Most books pick an age group and stay there. But some of the best stories I remember from childhood — the ones with talking rivers, wise old strangers, small seeds pushing toward light — never really stopped meaning something to me as an adult. If anything, they meant more.

That's what led me to write "The Lantern Keeper and Other Fables," a collection of three short stories built around that same idea: a lantern keeper who never stops relighting his flame even though the wind keeps blowing it out, a river that mistakes stillness for peace, and a seed that doesn't realize the darkness around it is exactly where growth begins.