For those of you who have walked the fantastical, sprawling streets of the Ponopolis series with me, it is time to pack your bags for a very different kind of journey. I am incredibly proud to announce the upcoming release of my next book—a standalone project that has been living in the quiet, dark corners of my mind for years. This is a sharp left turn away from my usual worlds and into the jagged, unforgiving terrain of historical reality. It is a story stripped of speculative wonders, replaced instead with the raw, uncompromising grit of classic hardboiled noir.
We are traveling back to the winter of 1921, landing square in the heart of Minneapolis’s infamous Gateway District. Once the grand entrance to the city, by the twenties the Gateway had devolved into a dense, soot-choked wilderness of transient rail workers, crowded missions, and back-alley deals. This was an era defined by a new, dangerous social experiment: Prohibition. With the stroke of a pen, the city was made dry on paper, but beneath the surface, it became a pressure cooker of illegal stills, hidden speakeasies, and raw, untamed capitalism where the only law was survival.
I wanted to capture the heavy, industrial breath of the old flour mills, the frozen silence of the Mississippi flats, and the desperate, hustling rhythm of people who had nothing left to lose. This book is a labor of love, a deeply atmospheric plunge into a bygone era of beautiful, broken things. I cannot wait to share this dark slice of the Twin Cities with you. Stay tuned for cover reveals, release dates, and the first official look into the shadows of 1921.