I drove up to Northern California this weekend to tend to some personal business and, as part of a very long detour (2.5 hours each way), I went to Fresno to attend the release party for Oz Monroe’s debut novel, Soil-Man.

The event was hosted at Mia Cuppa Caffe and included dark angel-themed paintings by local artists and local musicians performing at the start and end of the night. Evidently, Oz brought the local cafe a new record for customers in one night.

As Oz intended, the event wasn’t so much for publicity as it was a celebration; a celebration of the novel’s release, of course, but also a celebration of art and love (the latter strongly reflected in friends and family gathered around).

I met Oz at the Southern California Writers’ Conference a few years ago. We didn’t talk outside of workshops and rogue critique sessions, but when we talked about writing and publishing, Oz struck me as intelligent and passionate. Both these qualities are evident in Soil-Man.

A blurry Oz Monroe (right) at the Soil-Man Release Party.

I’ll wrap this up with the blurb on Soil-Man‘s Amazon page:

Jon Aesop, a man without religious belief, is forced to question everything when his family is tortured and killed by what appears to be an angel. Desperate to find his wife’s soul, he must survive murderous angelic forces while seeking answers to the afterlife.

Var is a freak to humanity and an abomination among angels. For centuries he’s hunted in the shadows, living a life of self-destruction, but obsessed with revenge.

What they both discover—hidden in the depths of hell—will change everything[.]