Samuel DenHartog's Blog: The Road to 1,440, page 4

May 28, 2025

What Talking Jackals and Mountain Kings Taught Me in “Fables from Simla”

There’s a particular kind of story that lives in the high places of the world. You can feel it in the way a pine leans into the fog or how a narrow path curves out of view like it knows something you don’t. The hills around Simla are full of those stories. Some are wise, some are strange, and some carry the weight of centuries in just a few short lines. These tales don’t need grand palaces or dragons to capture your attention. They speak in the voices of animals, villagers, spirits, and tricksters, all bound by the rhythms of life in the mountains.

This book is a collection of those stories, retold in a way that brings out their wit, mystery, and enduring charm. There’s the jackal who outwits a partridge, the prince born with the moon on his forehead, and the faithful dog who faces the gods. Each tale comes from the oral traditions of the Simla region, passed down by word of mouth and shaped by the people who told them over generations. Some are clever, others haunting, and a few might even leave you wondering whether that rustle in the trees is just the wind after all.

These stories don’t rely on heavy moral lessons. Instead, they offer glimpses into how people once made sense of the world around them. A snake might hold a secret. A foolish king might lose everything to a humble villager. Luck shifts. Wisdom hides in unexpected places. Even in the most magical turns, the tales stay close to the soil, grounded in daily life, the seasons, and the quiet authority of nature.

You won’t find sweeping epics here or endless genealogies. What you’ll find is something older and maybe more enduring: a kind of storytelling that is both practical and poetic, rooted in the land and the lives of those who know it best. That spirit is what I’ve tried to preserve in “Fables from Simla.”
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Published on May 28, 2025 06:27 Tags: fables, fairy-tales, fantasy, folk-lore, himalayas, india, mountains, nepal, simla

May 26, 2025

Journey Across a Sacred Landscape in "Monster Slayer and Born-for-Water"

Some stories unfold across kingdoms or continents. This one unfolds across sacred ground, where rivers remember, stones watch, and monsters are more than simple villains. At its heart is a journey between two brothers, one shaped for battle and the other for wisdom, traveling through a world broken by ancient wounds. Their path takes them from the safety of home to the edge of the sky, and finally into the deep places where the hardest choice is not how to fight, but whether to.

The monsters they face are drawn from Diné (Navajo) tradition, each one a force of imbalance: giants, serpents, creatures of bone and hunger. But the story is not a catalog of battles. It is a reckoning. Some beings are slain, yes. But others must be spared. And those moments of restraint say as much about the world as the fiercest fights do.

The Holy People, the Sun, and the sacred weapons are all woven into a narrative that stays close to the original structure while allowing room for emotion, silence, and doubt. These characters are not symbols. They are sons, brothers, and seekers. By the end, they do not just survive the journey. They carry it with them. That weight was important to preserve.

If you are thinking of picking up "Monster Slayer and Born-for-Water," I hope you will find in its pages the presence of something older, something that walks beside you rather than ahead. This is not a story that shouts. It follows the rhythm of myth, of memory, of lessons that reveal themselves only when you are ready to hear them. Not all monsters are what they seem. And not all power comes from the blade. Some stories arrive quietly and wait to see if you are listening.
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Published on May 26, 2025 09:05 Tags: american-indian, fantasy, folklore, hero, hero-s-journey, indengenous, magic, myth, navajo, twin-heroes

May 21, 2025

Fiddles, Trolls, and Forgotten Magic in “Trolls of Coal Mountain”

There's something about Appalachian mountains that sinks into your bones. Maybe it's the hills that keep secrets or the air that carries stories like pollen. In Trolls of Coal Mountain, that atmosphere isn't just a setting. It is a living presence. The mountain watches, remembers, and reacts, and the people who live along its ridges are never as alone as they think.

At the heart of the story is Sarah, a young woman torn between two lives: the quiet civility of town and the deep, humming wildness of the mountain where she spends her summers. What begins as a summer of reconnection becomes a season of reckoning, as strange illusions begin to creep through the trees and old beings stir beneath the moss. When her great-great-grandmother, a fairy long bound to the house, warns her of trolls, creatures immune to fairy magic, Sarah and Jamie must turn to an ancient book filled with spells meant for human voices alone.

The novel blends romance and folklore with a tone that is both eerie and intimate. Sarah and Jamie’s relationship grows not in grand declarations, but in the shared labor of survival: learning charms, studying lore, choosing each other when the world begins to tilt. Their bond becomes a small act of rebellion against the larger, darker forces rising around them. In this way, the story becomes as much about what is worth saving as it is about what is worth fearing.

This is not a fairy tale with tidy morals or clear divisions between good and evil. It is a story that roots itself in place, in bloodlines, and in the kind of courage that does not look like heroism until much later. If you have ever loved a story where the land itself feels alive and the past reaches through lace curtains and broken stone, this one is worth the climb.
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Published on May 21, 2025 09:36 Tags: appalachian, caol, fantasy, love-story, magic, romance, trolls, west-virgina, witches

May 19, 2025

Hair, Hope, and Haunted Journeys in "Rapunzel and Raphael"

Rapunzel isn’t expecting to be saved. She’s surviving. Locked in a tower without a door, she builds her world from birdsong and threadbare dreams. Her hair, long enough to carry someone skyward, is cursed against cutting. The sorceress who imprisoned her returns only when it suits her, and never with kindness. Days bleed into each other, but Rapunzel does not fade. She writes songs no one hears but the birds, knots her braid into puzzles the magic combs cannot undo, and tells herself stories to remember who she is. It is not that she believes someone will come. It is that she refuses to believe this tower is the end. And yet, some part of her wonders if every silence, every dream, has been carefully placed. If the sorceress has been waiting for something too.

Raphael is the son of King Logan and Queen Seraphina, a prince raised with duty in his blood and expectation always just behind him. But when dreams begin pulling him westward—visions of a girl singing in a tower that should not exist—he chooses a path no one else would have allowed. He walks away from the safety of the crown and rides into the unknown, armed only with a bow, a dagger, and the belief that love might be true even before it is proven. What he finds is not a damsel in distress, but a girl who has survived more than silence and time. A girl who has waited without waiting, who meets him with wariness and fire.

This is a story about love, but not the kind that arrives perfect and easy. It is about the kind that takes root slowly, that grows through late conversations and uneasy trust, through jokes made to keep fear at bay and moments of silence that mean more than words. It is a story of courage that does not shout. And it is a story of destiny, not as prophecy, but as a choice made again and again. A climb, a voice, a hand reaching out through bramble and spell.

And if the sorceress meant for them to meet all along, then what comes next may cost more than either of them is ready to pay.
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Published on May 19, 2025 07:14 Tags: eldoria, fairy-tale, fantasy, grimm, grimm-brothers, imagination, love, magic, romance

May 14, 2025

When Faith Outlasts a Kingdom in "The Olive and the Empire"

When I first began writing this book, I didn’t expect the siege to become so personal. The destruction of Jerusalem is one of the most tragic and complex moments in ancient history—filled with desperation, fractured loyalties, and sacred symbols pulled into the dirt. But amid all that collapse, I kept returning to a single idea: what does it look like to hold fast when everything around you is falling apart?

Eleazar came to me not as a warrior, but as someone who refused to be erased. He isn’t drawn to violence or power, but when the world pushes him into war, he doesn’t flinch. Through his eyes, we see the strain of leadership when surrounded by ruin, the cost of conviction when betrayal is constant, and the quiet dignity of someone choosing to protect rather than destroy. And always at his side, even when absent, is Mary—the person who sees him most clearly, who anchors his resolve with love, loyalty, and her own kind of courage. His journey doesn’t offer easy answers, but he never stops asking what is worth saving, and who he’s saving it for.

I found myself more interested in the spaces between battles. The silences in the temple courts, the weight of a decision made in the dark, the loyalty that survives when every cause has been questioned. The story moves across hills and cities, blood and prayer, but it always comes back to something quiet and human: what does faith look like when it no longer wins, and what love endures when even hope feels dangerous?

That’s the question at the heart of The Olive and the Empire, and the reason this book became more than a war story to me. It is about survival, yes—but also memory, silence, and the fragile bonds we cling to when history turns violent. I hope it lingers.
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Published on May 14, 2025 14:10 Tags: action, adventure, hebrew, hisotry, historic-novel, isral, jewish, love, rome, war

May 10, 2025

Gold, Gods, and the Fall of an Empire in “Ashes of the Feathered Throne”

Empires do not fall quietly, and they rarely fall cleanly. In Ashes of the Feathered Throne, I set out to capture the collision between two worlds, one ancient and ceremonial, the other hungry and unrelenting, without reducing either to stereotype. The story follows Isobel Greystoke, an English traveler drawn into the wake of Hernán Cortés’s march through Tenochtitlan. With no banner to serve and no side to truly call her own, she becomes a reluctant witness to a war wrapped in both gold and blood.

The world of the Mexica is not just a backdrop. It breathes with heat and ritual, with resistance and sorrow. Every temple, every offering, every shifting alliance speaks to a culture under siege and determined to endure. The conquistadors are not made into heroes, but they are not stripped of complexity either. What pulled me most was the human layer beneath the violence: the friendships formed across language and loyalty, the impossible decisions made under pressure, and the way a person’s sense of honor can survive even inside the machinery of conquest.

At the heart of the novel is a story of trust, loyalty, and forbidden love. Isobel’s bond with Cuauhtli, a nobleman of the Texcocan and brother to King Cacama, begins in caution but grows into something that neither war nor politics can easily define. Their relationship is one of shared risk and quiet defiance, forged in the margins of a collapsing empire. It is not a love untouched by fear or grief, but it offers both of them a reason to hope, even as the world around them burns.

I wrote this book not only to revisit a turning point in history, but to explore what is left behind when empires fall. Some ruins are visible, carved in stone. Others are hidden in memory, in silence, in all the stories that were never told. Victory is not always what survives. Sometimes, what remains are the ashes and the memory of the throne that once stood there.
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Published on May 10, 2025 15:32 Tags: aztec, english, hernan-cortes, historical-romance, history, mexico, moctezuma, spanish

May 7, 2025

Cannonfire, Queens, and a Reluctant Heroine in "Salt and Gunpowder"

The sea offers no explanations. It gives no warnings, makes no promises, and remembers no names. In that kind of world, survival depends on judgment, instinct, and the ability to act when hesitation would mean death. That’s where Tamsin Kendrick lives—not in defiance of her time, but firmly within it, shaped by its demands and tested by its dangers.

Her journey begins far from any battlefield, but she doesn’t stay an observer for long. Thrown into the heart of a conflict between empires, she adapts quickly—learning the pulse of the ship, the language of command, and the sharp edge of trust earned under fire. She doesn’t rise by accident. Every place she holds, every order she gives, is the result of actions that speak louder than rank.

The battles she faces aren’t just fought with powder and blade. They’re found in the quiet calculations before dawn, in the way alliances form and falter, and in the weight of every choice made under pressure. The ship becomes more than a vessel—it’s a crucible. And in its confined, dangerous space, a crew becomes something more than strangers sharing a deck.

"Salt and Gunpowder" is a story born of that tension—of loyalty forged in the heat of conflict, of respect earned in the harshest places, and of a woman who never once needed to prove she belonged. She simply did.
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Published on May 07, 2025 09:10 Tags: british, fiction, historical-fiction, history, inca, peru, pirates, sir-francis-drake, spain, spanish-main

May 3, 2025

Take A Peek Behind the Infernal Curtain in "Subject to Corruption"

There’s something uniquely unsettling about stories where evil doesn’t roar, but whispers. When I first set out to write Subject to Corruption, I wanted to explore that quieter battlefield — the one where ordinary souls are slowly nudged off course by unseen hands. Not through dramatic temptations, but through small, daily choices that seem harmless at first. The idea was to show how the greatest defeats often start with a simple shrug.

Rather than telling a traditional story, I chose the form of personal letters between two demons: a mentor and his student. It gave the work a rawness and intimacy, letting readers feel the slow, grinding efforts to undo a single human life. I wanted readers to laugh sometimes, to feel a creeping unease at others, and to realize that these battles — exaggerated though they are — have shadows in the real world.

Crafting the voice of Vilethorn was a careful balancing act. He had to be clever, cruel, and yet strangely funny in his own way. The tone had to walk a line between dark amusement and genuine philosophical reflection without ever becoming preachy. Every letter became a chance to explore pride, fear, loneliness, self-importance — all the subtle cracks that evil loves to widen.

Stories like this, I believe, are most powerful when they leave space for the reader to recognize themselves. Subject to Corruption is not just a story about a demon and his assignment; it’s a distorted mirror, held up with a crooked grin, inviting the reader to wonder where the real battle lines are drawn.
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Published on May 03, 2025 10:25 Tags: christian, demons, devil, god, good-vs-evil, letters, philosophy, soul, spiritual, wityy

May 2, 2025

Fly Beneath the Wings of the Gods in "Tales from the Roman Skies"

I’ve always believed that myths don’t need rewriting—they just need to be brought to life again. The stories of Roman gods have been passed down in fragments, etched into marble, scattered through poets and historians. But behind those fragments are full lives, waiting to be heard in new rhythms. This book offers those tales in new breath, closer to how they might have sounded around firelight or under open skies.

What fascinated me was how much was already there—love that turns sharp, loyalty that fractures, vanity that reshapes the world. The gods aren’t symbols here. They’re characters who make choices, and live with them. My goal was to honor the original myths but let them feel spoken rather than recited. When Mars strides into battle or Proserpina lingers in shadow, you’ll know their stories—but you might feel them differently.

Each tale holds tight to its source while finding a new pulse in the telling. Some follow Ovid’s path, others the whispers of Varro or Virgil, and some come from lesser-remembered lines that deserved to rise again. What ties them all together is the sky—a sky thick with fate, fire, and gods whose moods still echo through us. It’s not about changing what happened. It’s about hearing it like you’re there.
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Published on May 02, 2025 05:42 Tags: apollo, folklore, gods, jupiter, myth, mythology, neptune, roman, tale

April 28, 2025

The Bride Goes From I Do to I Disappear in "Something Borrowed, Something Wrong"

There’s something irresistible about a wedding in a small town—lace-trimmed details, sun-drenched ceremonies, and the slow buzz of gossip floating just under the surface. But what happens when the bride goes missing before the cake is even sliced? That’s the question at the heart of my newest cozy mystery, where nothing is quite as sweet as it seems and every borrowed item carries more weight than it should.

In this second installment of the Cozy Cove Mysteries, librarian Margot Bellamy returns to find herself tangled in the most delicate of disappearances. What starts as a suspected case of cold feet soon turns into something deeper, stranger, and far more dangerous than anyone in town wants to admit. There’s a missing veil, a borrowed book no one remembers checking out, and a ransom that arrives days too late.

This story leans into everything I love about the genre: a warm town full of oddball charm, a quiet sleuth who notices more than she lets on, and a puzzle built from rumors, half-truths, and forgotten corners. It’s got coastal charm, cake tastings, high-stakes secrets—and yes, a runaway bride who might not have been running at all.

If you like mysteries with wit, heart, and a bit of misdirection tucked into every chapter, I hope you’ll step into the tangled tale of "Something Borrowed, Something Wrong."
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Published on April 28, 2025 11:00 Tags: clues, cozy, cozy-mystery, detective, kidnapping, librarian, mystery, runaway-bride, small-town, woman-sleuth

The Road to 1,440

Samuel DenHartog
I'm Samuel DenHartog, and at 51, at the end of November of 2023, I've embarked on a remarkable journey as a writer. My diverse background in computer programming, video game development, and film prod ...more
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