Brandon L Roberts's Blog

Hello again! Author Brandon L Roberts here.

From June 2024-May 2025, I released three novels in The Grief Trilogy, and while I hold a space in my heart for all three stories, I was ready to say GOODBYE to grief and HELLO to something new.

What might that NEW thing be, you ask? Why, killing Ebenezer Scrooge, of course!

Dating back to 2020, I've been dabbling in a series of short stories that I never brought to fruition until now. And since I've spent a few years trying to be serious, the 2025 holiday season felt like the best time to let the absurdity flow.

Scrooge is Dead explores a universe in which Scrooge does not survive his redemption arc. A panicked ghost must do everything he can to ensure the news of Scrooge's death does not impede his efforts to bring good fortune to the townspeople (particularly the Cratchit family).

Synopsis below. You can preorder the e-book now & order paperbacks on November 24!

The unhinged holiday collection you didn't know you needed.

Benny Scrooge set out for a life of wealth and intended to make everyone miserable in the process. Past, a well-meaning ghost, intends to change the narrative in a single night. But when fate has other plans for Scrooge, Past must seek alternative & joyfully deranged methods to spread his wealth to those who need it most.

"Scrooge is Dead" is one of EIGHT holiday stories that explore the absurd alternatives to a merry and bright holiday season.

This healthy disrespect to holiday tradition reimagines A Christmas Carol, letters to Santa, holiday recipes fueled by financial fraud, the breakdown of a gumdrop marriage, Jolly Ol' St. Nick's foray into the world of LinkedIn influencers, and so much more.

It's not for kids. It's barely for adults. But if you've ever wondered what would've happened if Scrooge met an untimely demise before his classic redemption arc, you're right where you belong.

*an excerpt from my upcoming collection of holiday stories, "Scrooge is Dead," coming November 2025*

St. Nicky Claus, MBA

December 26, 8:55AM

I ALMOST didn’t deliver presents this year.

The elves didn’t reach their quotas.

The reindeer unionized.

And the cookies?

Terrible. Absolutely terrible.

The wife has fallen so far behind.

We started this together, in a garage in the North Pole.

We scaled a legacy North Pole manufacturing plant into a fully optimized, end-to-end dream enablement platform.

A platform to sustainably support the emotional thoughtput and expectation bandwidth of a multi-billion user demographic.

Lately, she has lost sight of the vision.

The vision?

To execute a globally synchronized, high-volume sentimental delivery initiative that leverages legacy sleigh-based technologies via logistics measures that vertically integrate elf manufacturing to maximize childhood delight across global markets.

And to do so within a single, frictionless operational cycle.

One night needs MONTHS of planning.

And my team didn’t meet the mark.

So what did I do?

I ditched the wife.

I downsized.

I bunkered down.

Everything—my blood, my sweat, my milk and cookies—went into the vision.

I stepped into the workshop for the first time in years.

I didn’t think I had to. Things ran so smoothly until now.

What a mistake!

I couldn’t believe what I saw!

Elves were working and near-breakneck speed.

We agreed on breakneck speed, not near-breakneck.

My fellow saints, THAT is why we have contracts.

I let them all go.

And as they left, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.

There were no elves.

No Mrs. Claus.

Just one man… one list… and a mission.

I became the entire supply chain.

C-suite and assembly line.

Chief Joy Officer and frontline fulfillment.

With one eye, I audited real-time requests.

With the other, I verified against the Naughty/Nice ledger.

And with optimal efficiency, I even had the time to check it twice.

Then, I deployed high-impact deliverables into the sleigh.

No shortcuts.

No dependencies.

Just scalable magic.

I didn’t delegate Christmas.

I embodied it.

We didn’t reach an agreement with the reindeer.

I didn’t panic.

Their demands were clear:

Better weather gear.

Hazard pay for undesirable rooftops.

Coverage for nasal-affirming surgery.

Instead of viewing it as a conflict, I saw it as an opportunity.

An opportunity to let everyone go.

You read that right: a 100% reduction in reindeer staff.

The solution was so clear:

Transition from organic propulsion systems to an AI-enhanced autonomous aerial logistics network to sunset our reliance on cervine-powered mobility.

Through machine learning, predictive route optimization, and real-time global demand mapping, I found an opportunity to reduce delivery latency by 69% (lol) while increasing scalability across all timezones.

The result?

A fully-automated, cloud synchronized gift distribution pipeline with zero hoofprint.

No elves. No wife. No reindeer.

True magic.

But it wasn’t enough.

I needed to scale more.

I needed to address the issue of gift disparity.

My good friend Elfa O’Reilly brings this up quite a bit.

He spoke of it again the night before Christmas.

Here’s a direct quote from his show, Claus & Order:

“Folks, let’s get one thing straight: Christmas is NOT socialism.

I’m hearing a lot of noise from the left wing saying this like “It’s not fair that rich kids get more than poor kids.”

Well, boo-hoo. Cry me a box of peppermint fudge.

That’s not inequality. That’s performance-based gifting.”

Wow.

I mean, wow.

Performance-based gifting.

The key to ultimate gift-distribution efficiency.

Recent fluctuations in my workforce and family have made me a one-man show.

I no longer have the time or the desire to comb through every socioeconomic sob story.

Sure, I checked my lists, but I checked them differently.

Allow me to explain.

There’s naughty and there’s nice, but there’s also zip codes and income brackets.

There’s also societal expectations and influence.

Imagine a rich kid in the Palasades getting a wooden train for Christmas.

Maybe they’re a dick to their Mom—but so is their Dad.

These kids live in big houses.

They leave out gourmet cookies.

They submit detailed wishlists, and they do it on time.

They even have security systems linked to the NORAD tracker.

Compare that to the less fortunate.

No security system, just a dad with a beer and a baseball bat.

No snacks, just the worst picture of a chocolate chip cookie that you’ve ever seen.

Logistically, it doesn’t make sense to leave a PS5 at those homes.

But a wooden train? I’m all about it.

Some of you may judge me for that.

“But Santa… where’s your Christmas spirit?”

I’ll tell you where it is:

It’s in the REAL WORLD, where REAL problems exist.

I can’t solve the housing crisis.

I can’t bring healthcare to the masses.

And for the last time, I can’t bring your Mom back from the dead.

I mean, I have the power to, but she’d come back in her CURRENT state. Yuck.

My goal is clearer than ever.

At present, I operate within a model that is structurally aligned with economic stratification.

The framework is intentional and I intend to operate within the expectations of international government regulation.

We have no roadmap for systemic reform, nor do we intend to explore it, for it is not conducive to our new AI-forward strategy.

Our focus remains on income-index gifting, wherein deliverables are scaled proportionately to household net worth and generational holiday contribution.

Maybe some of the parents were born with silver spoons in their mouths.

NOT their fault. They didn’t ask to be born (and they certainly didn’t ask to be born rich).

They perform every day. They get their payments. It makes NO sense for their kids to be shortchanged just because Todd and Sally wished hard enough for a Tickle Me Elmo.

Lower-income demographics will continue to receive appropriately tiered symbolic offerings, and that’s okay.

By and large, these demographics will NOT know what they are missing. That’s what the data says.

This year, we’ve delivered holiday satisfaction at-scale without compromising value.

Through AI optimization, we’re even exploring opportunities into Q3 activations, expanding “Christmas in July” from a gimmicky broadcasting effort to a true global rollout.

These efforts are made possible, in part, by my good friend Bezo the Greedy Elf.

Make no mistake: that is a family name.

Bezo the Greedy Elf is, in fact, the smartest man in logistics.

He’s a job creator. There’s NO SUCH THING as a greedy job creator. They’re the least selfish people out there.

Through Bezo’s North Pole Prime, we will be able to 2X the Christmas spirit by next year.

So, what can you learn from this?

Christmas was never about fairness. Christmas is about forecasted delight margins and maintaining our pole position in the seasonal sentiment economy.

Your family is holding you back. Do not let ANYONE doubt your holiday spirit.

And ownership isn’t a title, it’s a mindset.

Now, like all tech billionaires, it’s time for me to take a well-earned, 340-day break.

Jealous?

Then it’s time to pivot.

DM me “Ho Ho Ho” for a FREE 5-minute introductory video on how I built an autonomous, AI-powered holiday delivery network in a single night.

My course will teach you how to lead with data, delegate to machines, and drive joy at enterprise speed.

It’s time to “sleigh” the future.

Welp, we made it.

On June 10, 2024, I released my first story: Flower.

One year in, and my thematic trilogy is complete. I followed it with I'm Talking to a Dead Man in November 2024, and finished it with A Bear Named Barnaby in June 2025.

It has been a long, interesting year. For starters, with all my experience in film, I've never been too comfortable in front of a camera. That's made it a little tricky to stick to the one-a-day TikTok posts that everyone swears by... but I am getting better.

I've also had the chance to revisit the first two works after the release of Barnaby. After finding some of the errors I found, I almost wish I hadn't. But that's life, isn't it? I don't imagine anyone out there was sitting on this information and waiting to see me so they could point, laugh, and scream, "THAT'S THE GUY WHO FORGOT TO PUT A PERIOD AT THE END OF A SENTENCE!"

Unless you are that type, to which I say... don't find me.

The biggest lesson I've learned is that the journey doesn't end after publication. I am self-published, which comes with a bit of freedom, but there needs to be a regimented schedule to keep things normal and maintain output. I do hope to be traditionally published one day, but that's not my journey just yet. As I've learned with the post-release edits I've made, it's also never too late to make a change. When someone points out an error, I'm more inclined than ever to just say "thank you." People provide feedback because they care, and I appreciate it.

After the release of Barnaby, I find myself wanting to talk about my books more. I was really worried about coming off as pretentious, but there's a difference. If someone asks me about my book, I'll talk about it. I'm not going to relate someone's personal problems back to a scene in my book.

I need to get out there and talk about it more. Going to collaborative meetings, joining book clubs, and reaching out to influencers are all on my radar. I'm excited about each of my books. Barnaby, to me, is the most special, and I'm very proud of it. It's given me more confidence to be more forthcoming about the work I've written and the stories I intend to write.

I have three more in the timeline. The grief is over; it's time to be happy.

The Grief Trilogy is Now Available on Amazon

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

When she created Barnaby’s Playhouse, Elana didn’t expect to have one of the largest children’s shows of all time. She had a family- her loving husband, Aaron, and daughter Laurie. And then there was Barnaby, the sweet, sensitive son who inspired the TV show that inspired millions of viewers to embrace creativity and learn along the way.

After fourteen seasons, Barnaby’s Playhouse airs its final episode... and everything falls apart.
Two years after Barnaby’s Playhouse ends, the family loses Aaron in a collision. The accident estranges Elana from her daughter and leads a regressed and grieving Barnaby to hide in the costume of her show’s titular polar bear.
Between managing her grief and working to piece her family back together, Elana returns to her work for comfort, finding a new opportunity with a very unexpected writing partner: the boy from Aaron’s fatal accident.

“A Bear Named Barnaby” concludes The Grief Trilogy by Brandon L Roberts with a harrowing and often funny tale of family dysfunction, second chances, and humanity’s growing reliance on nostalgia for comfort.

Orders are available at https://a.co/d/eXOyH5P

Following a long writing process, I am excited to announce that the second book in The Grief Trilogy, "I'm Talking to a Dead Man," will be released on Tuesday, November 19!

The second of my anthological series on grief will focus on Gavin Hastings and the effect of anger in tumultuous times.

Read more below, I hope you have a chance to pre-order!

How heavy is the burden of a bad memory?
For years, Gavin Hastings has wrestled with his mother’s death and a childhood overshadowed by his father, restauranteur Jack Hastings.

A tragic accident unexpectedly bestows a fortune upon Gavin and his siblings. But wealth can’t erase resentment, and Gavin’s anger toward his father remains as sharp as ever. Soon, he’ll discover that such a powerful grudge can call back the dead. Jack’s ghost resurfaces with a fierce determination to reclaim his fortune. Now, Gavin is forced into a battle of wits and will with the one person he can never forgive.

It’s son vs. father in a face-off that will challenge Gavin’s understanding of love, forgiveness, and the cost of holding on.

In the year and a half that I've actually explored being an author, I think I've been pitched 10-20 different writing workshops, apps, or workbooks to be the best writer. The second I publicly announced my intentions to self-publish and made my author's email public, I started getting these pitches.

I find these products unnecessary. I typed in "How to Format a Book in Google Docs" and got a series of free answers. There is a little bit of a learning curve (getting the page numbers right, formatting chapter headers, and page breaks), which was a little guess-and-check.

The biggest downside to using Google Docs was uploading the book to KDP only to find out that the page break didn't take and that a chapter started on the left side instead of the right. It's inconvenient but certainly not the biggest issue.

Then, I came across various writing processes that each person deemed 'essential' to get a book right. Every approach was different. So I asked myself: What is the right way to write a book?

The right way, I learned, is the way you want to write.

That's not profound at all. That's the point. I think there are a series of people who approach writing as the smaller part of a grander scheme. The book is the idea, but the process is the product. That's why every software claims to be the best, the biggest, and the most innovative.

Gatekeeping appears to be rampant in the industry. Will millions of books being published every year, it's clear that gatekeepers are only influencing a fraction of the aspiring authors.

You can use Google Docs. You can use Canva or Photoshop to make your cover. You can use a search engine to ask questions. Or, you could hire a person to format, design, and upload your book.

I don't think there's a wrong way to do it. The same, I think, goes for the actual writing of the content, especially in the first draft. And I say there's no wrong way to do it because every word is one word closer to a published book.

If you're sitting there and asking yourself if everything you write makes sense, the only thing you'll get is discouraged. The first draft is vomit, that's the point. There will be spelling errors, and there will be continuity issues. That's part of the process. The great thing about a written piece is that it can be expanded or shortened. You can't do anything if the words aren't there.

My chosen process goes as such:
1. I don't keep a bible. Rather, I keep two one-sheets. The first is a character sheet to keep their personalities consistent throughout the book. The second is a beat sheet, where each chapter gets a two-second summary. Some beat sheets go further, but I find it constricting.

From there, I write in a stream of consciousness until that stream runs dry. I tend to be able to do this in bursts. When I first started, that meant daily bursts. Now, I tend to write twice a week. It's the most I can do while balancing work, exercise, and leisure time.

Why stream of consciousness? I find it freeing. If I write down an exact plot line, I risk sacrificing a unique idea. Getting too in the weeds about consistency, at least in the first draft, stifles my creativity.

Feedback used to make me sick. Even if it was about the work, it felt personal, like I was a failure, not that someone wanted to see a better version of it. When someone provides feedback, they're championing you. It's the most important tool in your arsenal.

I regret skipping the feedback portion with 'Flower,' as I ended up missing spelling errors and sentence fragments. It felt horrible that I'd let the book be released like that. Spelling errors happen, and they can even slip by your readers, but this step simply can't be skipped. I'm fortunate that KDP allows for updates to the product, and I offered free copies to any purchasing readers.

I also encourage developmental editing. Having a professional or freelance editor review your work can enhance even the slightest detail, helping make the work more realistic and true to the world it's told in. After developmental edits are made, they move on to heavy edits, which address sentence structure and grammar.

Again, there are many right ways to write a book, but this is my way.

When I began writing The Grief Trilogy, I wanted to explore the multifaceted journey of grief through three distinct stages: acceptance, anger, and regression. Each book features different characters, but a common thread of loss connects them all. The first installment, Flower, originally started as a screenplay in 2017. Unable to secure the funding to tell the story at the caliber it deserved, I pivoted to a novel format. This was the first of the three facets of grief I wanted to explore: the journey towards acceptance.

Flower is my attempt to find comedy and absurdity in dark times, a coping mechanism I often turn to. Bradley Wales, the protagonist, is a reflection of this approach. He’s an ordinary man living a mundane life, suddenly faced with an extravagant, bizarre diagnosis that threatens his normalcy. He is the invisible figure drifting through life with nothing profound to say, and that's okay. However, this way of life is turned upside down when a bee string causes sunflower petals to grow from his face. He is forced to tackle a significant health issue in the public eye, all while balancing a struggling marriage, a manipulative medical professional, and more.

This setup allowed me to explore vulnerability, not just in Bradley and his wife Jessica, but in myself as a writer. I held onto these characters for so long that completing the story felt both necessary and heartbreaking. It was weird to say goodbye to these characters. While The Grief Trilogy continues on, Bradley's chapter ends with Flower. In a way, I had to grieve that as well.

While I initially intended for Flower to have a darker conclusion, I realized that ending on a note of hopelessness was the wrong message. Grief often brings a sense of despair, but it’s up to us to find a way to work through it and make the best of our situation. Thus, The Grief Trilogy aims to end on a positive note, reflecting the resilience that we all can find within ourselves, even in our darkest moments. Readers (including myself) seem relieved by the ending, and I'm happy for that.

Through The Grief Trilogy, I want to illustrate that while grief may initially feel insurmountable, there is always a path forward. This trilogy is not just about the pain of loss but about the human capacity to adapt, cope, and ultimately find hope again. Flower sets the tone with Bradley’s unique, almost absurd battle—facing a bizarre condition while yearning for a normal life. His journey is emblematic of the broader human experience: dealing with unexpected challenges, navigating emotional turmoil, and discovering that, even in our darkest times, there can be light.

Writing this trilogy has been a deeply personal journey for me. Just as Bradley is vulnerable in facing his condition, I am vulnerable in sharing these stories.

The Grief Trilogy will continue into 2025, with the next of the series releasing in Fall 2024.

I hope readers will see themselves in these characters and find comfort in knowing that while grief may change us, it does not have to define us. My goal is to provide a narrative that resonates with anyone who has experienced loss, reminding us all that even in grief, there is always a glimmer of hope.

Welcome!
If you're here, you're probably wondering one thing: who the heck is Brandon L Roberts? Is he a real author? Is he handsome?

I'll answer all three:

1. I am Brandon L Roberts.

2. I am a real author.

3. My wife thinks I'm handsome.

It's an interesting field to be in, don't you think? I mean... what makes an author? What does it take to be a good author? Am I even a good author? Am I asking too many hypothetical questions?

I want to think I am an author, and the fact that I can at least stomach my work must say something. My first release, Flower, is officially available on June 10, 2024. It took me until the day preorders were live to get comfortable with the thought of being a real author (you'd think it'd be when I, you know, started writing, but it just didn't FEEL real until it was out in the ether).

I don't think any aspiring writer is comfortable in defining their work or their style... at least unseasoned ones like myself. It could go one of two ways:

A handful of people read my work and relate to my point of view, and my work is considered good.

It goes the opposite way, and my work is considered a 230-page doorstopper.

But this isn't just about self-deprecation. I am continuing my writing journey as long as my two middle fingers can type. As I said, Flower is out in June, and I will follow that up with I'm Talking to a Dead Man in October and Barnaby sometime in 2025. That will round out The Grief Trilogy, an anthology that explores reactions to traumatic events through unique characters, absurdity, and occasional humor.

December 2024 will also see the release of a collection of short stories, Gumdrops, which has made me laugh out loud while writing (which either means it's funny or I'm a tremendous narcissist—the jury is still out on that one).

Anyway... you have questions (that I made up), and I have answers. Let's do this.

1. Is Brandon L Roberts your real name?

Brandon L Roberts is not my real name. According to my close friends and family, this was not the right decision. But I will say this: Will Ferrell's real name is John. Can you imagine calling the star of Curious George JOHN Ferrell?

2. How did you get into writing?

It started pretty early in my life. I might have been 10. Hard to say.

Google used to have a feature called Google Pages. A friend and I hosted a page where we wrote very, very short stories inspired by the Goosebumps series. I truly wish I still had copies of this, but Google Pages went inactive a long time ago. I am very old now (I'm turning 30 in 2025).

Not too long ago, I was also an aspiring filmmaker and screenwriter. I won a string of Audience Awards for the 48 Hour Film Project, which was a lot of fun. But as we know, fun doesn't always pay the bills, so I let my creative passions fall to the side until 2023. I looked back at 2 old screenplays and realized that they could work in book form.

3. Why 'The Grief Trilogy?'

Grief is universal, and catharsis is very much worth our time.

I won't get too bogged down in the details, but I was one of those kids who heard 'you had to grow up so fast' a lot. My parents were sick a lot, and while they've persevered and made it to their sixties now, there was a lot of grief to experience. That does something to a person's brain chemistry.

Grief interests me because there is so much to explore. There are the 'seven stages of grief,' but I've come to recognize that they are mistakenly interpreted as linear. This interpretation leaves little room for a person's situation to be seen as unique, diluting a person's struggle to a simple 'that's just how things go' mentality.

My first three books explore (in order) Acceptance, Anger, or Regression. I've experienced each of these at some point in my life, and as I look back on the worst times of my life, I realize I am still navigating what it means to be happy, how to forgive, how to accept forgiveness. These books are a part of that catharsis, and I hope they do the same for my readers.

If you can believe it, these books have funny moments. You'll have to trust me on that one.

4. What's your writing style?

This is going to require a whole different blog. Considering the fact that I wrote these questions myself, this reflects very poorly on me.

I would say that my style is grounded in reality and sweetened by absurdist elements. Simon Rich is a great example. I do this for the sole reason that life is absurd, but to lean into absurdity as a genre would go too far, at least for the stories I'm trying to tell.

I appreciate slice-of-life works. The slice-of-life genre is the depiction of everyday life in a very specific way. If you're a fan of King of the Hill, then you're familiar with the storytelling.

Flower is my first attempt at combining slice-of-life with absurdity. The protagonist continues to work in a sales department as his body transforms into a sunflower. Despite his transformation, he must hold a job, be a good husband and father, and navigate the healthcare system. If you've ever had a sick parent, you'll definitely relate to the protagonist's struggles.

5. Are all writers rich?

Every writer gets a free 600-square-foot cottage in Connecticut to write in solitude and slowly go mad. But they are not rich in anything but experience... until they are (please buy my book, I beg of you)

6. Are you a Nepo Baby?
If I am, I have a lot of questions about why I grew up poor.