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The Iron Circus

“Odd and unexpected, in a Ghibli kind of way.”

— One of my friends that I let read it

“An addictively odd middle-grade novel set in a stylized world of circus folk.” — Kirkus Reviews

Available (by request) at your local independent bookstore right now!

Lewis Bokurtz is not saving the world. This isn’t that kind of story.

His parents don’t keep him in a cupboard under the stairs. His teacher doesn’t lock him in a closet filled with broken glass. His friends have never treated him with disdain due to his expression of any unique supernatural powers.

He desperately wishes they would.

A thoughtful young boy yearns for adventure, like so many he has lived between the covers of his favorite books. When the discovery of a rusted iron coin hidden in the depths of a pond leads him to the towering black gates of the Iron Circus, he finds everything he ever wanted waiting just for him beneath the monolithic reaches of its imposing iron Big Top. 

But everything at the Iron Circus is not as it seems: the performers are all busy preparing for their spectacular upcoming show, almost too keen for Lewis’s help. Meanwhile, the sinister Ringmaster lurks in the shadows, his hollow smile a mask for sabotage and subterfuge.

Can Lewis triumph over every challenge, ensure the show goes on, and live the adventure he’s always dreamed of?

Or is this just not that kind of story?

Writing:

Lefty-Ways to Ghastly Hollow

“This is going to be so sick if I don’t screw it up.”

— M. R. Howe

Rosie Flores has always unapologetically loved Halloween.

Her feelings about her brother Tito are significantly more nuanced.

Spirited away to the macabre town of Ghastly Hollow on Halloween night, Rosie and Tito must Trick or Treat for their immortal souls, a sick sort of theater considering they’re already dead.

In contention with the horrifying Figurants that call the Hollow home, our young heroes soon find their misadventure complicated by the appearance of a terrifying Revenant, a lost soul that feeds on lost souls.

They are being hunted.

While what is dead cannot die again, a lost soul in the Hollow might still find itself wary of what passes for murder: you will always come back, but at what cost?

With a little help from a possessed turnip Jack O’ Lantern (a heartless creature of the purest malice), Rosie and Tito strive to survive their never-ending nightmare with their souls intact.

Or they would, if they could just get along for five seconds.

Keep your shirt on alright? I’m workin’ on it.

This is Posey. She watches me write. Dresses a bit like a pirate king. She’s not helpful or anything.

Seriously, this is a real book.