiction and the painful distance between loving someone and being able to save them. It is ultimately a story about grief, accountability, faith, redemption, and the difficult question of whether doing good can ever justify doing wrong.

The Mantle: A Debt of Mercy is planned as the first book in a larger series, allowing its characters and moral questions to unfold over time.

The Dragonfly Diaries: The Origins began with a dream—an image and idea that stayed with me long after I woke. It opened the door to a faith-centered fantasy world where mystery, adventure, and spiritual questions can live together.

At the heart of the series is the idea that some people are called toward a purpose they do not yet understand. The journey asks what it means to listen, to trust, to choose courage when the way ahead is uncertain, and to recognize that our lives may be connected in ways we cannot immediately see.

Fantasy gives us room to explore the great “what if” questions through unfamiliar worlds and extraordinary circumstances. But beneath the wonder are human questions: Who am I becoming? What do I owe the people beside me? Where does faith lead when certainty is hard to find? How do seemingly small choices become part of something larger?

The Origins is intended as the opening of a multi-book series. It is an opportunity to let imagination take flight while keeping faith, hope, friendship, and the search for purpose at its center.