NOVEL ANNOUNCEMENT · FEBRUARY 2026

Some things are real. Just not reliably enough to save a marriage.

Announcing The Margin - a literary novel about a family dissolving in a world where 10% of impossible things turn out to be true.

"Dr. Winters' office smells like lavender and lies." That's the first line my character Nora speaks.

The Margin is a novel I've been quietly building for a long time - a literary fiction about a family fracturing, told in five rotating first-person voices across a single tumultuous year. It's about a marriage ending. It's about children who know more than they're supposed to. And it's set in a world almost exactly like ours, with one key difference.

In this world, roughly 10% of anomalous phenomena - UAP sightings, consciousness effects, precognitive dreams, empathic sensitivity - turn out to be verifiable, real, and utterly resistant to resolution. Not enough to end the debate. Just enough to change everything quietly, around the edges, in ways the ordinary world hasn't caught up to yet.

"The ten percent is the worst possible percentage for social cohesion. If it were 90% real, everyone would have to accept it. If it were 1%, everyone could dismiss it. But 10% means everyone gets to be right enough to feel validated and wrong enough to feel attacked."

- Alex Katsaros, age 16, Chapter 3

FIVE VOICES. ONE STORY.

The Katsaros family are not extraordinary people. Nora runs a wellness spa on Chicago's North Side that her husband Daniel - a journalist assigned to the "anomaly beat" - has never quite been able to respect. Their oldest son Alex tracks his precognitive dreams in a spreadsheet. Their daughter Sophie absorbs everyone's feelings as if they were her own. And their youngest, seven-year-old Eli, has an imaginary friend named Thomas who occasionally knows things he shouldn't.

The novel opens on November 15, 2027, in their couples therapist's office. Chapter 1 is Nora's account of the session. Chapter 2 is Daniel's - the same hour, the same room, incompatibly remembered. From there, the story moves through Thanksgiving, Christmas morning, an anniversary trip to the coast, and the slow, un-dramatic work of two people realizing they have been lonely inside a marriage for years.

THE CHARACTERS

Nora Katsaros, 42 · Consciousness practitioner

Greek-American, founder of The Stillpoint Spa. Intuitive, determined, and exhausted from making herself legible to a husband who speaks a different epistemic language.

Daniel Katsaros, 44 · Journalist

Covers the anomaly beat for the Tribune. Rigorous, lonely, drinking a little more than he should. His best work documents a world he can't bring himself to fully believe in.

Alex Katsaros, 16 · Accidental archivist

Tracks his precognitive dreams with a scientist's rigor. Current accuracy rate: 11.3%. High enough to be real. Not high enough to trust. Old enough to lie to his sister to protect her.

Sophie Katsaros, 12 · Empath in training

Feels her parents' misery like a physical weight. Has been keeping evidence logs of their incompatibility. Also keeping prayer journals. She is aware of the contradiction.

Eli Katsaros, 7 · The youngest

His imaginary friend Thomas says the family is "changing shape - like water." Eli doesn't fully understand. But Thomas is usually right, so he repeats it anyway.

WHAT THE NOVEL IS ACTUALLY ABOUT

The 10% world is not the point. It's a mirror - a speculative device that lets me ask a question I've always found interesting: what happens when two people are both right about reality, but their truths don't reconcile?

Nora knows, with the conviction of someone who has watched chronic pain evaporate in a sound healing session, that consciousness is fundamental and real. Daniel knows, with the rigor of someone who has spent seven years reporting on things that almost-but-don't-quite defy explanation, that the extraordinary almost always reduces to the ordinary. Neither of them is wrong. That's the problem.

The novel's deepest interest is in this: how do families survive the private epistemological wars that never get named? And what do children inherit when the adults around them can't agree on what's real?

FROM CHAPTER 1 - NORA

"We don't live in the same world. I live in a world where consciousness is fundamental, where intention shapes reality, where the barrier between mind and matter is porous. He lives in a world where evidence is king, where skepticism is rigor, where unexplained just means not-yet-explained. And we're both right. That's the cruel part. We're both right."

THE PART I'M MOST PROUD OF

Eli, the youngest. He's seven. His imaginary friend Thomas tells him the family is "changing shape - like water." He doesn't understand what that means, but Thomas is usually right, so he says it anyway.

Writing Eli's chapters meant finding a voice that is genuinely childlike - not cutely naïve, not preternaturally wise - but honestly, messily in-between. A child who absorbs more than the adults realize and processes it through drawing, through play, through a friendship with someone who may or may not be there. Getting that right took longer than any other section of the book. When it clicked, the whole structure fell into place.

That's what I love most about this project: it demanded that I take every character seriously on their own terms. The story doesn't have a side. Nora isn't wrong. Daniel isn't right. Alex can't save anyone. Sophie can't fix it by feeling hard enough. And Eli's Thomas says things that turn out to be true - about 10% of the time. Just like everything else in this world.

Proposed cover for the book