Most of you know me for the historical work. This one’s off my usual map, so let me catch you up.

These past few months I’ve been writing a cozy fantasy series — Moon Over Marisol, a nine-hundred-year-old witch doing cosmic community service with a sarcastic cat. Eighteen books. Funny, warm, nothing like the historical novels, and I’ve loved every minute of it.

It’s been running on Kickstarter, and it’s down to the last two days — it closes Tuesday at midnight.

I won’t pretend you’ve been following along; a lot of you are hearing about this for the first time. So no hard sell. But if a funny, cozy fantasy sounds like your kind of thing — or somebody you know’s kind of thing — the next two days are the window.

There’s room at every price. The Eternal Registry is $25 and puts your name in Marisol’s world for good. The middle tiers come with the paperbacks. The deluxe collector’s set is there for the few who want the whole thing in hardcover.

After it closes you can still pledge through the late window — it just costs more. While the campaign’s live is the best price it’ll be.

The books are finished. Eighteen of them, ready to print. They ship this fall.

And if cozy fantasy isn’t your lane — no worries at all. The historical work is still coming. Thanks for being here either way.

— Dennis

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/moonovermarisol/moon-over-marisol-the-complete-18-book-deluxe-edition

The music changed and everyone felt it, that shift from background to foreground, from something you heard to something you felt in your chest, in your hips, in the parts of your body that remembered how to move before your brain got involved.

Will Harris hit the snare like he was waking something up, his eyes scanning the room even as his hands moved. Reading the crowd the way he’d learned to read terrain in the war, watching for signs of trouble, for energy shifts. It was an old habit, battlefield consciousness carried forward. But tonight felt good, tonight felt safe, so he drove the rhythm harder.

Georges answered with the trumpet, a run that climbed and climbed and then broke open at the top like sunrise, like laughter, like everything good that had ever happened distilled into sound.

“Darktown Strutters’ Ball.” The song filled the room, upbeat and familiar, the kind of music that made people want to move before their minds caught up with their bodies.

The dancers moved into the center of the room.

They drifted there in twos and threes, feeling the beat, letting it into their bodies, and you could see the transformation happen. You could see them shift from women working to women dancing, from bodies for hire to bodies for joy.

Simone led them like she always led them, moving into the space the crowd had cleared with people pushing back chairs, making room. She started slow, just swaying, just letting everyone see her. Her dress was red, dropped waist, the fabric cut to move with her hips, and it moved when she moved and when she stopped it kept moving for a second after, like it was reluctant to stop.

She raised her arms above her head and her whole body stretched long and the men in the room, most of them, nearly all of them, stopped whatever they were doing and watched. Because how could you not watch when something that beautiful was demanding your attention, demanding that you acknowledge that beauty existed, that grace existed, that there were still things in the world worth looking at.

The other dancers joined her and the formation shifted, became something more complex. Bodies weaving between bodies, arms extending and retracting, legs kicking high enough that you could see thighs, could see the muscles working underneath the stockings, always stockings, seams perfectly straight, could see garters when they kicked high enough. The human machinery of movement and strength that made this look easy when it absolutely wasn’t.

The music drove them faster. Charlie at the piano, his hands flying now, both hands despite the two fingers that didn’t quite work right, making the piano sound like it had more keys than it did. The bass was thunder underneath, steady and deep and relentless, the heartbeat of everything.

Maurice played and watched his son watching, and something opened in his chest that was both joy and pain, both gratitude and grief.

His son stood at the edge of the stage, eyes wide, holding his small trumpet forgotten at his side. Watching the dancers like he’d never seen anything so beautiful. His face was pure wonder, mouth slightly open, eyes tracking the movement, his whole small body leaning forward.

Maurice played harder and remembered.

In 1916 he’d been at a field hospital ten kilometers behind the lines near Verdun. Close enough to hear the guns. Close enough that the wounded arrived in waves, sometimes faster than the doctors could work, faster than the grave diggers could dig.

Maurice had been there three days. Playing. Standing in the corner of the tent with his trumpet while men screamed and men died and men begged for death because dying was better than the pain they were in.

A doctor had asked him to play. Major Beaufort, older man, steady hands that never stopped moving.

“Play something,” Beaufort had said without looking at Maurice, looking instead at a boy on the table whose leg was gone, just gone, nothing below the knee. “Play anything. Just make sound. They need to hear something besides screaming.”

So Maurice had played. Had stood there with his trumpet and played songs he’d played in cafés before the war, songs his father had taught him.

And men had died while he played. Had died screaming. Had died quietly. Had died begging. Had died cursing. Had died praying.

He’d played for six hours straight. Played until his lip split. Played until his arms ached. Played until the music stopped meaning anything except noise, except something to fill the air so the screaming wasn’t the only sound.

A boy who couldn’t have been more than eighteen had looked at Maurice while dying. Right at him. Made eye contact.

“That’s pretty,” the boy had said, his voice weak, blood everywhere. “That’s real pretty, friend.”

Then he’d closed his eyes and died and Maurice had kept playing because what else could he do, what else was there.

He played like that for three days, standing in that tent playing while the wounded poured in and the dead were carried out.

When his unit had moved on, Maurice had packed his trumpet and walked away and sworn he’d never play again. Because what was the point if it couldn’t stop anything, couldn’t save anyone.

But then he’d survived. Had come home. Had seen his son. And here’s what he’d learned: if he didn’t play, if he didn’t pass this down, if he didn’t show his son that making beauty was worth doing even when the world tried to convince you nothing was worth doing, then what was the point of surviving? The boy in the field hospital had said his music was pretty. Had smiled while dying. Had heard something besides screaming in his last moments. That mattered. That was enough. That was everything.

So Maurice played now, played for his son, played to teach him that beauty was worth bleeding for. Played a phrase he’d teach his son next week. Played it clean and clear. Played it for the future, for the proof that something survived.

One of the dancers, a blonde girl maybe twenty-five with a gap between her front teeth that made her smile look innocent, spun so fast her dress lifted and the men cheered and she laughed and spun faster, feeding off their energy, giving it back to them doubled.

The room was getting hot now. Bodies generated heat and there were a lot of bodies now, packed in close, watching and drinking and sweating and some of them starting to move too, starting to feel the beat in their own legs, their own hips, starting to realize they could dance too even if they couldn’t dance like that.

A couple got up from their table, the American woman and her husband, both drunk enough to be brave, not drunk enough to be sloppy. They found a spot near the edge of the dancing and started moving together, his hand on her waist, her hand on his shoulder. That loose foxtrot everyone did when the music got going, slow-slow-quick-quick more or less, not quite matching the rhythm perfectly but not quite fighting it either.

Others followed. The French students abandoned their table and their cheap wine, dancing like kids. An older couple moved with the ease of people who’d been dancing together for decades, whose bodies knew each other well enough that dancing was just another form of conversation.

Andreas watched Evelyn watching the dancers.

She hadn’t moved from her table. She sat there with her wine, her posture perfect, her attention completely captured by the movement. Something in her face suggested longing, maybe, or recognition. Some quality that said she wanted to be part of this but didn’t know how, didn’t trust herself to.

Her foot was tapping. She probably didn’t know she was doing it. Small movements under the table. Her body responding to the rhythm even while her mind held her in place.

She was beautiful even just sitting there, especially sitting there. The careful self-possession of someone who’d learned to be alone in crowds.

Andreas wanted to go to her. Wanted to ask her to dance. Wanted to cross that distance and say something, anything.

But he couldn’t. Because what would he say? What words existed that could bridge that gap? He was German. She was English. The war had been over for five years but not really, not in the ways that mattered.

So he stayed in his seat. Kept watching.

And she kept sitting at her table. Kept tapping her foot. Kept watching the dancers with that longing expression that broke his heart because he recognized it, carried it too.

The music built and the dancers spun and the moment stayed suspended between them, not connection, not yet, just awareness, just the possibility of something.

Simone spun close to the chess table and for half a second Dmitri looked up from the board, his concentration breaking, his eyes following her body as it moved past. Just half a second. Then back to the game. But Marko saw it, saw the distraction, smiled slightly. Recognition that even Russians were human.

Antonio Rossi at the bar was transfixed. He’d stopped drinking entirely, just watching, his eyes moving from dancer to dancer like he was trying to memorize them. His appetite wasn’t hidden now, wasn’t subtle, was just there on his face for anyone to see. Desire, appreciation, longing, the pure animal want of a man who remembered that bodies could create pleasure as easily as they created pain.

His whole body responded to the rhythm with feet tapping against the bar rail, fingers drumming on his wine glass, shoulders swaying.

Father Julien watched from his table with different eyes, not lust or hunger but just appreciation for the human body’s ability to move, to create beauty. He’d seen so many bodies that couldn’t move anymore, that were broken beyond repair. These bodies worked. These bodies danced. These bodies were alive and celebrating that aliveness.

And he raised his glass to them. To all of them.

The music built to something that felt like climax, Georges’s trumpet screaming now, not in pain but in joy, in the pure exhilaration of making sound that mattered. The dancers moved faster and the crowd cheered and someone threw money, coins that clattered on the floor, bills that floated down, and the dancers kept dancing because this was the moment, this was what it was all for.

Then someone stumbled, one of the Americans, the husband, too drunk after all, his feet tangling with each other and he went down. Not hard but awkward. His wife laughed and helped him up and everyone laughed with them, not cruel laughter but the laughter of recognition. Yes we’ve all been there, yes we’ve all been too drunk to dance properly.

The music kept going, the dancers kept dancing, the moment passed like moments always pass. People who’d been watching started dancing too and people who’d been dancing sat down to rest and order more drinks. The energy building and releasing and building again, the room breathing like a living thing.

In the corner the chess game continued. Dmitri moved a piece. Marko countered. Neither of them looked at the dancers. They had their own war to fight.

But the rest of the room danced.

Or watched.

The night was still young. Hours to go before dawn.

Anything could happen.

Everything would.

The chess table had been waiting in the corner all night. Old wood scarred with cigarette burns and wine stains and the carved initials of men who were probably dead now. The board was already set up because someone always set it up, some regular who understood the ritual of it. The pieces were mismatched, one side carved from dark wood showing age and wear, the other from bone that had yellowed over years, but they were all there, waiting.

The Russian sat down first.

Dmitri Volkov moved with deliberation, not slow but careful, like a man who’d learned that rushing got you killed. Maybe forty, maybe older, hard to tell with Russians. He was thin and sharp-featured, wearing a suit that had been expensive once, tailored in Moscow or St. Petersburg, in another country, in another life. The fabric showed wear at the cuffs now, small signs of exile. He adjusted the pieces with precise fingers, straightening a pawn, centering a rook. His hands were steady but his eyes were not. They moved constantly, watching the room, watching the door, watching everything the way soldiers watch things when they can’t afford to be surprised.

Someone at the bar noticed. Antonio Rossi. He nudged the man next to him and pointed with his chin toward the corner where the Russian sat arranging pieces.

“The Russian’s playing,” Antonio said.

“Who’s brave enough to sit across from him?”

They didn’t have to wait long.

Marko Petrović came through the crowd like he’d been summoned, like he’d heard his name called even though no one had said a word. Younger than the Russian, early thirties maybe, thick through the shoulders and wearing a worker’s jacket and boots that had seen mud and blood and everything else. His face was hard, all angles and sharp edges, pride like steel in the set of his jaw. He moved through the crowd like he owned space even when he owned nothing.

He saw Dmitri. Dmitri saw him. They looked at each other for three seconds. Some kind of recognition passing between them that had nothing to do with knowing each other personally and everything to do with knowing what the other represented.

This was their fourth Friday. Maybe their fifth. They’d been doing this for weeks now, same table, same time, same result. Neither had won yet. The game always ended with someone too drunk to continue or both of them staring at a stalemate they were too stubborn to call. But they kept coming back. Kept sitting across from each other. Kept fighting the same war over and over on this board because at least here it had rules, had boundaries, had some shape they could understand.

Marko sat down across from him.

They didn’t shake hands or greet each other, just exchanged a nod, cold and formal, the kind of acknowledgment you give to someone you’d kill if circumstances were different.

Dmitri gestured at the board. “Your move.”

His voice had an accent that cut like broken glass. A reminder of where he was from and what that meant.

Marko leaned forward and studied the board like it was a battlefield, like each piece represented something larger than itself. His hand hovered over a pawn, then moved to a knight instead. He picked it up, the piece looking small in his thick fingers, fingers that had dug trenches and handled rifles, and set it down with a quiet click that seemed louder than it should have been.

Dmitri smiled, though not with warmth, just recognition. He moved his own piece without hesitation, like he’d known what Marko would do, like he’d planned for it. Another click.

Someone brought them wine without asking. The server set the glasses down quietly, cheap red at three francs each, not wanting to disturb the concentration. Neither man acknowledged the gesture. They just kept their eyes on the board.

They played in silence and the room noise faded around them. The music became background, the conversations became static. Cigarette smoke drifted across the table, wreathed around them like fog. Just the board and two men who’d survived one war and were trying to fight another one that made sense, that had rules, that ended when someone won.

A crowd gathered, though not in an obvious way. Just people drifting closer the way people always drift toward violence even when it’s controlled. Jacques from his corner. Antonio from the bar. A couple of the French students who’d been arguing about Picasso five minutes ago. Even one of the dancers, taking a break between sets, her professional smile gone, her face serious.

They watched like people watching a duel, quietly and respectfully, understanding without being told that this was serious.

Dmitri took a pawn and for half a second, just a flash, the taking wasn’t a taking, it was a village burning, a checkpoint overrun, men who didn’t come back. Then it was just a pawn again, just a piece of yellowed bone in his hand. He set it aside carefully, looked at Marko, and said nothing.

Marko’s jaw tightened and he studied the board like it had personally offended him. His hand moved, took one of Dmitri’s pieces, set it down harder than necessary. The click was sharp, aggressive, a small violence that felt good even when it accomplished nothing.

Someone in the crowd muttered, “They’re going to kill each other.”

Someone else: “Better the board than the street.”

Father Julien watched from his table and sipped his wine and understood completely.

He’d seen this before. He had seen it a thousand times. Men turning everything into war because war was all they knew anymore, all they trusted, all they had left.

He took another sip of wine, his second glass already, or third, and felt the weight of five years settle on him. Five years of coming to this bar. Five years of watching men fight wars that had ended. Five years of blessing transactions and witnessing pain and offering silent companionship to people who needed someone to see them even if he couldn’t save them.

Five years of asking himself the same question: Does any of this matter?

The chess pieces clicked and Julien was suddenly somewhere else, no longer here, no longer now, but back there.

The boy’s name had been Étienne. Or maybe Antoine. Or maybe something else entirely. Julien couldn’t remember anymore, and that failure haunted him more than the death itself because if you couldn’t remember their names then what was the point of witnessing?

He might have been nineteen years old, maybe twenty. Hard to tell with the mud and blood.

It was 1917. July. Somewhere near Verdun. Julien had been a chaplain for two years by then, had seen more death than any person should see, had held more dying men than he could count.

The boy had been hit in the stomach.

Shrapnel.

The kind of wound that meant you died slow, meant you had time to think about dying, and with time to be afraid.

They’d brought him to the aid station, barely a station, just a tent and some tables and men working too fast because there were too many wounded and not enough time and never enough morphine. Julien had been sitting with another boy who’d just died when the doctor called him over.

“This one’s asking for a priest.”

The boy was on a table, conscious, terrified, his hands pressed against his stomach trying to hold himself together. His eyes when he saw Julien’s collar were full of hope, desperate hope, the kind that breaks your heart because you know you can’t deliver what they’re hoping for.

“Father,” the boy said, his voice shaking. “Father, am I going to die?”

And Julien should have said something comforting, something about God’s plan or mercy or heaven. The words that were supposed to make death easier and make fear smaller.

But he couldn’t. Because he’d said those words so many times and they’d stopped meaning anything. Had become sounds. Noise. Lies he told because lies were what he had.

So he just took the boy’s hand. Just held it. Just sat there next to him while the boy died, which took twenty minutes, which felt like hours.

The boy cried. Asked for his mother. Begged God to save him. Begged Julien to save him. Begged anyone who was listening to please, please make it stop.

And Julien had nothing to offer. He had no words, no prayers that felt real, just his hand holding the boy’s hand while the boy died terrified, died begging, died alone even though Julien was right there.

That was witnessing. That was all he could do. Just hold the boy’s hand and be there while everything fell apart.

And when the boy finally died, gasping, shaking, his eyes wide with fear right until the end, Julien had stood up and walked out of the tent and vomited in the mud and asked God what the point was, what the damn point of any of this was if all he could do was watch people suffer and die.

God hadn’t answered. Had been silent for three more years of watching boys die terrified while Julien held their hands and offered prayers that felt like nothing, meant nothing, changed nothing.

The war had ended. Julien had survived. Had come back to Paris and tried to figure out what a chaplain did when there was no war, when there were no dying boys, when the terror was quieter but still there.

So he’d started coming here. To this bar. Watching people who were trying to survive the aftermath. Trying to be present with them the way he’d been present with dying boys. Trying to believe that witnessing mattered, that just being here and seeing people was worth something even if it couldn’t save anyone, even if couldn’t change anything.

Does it? he thought, watching Dmitri and Marko hate each other across a chessboard. Does any of this matter? Am I helping anyone? Or am I just spectating?

He didn’t have an answer. And he wouldn’t have one tonight.

At the chess table Dmitri captured Marko’s queen.

Held it up between two fingers, examined it like it was beautiful, smiled that dark smile. “A great loss,” he said, his voice quiet, almost gentle. “My condolences.”

Marko said nothing. His face didn’t change, but his hand when he reached for his next piece was shaking, just slightly, just enough to see if you were looking.

And everyone was looking.

He moved his rook, aggressive and almost suicidal, exposing his king like he wanted it taken, like he was daring Dmitri to do it.

Dmitri studied the board and his smile faded because this wasn’t clever anymore, wasn’t strategy, wasn’t even chess. This was something else. This was a man who’d stopped caring whether he won or lost and just wanted to hurt something.

“You should resign,” Dmitri said quietly, his tone not mocking but almost kind.

“No.”

The word came out simple and final and absolute. Marko’s pride wouldn’t allow it. He’d lost the war but he wouldn’t lose the chess game. Or he’d lose the chess game but he’d lose it his way, fighting, refusing to surrender.

Dmitri sighed like this exhausted him, moved his piece, deliberate, and final. “Check.”

Marko moved his king, bought himself one more turn, maybe two. Delaying the inevitable the way you always delayed it when you had nothing left except the ability to refuse to quit.

The crowd watched in silence, understanding they were watching something larger than chess, something older, something that would keep happening in rooms like this for years, for decades, for as long as men carried grudges and borders meant something and pride mattered more than sense.

Julien raised his glass. To both of them. To all of them. To everyone in this room carrying something they couldn’t put down. And couldn’t fully bury.

A blessing or just a gesture. He wasn’t sure anymore which was which.

The chess game was better than fists. Fists were better than knives. Knives were better than guns. You took what you could get. You were grateful when men found ways to hate each other that didn’t involve bodies in the street.

This was civilized. This was progress. This was two men not killing each other and calling it peace.

Maybe that was enough. Maybe witnessing this, blessing this, being present for this, maybe that was the work.

Or maybe he was lying to himself. Making peace with cowardice by calling it ministry.

He didn’t know. And he certainly wouldn’t know tonight.

But Julian kept sitting here anyway. Keep watching. Keep blessing what he could bless.

It was all he had.

The music played on. The dancers danced. Money changed hands at the bar. Wine flowed. Life continued around them like water flowing around stones.

At the chess table two men fought a war that had ended five years ago and would never end, not really, not for them.

The pieces clicked again and again.

And the game went on.

They came in ones and twos at first, then small groups, then suddenly the bar was half-full and you couldn’t remember it being empty, couldn’t remember the quiet, couldn’t remember anything except bodies and voices and the smell of people who’d come here to forget they had problems or remember they were alive or both.

The regulars arrived first, knowing …

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The war had been over for five years and every day since had gotten a little more normal, a little more gay, a little more like Paris was supposed to be. The music got louder and the wine got cheaper and the dancing went later into the night. People laughed easier and smiled quicker and forgot faster and made love more freely and drank until they couldn…

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We Funded

Holy crap.

The Moon Over Marisol Kickstarter funded.

In about 30 hours.

I’m still trying to process that sentence.

This campaign launched early Tuesday morning, and by Wednesday morning, it had crossed its goal. As I’m writing this, it’s sitting at over $1,600 pledged, 9 backers, and 20 days still to go.

That might sound small in the grand machinery…

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The Moon Over Marisol Kickstarter went live this morning. Eighteen short cozy fantasy books, a 900-year-old witch, a sarcastic cat, and the deluxe hardcover trilogy I’ve been building toward for a year.

Here it is:

Three easy doorways:

$10 — the first three ebooks. A ghost town, a broken bridge, and an egg roll situation that gets wi…

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Hope your weekend is a great one.

—Dennis

Sweet Williams

Hydrangeas

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Dennis: Well, I spent 4 hours making a cute cat calendar.

And yes, this is now where my life has taken me.

But the long and short of it is that Tibby is getting a calendar! A real one.

It will be a glossy 2027 wall calendar filled with twelve cozy, moonlit Tibby images. One for every month. Snow Tibby. Beach Ti…

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One of the best things this year my readers responded to was the Moon Over Marisol Eternal Registry.

As, a reader it was a massive “what a deal!” experience. And as a writer, I love that. Plus the people who signed on have actually gotten their cho…

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CHECK OUT THESE GREAT BOOKS ON BOOKFUNNEL:

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https://books.bookfunnel.com/clean-dystopian-scifi-fantasy-giveaway/7j3k51kfw2

https://books.bookfunnel.com/clean-comedy-fiction-giveaway/7t18sq9n0k

https://books.bookfunnel.com/feel-good-may/y7ogn17z80

ALSO IF YOU’RE…

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These are my mother’s eggrolls. Photographed five minutes after they came out of the pan, which is the only honest way to photograph an eggroll, because an eggroll that has been sitting around getting its picture taken is not the same eggroll. The wrapper goes soft. The corners stop being sharp. You lose t…

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This July I’m launching the biggest Kickstarter of my career — a deluxe collector’s edition of Moon Over Marisol, an eighteen-book cozy fantasy series I wrote between January and April of this year. Three foil-stamped hardcover volumes, sprayed edges, silk ribbons, the works. Made by Bookvault in the UK. Only 75 deluxe sets will exist.

I know — fantasy i…

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Every spring I take a ton of pictures of pretty flowers and trees. Here’s a picture of my grandmother’s lilacs.

Warm thoughts are sometimes all you need.❤️

Happy Spring!

-Dennis

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I still remember the dread of them.

That tight feeling in the stomach. That low hum of agita sitting under everything. The sense that a date was coming whether I felt ready or not. Even decades later, that kind of pressure still has a way of living in the b…

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It’s Dennis.

Back during the Eternal Registry push, some of you from this list showed up and bought in. I want to say thank you for that. I wasn’t expecting it and it meant a lot.

I know this list came together around the historical work, the nonfiction, the historhy of fruit stuff, the movie essays — not the fantasy stuff. So I try to be respectful …

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I’ve probably seen this little cartoon a hundred times in my life. First when I was six. I’m thirty-eight now and it still hasn’t left my psyche. 😆

The plot in a sentence: a reformed Wolf who joined Riding Hoods Anonymous tries to tell Little Red Riding Hood about his new way of living.

Little Red and Grandma give him a constant “Fat chance, buddy” and h…

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Hi everyone,

A quick note from the world of Moon Over Marisol.

For the past few months, I’ve been building something I’m genuinely proud of: an 18-book fantasy series called Moon Over Marisol. It’s funny, weird, warm, magical, and full of the kind of heart I always hope to put on the page.

This audience may know me from a lot of different corners of my wri…

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