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ANNOUNCING MY DEBUT NOVEL, THE TOWPATH  Welcome to the first entry in my blog, The Trailhead, which will take you deep into the legends, mysteries, characters, and settings of The Towpath, my debut novel. I will also share bonus materials, discuss the writing process, and delve into the mechanics of time travel—a topic on which there is sure fun to be had. I’m also pleased to announce that The Towpath will be published by Collective Ink in October of 2024, through their Roundfire imprint. Part of Collective Ink’s marketing strategy involves their authors writing their own press releases for their books, which they can then leverage as part of the overall marketing and publicity campaign. Some outlets, magazines, and radio programs prefer to hear directly from the authors themselves. Because of this, and the fact that this is my first blog entry, I figured I’d share my self-written press release, which is as follows: Travel Down THE TOWPATHBut beware, you might not end up where—or when—you expect. By Jonathan Walter Visitors to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park (CVNP) in Northeast Ohio might not realize that there’s more to the park than meets the eye—or any other sense for that matter. For just beneath their feet, deeper than the deepest of troughs of the mighty Cuyahoga River, and more implacable than the sheerest of cliff sides along the valley’s eastern rim, awaits a power that’s beyond all reckoning. We’re talking about the conditions for time travel here, and I’ve written a story that puts a new spin on a genre that’s captured the imaginations—and pens—of legendary authors like H.G. Wells (THE TIME MACHINE) and Stephen King (11/22/63). Note: that’s the last time you’ll ever see me reference myself in the same sentence as King or Wells! In my story, The Towpath, the more you meddle with your own history and lineage, the stiffer the objective and steeper the penalty, which only increases the further you stray from your native time and place and the longer you stay there. There are rules to time travel after all—and there are consequences. Some brazen souls may test those rules, often to their own lurid demise. But there is one person who’s managed to defy these rules and somehow stave off the grave consequences… for now. That person would be THE REDEEMER, who’s determined to prevent her teenaged daughter’s suicide in 2014. She’ll take whatever detour in time and place that’s necessary to achieve her goal, removing anyone who stands in her way. She’s become hardened, brutal, and impassive from these long and meandering journeys, increasing the damage and collateral she leaves in her wake. Consequences and the Butterfly Effect be damned. When she finally discovers that there’s an ancient medallion with powers that would allow her to time-travel freely and without penalty, she and her legion of Iroquois warriors embark on a bloody mission to recover it in the 1600’s. When that mission ultimately fails, she defeatedly returns to her native time in 2021. But she isn’t idle for long. Her mission is renewed when she learns that AARON PORTER, a shy fourteen-year-old with a garbage picking hobby, discovers it in Portage Falls, Ohio in June of 2021—which just so happens to be her native, present time. Now, hot on the trail of Aaron and his friends, The Redeemer won’t hesitate to remove them and claim what’s rightfully hers. My story will take you across hundreds of years, pulling you deep into the legends and lore that have been smoldering in and around the Cuyahoga Valley for centuries. You’ll go underground, including into the cavernous Salt Mines under Lake Erie, speed along the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail, get lost in a national forest, and find yourself in places and times you might not have ever expected. Oh, and along the way, you’ll be pursued by a brutal killer and her equally brutal warriors from the past. So, get ready and climb onto your bicycle along with Aaron and his friends, Libby, and Simon. Because in The Towpath, you’re not just in for the ride of your life. You’re in for the ride for your life. For more on The Towpath: NovelTime TravelAnnouncementThe TowpathSuspenseThrillerPress Release

THE LATEST  I’m happy to share that the paperback version of THE TOWPATH is available for pre-order now (ebook will be this Spring)! And while I’ve been waiting to share the cover design, the cat will be out of the bag anyway if you check it out on Amazon. The publishing world is still a mystery to me, and timing can be very difficult to understand as huge online marketplaces like Amazon and Barnes & Noble are governed by their own rules, processes, etc., and things drop without my knowledge unless I proactively go out and see what’s happening. COOL STUFF THAT MIGHT ONLY INTEREST ME  Let’s delve into time travel for a moment, shall we? In The Towpath, things only get worse for you the longer you stay, the further you go back, and the more you attempt to meddle with your own past. Not only do you become marked, even putting the Earth’s creatures on high alert (yep, they want no part of you), you will look different too—at least, temporarily. I won’t give away how time travel happens, but let’s just say the physical effects may remind you of the weird story of the Children of Woolpit. That is, if you’re familiar with it. If not, allow me to bend your ear for a moment. In this bizarre historical account that took place in Suffolk, England, in the 12th century, a group of villagers came across a young boy and girl whose skin had been tinted a sickly green and they were acting strangely, if not temperamental. The kids didn’t speak any language that was recognizable to the villagers and were taken in by a local man who tried to feed them, but they refused to eat. Over time, they acclimated: their skin turning to their natural color and eating what food was available to them. The boy died young, but the girl adjusted to her new life. When she was eventually fluent in English, she said that she and her brother came from the land of St. Martin, which was a place of perpetual twilight where the sun never shone, and she did not recall how they made travel from their homeland to Suffolk. I also find it interesting, at least according to this Wikipedia entry, how the sister was described as being “very wanton and impudent.” There have been many attempts to theorize where the children came from, and some people have asserted that they came from underground and could even have had extraterrestrial origins. Other theories simply assert that the kids were malnourished, lost, and spoke an unfamiliar dialect or language. I won’t describe just how much this bizarre story has influenced the mechanics and consequences of time travel in The Towpath, but you’ll likely make some connections after having read the book, including how characters behave based upon their length of stay and what they do during those visits. WHAT’S UP NEXT I’ll admit that self-promotion is not a natural inclination for me. But I also get that it’s a necessary evil, even if my novel is going to be traditionally published by Collective Ink. From what I’m learning through my crash course on the world of fiction publishing, even authors published by the “Big Five” (Macmillian, Penguine Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster) still need to hit the proverbial streets, grow a following, and drum up interest. It’s also overwhelming just how many options authors need to consider for promotion and how they should strategize building interest for a book that could take several months to finally release. But I’m starting to get a handle on this and have made a deliberate decision to grow my audience through the following channels: Well, that’s all for this post. Until next time! Sapere Verdere. For more on The Towpath: NovelTime TravelThe TowpathSuspenseThrillerHistorylegendsAmazonBarnes & Noblesocial media

THE LATEST  I’ve been dusting off my Photoshop skills over the past several months, creating original conceptual imagery that ties in with the story of THE TOWPATH. Check out THE TOWPATH Image Gallery page, or follow The Towpath Novel Facebook group (I’d love to have your follow) to view it there. So, how am I doing with the visuals? Am I putting my Visual Communication Design degree to good use, or should I just stick with writing? WAIT… DO YOU GET THE FEELING YOU’VE READ THIS BEFORE?  Have you ever experienced déjà vu, or sensed something is about to happen, and then it actually does? Maybe a song just randomly popped into your head, and later, you hear it on your music app or the radio. I’ve often had this happen, even if subtly, and my wife Becky thinks I have some bizarre connection with the Akashic Records or some astral plane of existence, and then jokes about how useless this “ability” is. Great Jon, the song, “White Wedding,” by Billy Idol pops into your head and then you later hear it that same day—very useful, well done. Now, get back to your day job. Oh, and the trash needs to be taken out. Let me know when you can prevent a crime or someone’s death… you know, something useful. But what if there was more to it and we’re simply not as tapped into it as we could be—or perhaps not quite yet? Does time operate linearly, even though we perceive it to? I believe it does NOT, and we are only scratching the surface of how time works. Stick with me for just a moment… HIGHWAYS AND BUMPER CARS If I were to somehow overlay a physical construct for how events happen in our lives, I don’t believe it would look how many of us imagine it would. We’ve been conditioned to perceive time and our movement through it as we might perceive moving along a highway. We travel in one direction, with our past diminishing in our rearview mirror and our future stretching before us, even if the way ahead is densely fogged, with our life events scrolling past like sequential mile markers; our present is the one we just so happen to be at in the moment. But in reality, I believe we’re all in a big bumper-car rink, like the kind you went to as a kid, randomly and jerkily colliding into other bumper cars (aka, “Dodgems”)—which are our life events. However, as with the events in our lives, each of these bumper cars might exert its own gravitational pull. As you approach another bumper car, aka event, you might sense that gentle tug. You feel an impact is about to happen, but maybe you don’t know when, or how forceful, that impact may be. Or, as that car (event) draws near, you sense you’ve encountered it before. If time were just some obstinate, linear path on which you could only move in one direction, I doubt that many of us would share this intuition that seems to lurk beneath the surface of the world we live in—assuming we’re attuned to it, which is increasingly difficult in our noisy, hyper-media-connected world. In short, déjà vu and precognition—even if very subtle—are present because our relationship with time (in its truest, primal form) has made them so. Furthermore, gravity is an oft-forgotten factor that influences space and time, which I believe aids that feeling that something is about to happen, or has happened before. Just watch Interstellar for some indelible reminders of gravity’s influence on space and time. Getting back to THE TOWPATH, I think you’ll find that this very question is nethermost to the intuition some of the characters experience. It also informs the force that powers the bumper cars. In a bumper car rink, that energy is channeled from the floor or ceiling—someplace else, that’s remotely connected to the cars. The energy that we might feel but do not see as it pertains to time has to come from somewhere right? But who makes it and how? God? Or someone, something else? Hmmm… SOME MUST-READS ON TIME TRAVEL When setting out to take on the dicey topic of time travel—which I know, is a bit nutso for a debut novelist—I devoured all I could on the topic. Here are a couple of inspirations in case you feel like chasing the rabbit down the hole with me: TIME TRAVEL: A HISTORY, by James Gleick I referred to Gleick’s informative book multiple times as I considered my own fresh takes on time travel and the mechanics that would govern it. In TIME TRAVEL: A HISTORY, Gleick breaks down the history of time travel in literature and its evolution throughout popular culture. He also covers dicey subjects such as the paradoxes of time travel (if you go back in time and kill your grandfather, would you die too?). Needless to say, if you’re interested in this topic and looking to see what’s been done and perhaps get ideas on what hasn’t, I highly recommend Gleick’s book. THE ORDER OF TIME, by CARLO ROVELLI If you’re ready for something really heady, I invite you to check out THE ORDER OF TIME, by Carlo Rovelli. And when I say heady, I mean it—you’ve been warned. In this tight, densely filled book, Rovelli will have you join him in answering questions such as, “What happens when nothing happens?,” and, my favorite, “Where does the eternal current come from?” You’ll go down that rabbit hole my friend, pondering singularity, quantum superpositions, and spin networks. These topics also made me think about bumper cars instead of highways. But, we’re all different, and no two people have the same takeaway even if they read the same book. WHAT’S UP NEXT While you can go to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the Collective Ink website and view or pre-order THE TOWPATH now, thus seeing the cover anyway, I plan to at least indulge some pomp

THE LATEST  In this issue, I discuss the cover and design of THE TOWPATH, as well as some inspirations behind it. THE COVER REVEALED This blog template doesn’t support inline images (at least not that I’m aware of), so I can’t post the cover here. However, you can easily see it on The Towpath Overview page or within the Image Gallery, via my concept imagery. I didn’t want to just take some bland photo of it lying on my desk—anyone can do that. Besides, what fun would that be? In a future post, I’ll take you behind those concepts and composite images, as well as some of the others I’ve done using good ol’ Photoshop… with a tiny smidge of AI tech. Moreover, I’ve also routinely posted imagery to The Towpath Novel Facebook Group and on my Twitter(X) account—so, some other places to engage. BEHIND THE DESIGN In the world of literature, I’ve always heard that an author’s expected response to their completed cover design must range from, “It’s amazing!”, to “It’s astonishing!”, and every gush-filled adjective in between. As you can guess (and as I’m finding out), authors don’t have a lot of say on their final cover design. This is why I was pleasantly surprised that my input was actually factored in, perhaps way more than I was expecting. When the creative process was about to kick off, Collective Ink (the publisher), provided a form to capture any ideas an author has for their cover design, while fully caveating that the artist doesn’t have to use or consider any of it. I was also invited to upload any inspirational images or even sketches (which I did provide, but I need time to work up the courage to share that embarrassment with you).  Given I had a glimmer of an opportunity to influence the design, the Visual Designer/creative in me couldn’t resist. I combed through my own photography as well as hundreds of royalty-free images using the platforms specified by the publisher. Eventually, I found the image of The Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath trail that you see on the cover, which appeared set during the right time of year in which the story takes place—the June-July timeframe, when the forests of Northeast Ohio are at their lushest and greenest. For that image, my feedback to the artist, Nick Welch—who’s an award-winning graphic design specialist out of the UK with over 25 years of experience designing book covers—was as follows: “Here’s an actual photo of The Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, where much of the book is set, and the trail is central to more than one key scene in the book. I do like how there’s a bit of mystery for what’s around that last bend.” Additionally, while yes, the title of the book is The Towpath, and it would make sense to show, you know, the namesake trail within the Cuyahoga Valley National Park that inspired it, the cover also needed to communicate the central sub-genre, Time Travel, and also convey some danger too. After all, this isn’t exactly a kid’s book, even if teens are some of the main characters. As such, here’s some additional guidance I offered Nick without any expectations it would be used: Hence, perhaps you can begin to see how the swirling clock motif in the foreground evokes the spiral and the color purple serves as an accent in several areas, including the text on the upper left-hand side on the front cover, and the leading characters for each paragraph on the back cover’s description copy. Nick also darkened the hollow in the trees where The Towpath trail vanishes into that last bend, which I think serves very well and evokes the danger I was hoping for. I admit I had mixed feelings when I first saw the final design given this book has been my baby for over seven years. However, I’ve fully embraced it, even to the point of building all my other conceptual imagery around this central design, hoping to thematically foreshadow it so it would make perfect sense when I shared the final design (which is now) with my followers and subscribers. Well, there you have it. I’d love your feedback on the final design. My goal is to earn the right to publish more books, so even if your thoughts don’t benefit this one, there’s a chance you might help me in the future! WHAT’S UP NEXT I’m going to start looking into the publicity side of things, which I admit makes me squirm, as self-promotion doesn’t come naturally to me. That said, it’s a necessary evil, even for authors who are fortunate to publish with even the largest of publishers, such as Macmillan or Penguine Random House. More to come on that topic. In the mean time, let’s stay connected. Here’s where else to connect with THE TOWPATH and its author (yours truly): Well, that’s all for this post. Until next time! Sapere Verdere. For more on The Towpath:

THE LATEST It’s been a minute since I last posted (in February). In this issue, I’ll share some ruminating thoughts on the recent solar eclipse that many of us experienced in North America—and the incredible coincidences needed for it to happen—plus, some historical reactions to these kinds of events (which are a bit scary), and a look back on some prior works that got me to where I am with my debut novel. REFLECTIONS ON THE APRIL 8 SOLAR ECLIPSE Were you along the path of the solar eclipse that happened on April 8? I was, from my vantagepoint in Cleveland, OH USA, and I am still marveling at how extraordinary the path of totality was. It was simultaneously dusk and dawn at one point, the diffused light that fell upon our neighborhood as surreal as a Dali painting. Then, the darkness of totality happened, the light posts lining in our neighborhood’s front yards winking on one-by-one to the tune of barking dogs and gasping humans. And when I say it was extraordinary, there was something that felt “designed” about it. Is it just me, or did you feel that way too? If you’re wondering where I’m going with this, let me explain by posing a question: what are the odds? What are the odds that the sun is 400 times larger than the moon, yet is 400 times further from the Earth than the moon; hence, making the two heavenly bodies identical in size—at least, from our minute vantagepoint on this spinning blue marble? The math is near perfect. How did nature, God, or whichever higher power you believe in create this? If your brain works the same way as mine, something about seeing the black disc of the moon slide past the brilliant sun—almost like an eye occluder covering one eye for a vision exam—felt purposeful. Then, as it perfectly covered the sun save for the slender corona, it felt like a divine design that we (or some other creatures) are meant to see and experience. Or perhaps there’s some other purpose that defies our knowledge or ability to understand it. Maybe it’s meant to be an occasional reminder, communicating, “Remember, all this can go away at any time. That precious life-giving star is all you’ve got. Appreciate what’s been given to you—don’t F it up.” I know these thoughts sound like tin-hat ruminations, but I couldn’t help but wonder… what are the odds? And why? HISTORICAL FREAK-OUTS If you lived back in 1806, your thought process might’ve been very different. And by what’s been recounted by local Northeast Ohio historians, your pre-knowledge of this incredible event could’ve led to your death. Take what happened with the Wyandot tribe in what is now a Cleveland metropark (Hinckley Reservation) and not far from the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, where THE TOWPATH takes place. A Wyandot woman was able to predict a “great darkness” that would fall over the Earth. Her insistence of this freaked out the tribe and she became viewed as evil, or some kind of witch, and was later hanged over the nearby river for others to see: a warning. A couple of weeks later, when the eclipse DID happen, the tribe understandably got spooked and assumed it was the woman’s way of exacting posthumous vengeance. While this event of course ended tragically, it’s incredible that she was able to predict it—at all. She must have had uncanny knowledge of the movements and patterns of the Earth, moon, sun, other stars, and time itself. It makes my head spin to imagine just how she went about acquiring this knowledge and studying/understanding it to the degree that she could predict something of this nature. Then again, the ancient Mayans—who predated this North American Tribe by centuries—had remarkable knowledge of the stars, were exceptional mathematicians, and keen observers and recorders of time. So, there’s a part of me that also feels that we modern humans with all our glowing technology and conveniences have lost some important connections with our planet and no longer marvel at the heavenly events swirling around us—that is, if we’re even able to get away from our own light pollution. Hence, we tend to think it’s beyond comprehension that people of the past could understand and calculate these things because our own comfort and ignorance has gotten in the way, and this so happens to be a subtle theme in THE TOWPATH. In fact, because we can’t grasp it, we often assume it had to be aliens, divine intervention, or some force that gave our ancestors this special knowledge. Maybe that’s true… but maybe not? THE WRITING JOURNEY All this looking to the past has made me feel nostalgic, and I often overlook those past efforts that landed me where I am: which is on the cusp of releasing a debut novel. Had I not gotten my feet wet with some short stories, I doubt my writing and self-editing abilities would have landed me a traditional publishing contract. The following are a couple of works that I rarely, if ever, promote (they are FAR under the radar on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other distributor channels), but I’d like to share them with you nonetheless since they are part of me and my journey as a writer. And heck, maybe you’d like to check out these stories and their respective anthologies, which contain some great stories from some talented, unsung writers (wink wink, nudge nudge). My contributions: SHALLOWEEN  Featured in GHOSTLIGHT, THE MAGAZINE OF TERROR Sam Haines is a cantankerous senior whose affinity for Halloween goes to the extremes—much to the chagrin of his immediate neighbors. Despite warnings from his wife to keep a “low profile,” Haines conjures up an antagonistic game of judgment for trick-or-treating children and their helicoptering parents. But is Haines the only antagonist on this cold and dark Hallows Eve night?  Purchase the anthology on Amazon. REIGN, REIGN Featured in THE DEVIL’S DOORBELL: AN ANTHOLOGY OF DARK ROMANCE Recovering drug