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Thin Places: Where The Normal Fails
Not yet published
Expected 17 Feb 26A casino rises where the mill used to be. The smokestack is still there—decorative now. The parking lot where two generations learned to drive is a valet lane for high rollers from out of state. And in Riverside, everyone can feel the trade. Even if no one can prove it.
Claire used to deliver the scripts. Organizational realignment. Language sliced so fine you didn't feel the blade. Then she refuses to sign off on a lie, gets "realigned" herself, and drives to the hospital where her father is dying.
In the room next door, a terminally ill woman named Ruth sees something in Claire that Claire can't see in herself. Ruth has done this before—in Appalachian mining towns, in Gulf Coast refinery corridors. Wherever systems extract, Ruth plants something the machinery never people who learn to see clearly.
A garage circle forms. Veterans who've been watching this town for forty years. A man hiding behind a name the military gave him. An artist's daughter who draws what no one else will say out loud. They aren't organizing. They're just comparing notes. And the notes are starting to match.
Because they aren't just being exploited. They're being studied.
Someone is logging their meetings. Measuring compliance. Mapping morale. Classifying risk. His reports go to an address he was given. He doesn't know if anyone reads them. He has no reason to believe otherwise.
A dying woman in Room 412 looked at him once—through him—and called him by a name he doesn't remember having.
Thin places are where the normal fails. Where grief sharpens the world. Where the body knows what the mind won't admit. In Riverside, those moments are spreading.
And the machinery is paying attention.
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
I wrote Thin Places because the most effective forms of control rarely look like cages or cuffs. Sometimes they look like comfort and distraction—but just as often they look like the slow training of a person to accept whatever they’ve been handed as “normal,” even when that “normal” is failing them, to shrink their expectations, to confuse survival with a life, and to forget they were meant for more.
This story is a mirror held up to modern life—and a reminder that reclaiming your attention is the beginning of reclaiming yourself.
Thin Places is the first in a collection of fictional works to come in the Voice of the Heart Collection: stories built to bring those realities to life through pressure, consequence, and choice—not instruction. If the world of Riverside feels uncomfortably familiar, that’s intentional. The machinery doesn’t always announce itself. It blends in. It normalizes. It waits.
And because the battle doesn’t start in adulthood, there will also be a children’s collection—currently titled Growing in the Garden—written to help kids cultivate awareness, courage, and a clearer sense of the world they’re preparing to enter.
Different doors. Same war. The soul is worth fighting for.
Claire used to deliver the scripts. Organizational realignment. Language sliced so fine you didn't feel the blade. Then she refuses to sign off on a lie, gets "realigned" herself, and drives to the hospital where her father is dying.
In the room next door, a terminally ill woman named Ruth sees something in Claire that Claire can't see in herself. Ruth has done this before—in Appalachian mining towns, in Gulf Coast refinery corridors. Wherever systems extract, Ruth plants something the machinery never people who learn to see clearly.
A garage circle forms. Veterans who've been watching this town for forty years. A man hiding behind a name the military gave him. An artist's daughter who draws what no one else will say out loud. They aren't organizing. They're just comparing notes. And the notes are starting to match.
Because they aren't just being exploited. They're being studied.
Someone is logging their meetings. Measuring compliance. Mapping morale. Classifying risk. His reports go to an address he was given. He doesn't know if anyone reads them. He has no reason to believe otherwise.
A dying woman in Room 412 looked at him once—through him—and called him by a name he doesn't remember having.
Thin places are where the normal fails. Where grief sharpens the world. Where the body knows what the mind won't admit. In Riverside, those moments are spreading.
And the machinery is paying attention.
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
I wrote Thin Places because the most effective forms of control rarely look like cages or cuffs. Sometimes they look like comfort and distraction—but just as often they look like the slow training of a person to accept whatever they’ve been handed as “normal,” even when that “normal” is failing them, to shrink their expectations, to confuse survival with a life, and to forget they were meant for more.
This story is a mirror held up to modern life—and a reminder that reclaiming your attention is the beginning of reclaiming yourself.
Thin Places is the first in a collection of fictional works to come in the Voice of the Heart Collection: stories built to bring those realities to life through pressure, consequence, and choice—not instruction. If the world of Riverside feels uncomfortably familiar, that’s intentional. The machinery doesn’t always announce itself. It blends in. It normalizes. It waits.
And because the battle doesn’t start in adulthood, there will also be a children’s collection—currently titled Growing in the Garden—written to help kids cultivate awareness, courage, and a clearer sense of the world they’re preparing to enter.
Different doors. Same war. The soul is worth fighting for.
Kindle Edition
Expected publication February 17, 2026
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