Michael Ripplinger's Blog

I am very pleased to announce that Today’s Saints, the concluding chapter of my Verdant Revival trilogy of fantasy/science fiction novels, is now on sale. You can download the ebook immediately from Amazon, either as a direct purchase or as part of your Kindle Unlimited subscription. The paperback is available from either Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

The Verdant Revival is my Weird West love letter to JRPGs and their memorable characters and epic stories. If you haven’t read the previous t...

I’m pleased to announce that Yesterday’s Demons is now available in audiobook format. The audiobook is unabridged (ten hours long) and is a dramatic reading with sound effects and music.

The best part of working on this audiobook has been working with the narrator, my best friend Zack Percell. He did a phenomenal job, and I can’t wait for you to hear Siv, Cassie, and Fritz for the first time. If you like his work, he offers a full array of voiceover services. Please consider him for your ...

It’s time for my annual Henry Bemis article — my annual reflection on my reading from the past year. I read 19 books in 2020, down from 28 the year before.

The icon indicates a book I read because one of my children read it for a school book report, and since I’m their homeschool reading teacher, I had to read it, too. All books on the list are fiction unless they bear the non-fiction icon.

Onto the list:

I’m a devout Catholic, deeply in love with my faith and my church. From that perspective, I was elated to witness the inauguration of only the second Catholic President in the history of the United States, Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

It might surprise you to learn that, to many Catholics, I just made a very controversial statement. On Inauguration Day, Catholic Guy Lin...

My brother Todd was a stage magician. He and our best friend Zack Percell were putting on magic shows throughout the Midwest even while they were still in middle school, high school, and college. Like many magicians, when they put on shows, they were well-dressed. In their younger, mid-90s high school days, they had matching purple sports jackets and crazy ties. They looked great, in a sort of Spencer’s Gifts meets GQ magazine kind of way.

As they got older, their magic shows had to be squeez...

A couple of months ago, my wife and I got rid of our family’s satellite dish. I hesitate to call this “cord-cutting” because our entire family entertainment system still depends on a rather significant cord — the one that feeds data into and out of our high-speed cable modem-based Internet connection. Nevertheless, like other cord-cutters, our desire was cost savings. We knew there was a vast discrepancy between how much we were using our Dish Network subscription versus how much we were paying ...

Well, 2019 happened, but you wouldn’t know it from reading my articles on this blog because there weren’t any. I’ll get to why that was in a future article, but for now, it’s time for my annual Henry Bemis article. Here are my reflections on the books I read in 2019.

The icon indicates a book I read because one of my children read it for a school book report, and since I’m their homeschool reading teacher, I had to read it, too. All books on the list are fiction unless they bear the non-fictio...

Most people write their “Year in Review” stories in December, but I’m not most people. I always wait to write mine until the new year has officially begun, especially my look back at the books I read in the past year. Because what if I finish a book on December 31? That book needs to be cataloged in the correct year! And guess what? This year, that policy paid off.

Welcome to the 2018 edition of my annual Henry Bemis article, named after the main character of The Twilight Zone episode “Time Enou...

Today’s the day! My new novel, Tomorrow’s Shepherd, is on sale now. You can download the ebook immediately from your favorite retailer, or you can order a print copy. You can read a sample chapter before you buy.

Tomorrow’s Shepherd is Book 2 of my fantasy trilogy, The Verdant Revival — my Weird West love letter to JRPGs and their memorable characters and epic stories — but you shouldn’t be too lost if you want to start with this one.

If Tomorrow’s Shepherd were a film, I’d cast Grant Gustin as ...

Tomorrow’s Shepherd

One of my writing quirks is that I put together a soundtrack for pretty much every story I write, be it short or novel-length. A short story might have a single song, but for my novels, I eventually put together a full-length playlist. Music helps me visualize my characters and coalesce the story’s scenes into a resonant whole. It has long been my most generous muse.

Here is the list of songs I put together for my latest novel, Tomorrow’s Shepherd, Book 2 of The Verdant Reviv...