I Dream of Castles

TLDR: This novel has been through a lot, and now it’s finally here.

Today is the day! Vanishing Castles has been in the works for what seems like forever, but in actuality it has been four years. I started the novel back in 2022, wanting to do something different but still sticking to the things I love writing about—people and their messy relationships, cosmic horror, monsters, ghosts, all the things that give me goosebumps. That’s the tricky thing about being a novelist sometimes—you have to avoid repeating yourself while also wanting to write about the things you enjoy and are confident in writing about. So, the idea for Vanishing Castles came to me, a mixture between a dream I had (a castle in the woods, just standing there, like a guardian) and my fandom for internet-born urban legends. I decided to frame the novel around a true-crime podcaster, Bree Kinney, who occasionally ventures out from behind the microphone to investigate missing persons cold cases. She and her partner, Jamal, choose a case about a boy who went missing after spotting the castle in the woods, or so claims another boy who was with him at the time. People in the area are starting to see the castle again, bringing back old ghosts of that traumatic event. And bringing something else entirely otherworldly.

I had a ton of fun writing Vanishing Castles. It’s one of my favorite things I’ve written so far. The publishing road from writing that first draft in ‘22 up until now has been a little bumpy, and we almost didn’t make the trip. It was originally set to publish back in 2024 through a press that began to have issues just months before the book was set to release. Ultimately the press collapsed, leaving Vanishing Castles (and its standalone sequel, which had been written) orphaned.

If you’ve been following my writing career for a long time, you probably know I’ve seen my fair share of small presses take the almighty dive into publisher hell. I’d really have to think about it to get you an exact number of times I’ve had this happen to me—my gut says 4, but it’s probably more like 5 or 6. In any case, this one hit pretty hard and I didn’t really know what to do. I really wanted the book to find a home with a reputable publisher because I felt like it deserved it. Most of the publishers I felt comfortable working with were either booked out years in advance or simply weren’t accepting submissions at that time. So, I sat on it. For a long time. A year, maybe more? The whole experience with that last publisher broke me a little, and I didn’t feel the desire I normally had to sit down and write every day. Or at all. I think I went months without writing a single word. I shifted my focus to other creative endeavors and hobbies. At one point I decided I just wasn’t going to publish it, that Vanishing Castles and its standalone sequel would just be distant memories, novels I wrote for me and no one else.

But, like the curious structure in the novel, that feeling came and went, came and went. Ultimately, I loved the story and characters too much to let it go, allow it to remain a file in my documents, collecting digital dust for all eternity. So, I decided to bet on myself and self-publish the book. And after four years of wondering if Vanishing Castleswould ever see the light of day, well, we have to wonder no more. It’s here.

Huge thanks to Kenneth Cain for his sharp editor’s eye and Don Noble for the banger of a cover. Also, super huge shoutout to Tantor for producing the audiobook, and Bianca Bryan for giving Bree a voice, absolutely nailing the narration!

If you’re still reading this (and thank you!), you now know how much this book means to me and how important this day is. If you do purchase the book from your retailer of choice (and if you do, thank you!), please consider dropping an honest review in all the usual spaces—it helps sooooo much.

Thanks for taking this trip down memory lane with me. I’ll see you inside the Castle.

-TM 11/3/26