Halo Publishing International

01/08/2026

In honor of National Mentoring Month, we’re launching a special series of posts packed with practical tips and small tweaks to elevate your writing process.

Mentorship doesn’t always look like a formal teacher-student relationship. Sometimes it’s a writer, past or present, whose work shaped your voice. Sometimes it’s a single quote that stays with you. Sometimes it’s a book that found you at exactly the right moment… or even someone outside the literary world who believed in you before you believed in yourself, or simply had a gift for telling unforgettable stories.
So tell us—who has mentored you on your writing journey?
Drop their name (or the book/quote) in the comments!

To kick off National Mentoring Month, we’re sharing a writing tip inspired by one of our editing team’s greatest mentors: Julio Cortázar.

“If a book wants to question and doubt many things that are taken for granted or codified, how can the writer manage to do that, to put all those things in doubt? Apparently he has to write, his only tool is language, but what language should he use? That’s where the problem begins, because if he uses the language that expresses the world he is attacking, that language will betray him. How can he denounce something with the tools that are used by the enemy, that is, the stratified, codified language, a language already used by the masters and their disciples?”
― Julio Cortázar, Clases de literatura: Berkeley, 1980

01/07/2026

So early in the year—and we already have a reason to celebrate!

Congratulations to author Rachel Gregory: both books in her Gracie and Aero’s Wallet series have received a Literary Titan Book Award.

Discover the award-winning titles here:

The Literary Titan Book Award recognizes children’s books that mesmerize audiences with incredible narratives, vibrant illustrations, charming characters, and fresh ideas. Offering well-earned acco…

01/07/2026

After publishing two works that reshaped the literary landscape of Latin America, and eventually, the world, the writer quietly steps away, offering an excuse that goes something like this:
“My uncle Celerino died—and he was the one who used to tell me all the stories.”
He leaves behind an unfinished project, The Golden Cockerel (El gallo de oro), suspended somewhere between a film screenplay and a short novel.
A little more than a decade later, he dies on January 7. And although in life he was a quiet, shy, enigmatic man—almost invisible, the world never forgets his name: Juan Rulfo (born Juan Nepomuceno Carlos Pérez Rulfo Vizcaíno), author of the novel Pedro Páramo and the short-story collection The Burning Plain (El Llano en llamas).

We don’t need to say much more.
(Happy death day, Rulfo. May your ghost never wander Comala, thinking you’re still alive.)

“There you'll find the place I love most in the world. The place where I grew thin from dreaming. My village, rising from the plain. Shaded with trees and leaves like a piggy bank filled with memories. You'll see why a person would want to live there forever. Dawn, morning, mid-day, night: all the same, except for the changes in the air. The air changes the color of things there. And life whirs by as quiet as a murmur...the pure murmuring of life.”
―Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo

12/25/2025

As the year comes to an end, there’s only one thing left to say (for now): thank you.
You’ve made our dreams come true for yet another year.

This holiday season, we’ll be dreaming of all the books coming our way in 2026 and beyond. The year may be ending, but our talented voices never rest. There’s still an idea waiting to be shaped, a story waiting to be told, and we’re here to make sure it finds its way.

Merry Christmas, and here’s to a new year filled with writing and reading.

12/23/2025

Let our December Best Sellers guide you toward a stronger, more spiritual 2026.

Embark on a heartbreaking and deeply moving journey with Eugene Z. Bertrand’s "Resilience", or allow Alex O’Neal Heaton Jr. to take you on a soul-healing voyage through the skies with "Journey on Angel Wings".

Two powerful reads. One meaningful start to the new year.

12/23/2025

Last call to check those Christmas lists!
Our Best Sellers are definitely on Santa’s must-bring list this year.

We’re already taking these books home to our little ones, but what about you? Will you be gifting an anatomy adventure with Dr. Ryan’s "Your Amazing Heart!"? Or setting sail on Mog’s pirate adventure by Laura Mitchell? Perhaps you’ll choose a classic like Jenn S. Francisco’s "Loving Lola".

Whichever you pick, these stories make thoughtful, meaningful gifts that kids will treasure long after the holidays.

12/22/2025

"Attn. all my western PA friends—I am about to give you a Christmas gift suggestion, and it’s a book!

Rod Olson this past summer had his second memoir published by Halo, and it is largely about what it was like to grow up in a small western PA coal mining town. It’s called “Little Brothers and Other Observations,” and it is full of recollections and stories that I really enjoyed and could relate to.

I finished it months ago but have gotten out of the habit of writing these. However, I found Rod’s writing about his roots and relatives both comforting and grounding. I no longer remember many specifics, but it did refresh a lot of great and sentimental memories of growing up in Black Lick, PA. I think of simple games we played in another era, one where all us kids walked or rode our bikes to the community park to play “tag” and “Release the Belgian.” A time where wiffle ball tournaments were held in my backyard. A time when I got to play fireman and ride in Rod’s pedal driven firetruck up and down Walnut Street while our moms sat and gabbed and drank a pot of brewed coffee together.

There’s lots in the book about the impact of family too-the wisdom of aunts and uncles and the faithful love of grandparents. And Rod’s writing is even stronger than in his first book!"

—Reviewer Dennis Piper about W. Rod Olson's "Little Brothers and Other Observations"

https://halopublishing.com/authors/w-rod-olson/

12/19/2025

🎙NEW PODCAST EPISODE!🎙

This year, authors and expats Lisa M. Umina and Kirsten Harty contributed to an anthology that brought together women from around the world who share one thing in common: they left their homes, their countries, and the security those offered to embark on a new life journey in Mexico City, where they found the courage to start over. Along the way, they found each other.
Listen to these courageous women discuss life after the move and the powerful experience of capturing that transformation in a book that has earned praise, awards, and recognition.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2HArYncsVp1OmwD5ICe8Xf?si=s5UsaH8JR5C_Fhxm3Iac2w

12/19/2025

By December 24, 1843, every copy of the book had already been sold. At the time, England was beginning to revive old Christmas traditions, while the holiday itself was evolving and incorporating new customs, many of them strikingly similar to the ones we celebrate today.

The book, originally titled "A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas", was published on December 19—on a day like today—of that same year. It was an instant success. In less than five days, the first edition had completely sold out.

Its author, Charles Dickens, was already well known for his novels, most of which had been published in installments, though that success had not necessarily translated into financial stability. Dickens was deeply concerned with social issues such as poverty and labor conditions, but publishing a pamphlet or sociopolitical essay on these topics would not have reached a wide audience.

Then came the realization: Victorian readers loved two things: novels and Christmas. And so what we now know as "A Christmas Carol" was born, written in just six weeks.

Whether or not we’ve read this short novel, we all know the story of Ebenezer Scrooge. And even if we don’t know the story in detail, we live out many of the traditions that were first shaped by it. Once again, literature helps shape the world, and we get to experience its legacy firsthand.

12/18/2025

Talking about migration is common. Migrating, by contrast, is extraordinary, necessary, and beneficial to all.

What benefits no one is the climate of hatred, violence, and resistance promoted by some governments, often disguised as patriotic rhetoric.

Equally harmful is the failure of those same states to manage a deeply human process—one they have themselves intensified by sustaining inhumane systems that prevent millions from living dignified lives in their own countries.

Opposing migration is one of the most misguided ways to deny history and civilization itself.

This International Migrants Day, listen.

12/17/2025

Helping teens understand anger—and express it without harm—has never been more urgent.

With decades of experience as an educator, counselor, mediator, and conflict-resolution specialist, Dave Wolffe returns with an updated second edition of "Peace: The Other Side of Anger", a practical and compassionate guide for supporting young people through anger in today’s complex world.

12/16/2025

“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.” ―Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen observed the intricate web of 18th-century society, the spiders at its center and the full spectrum of creatures caught within it: the plain, the intelligent, the willful, the timid. And she laughed. Not a simple laugh, but one layered with scorn and tenderness, absurdity and deep understanding, pain and joy.

For a woman at the end of the 18th century, there were few choices: to laugh quietly, or to live an “appropriate” life without asking questions. Austen chose the former. And then she chose to write.

We know little about her as a person. She was not widely famous in her lifetime, and only a small number of letters remain to hint at her character. What we can do is look for fragments of her in her work. She wrote six complete novels, began writing in her early twenties, and was not published until her late thirties.

She could have confined herself to etiquette, manners, sentimentality, romance. She could have followed literary trends and social expectations. Instead, Austen did something far more daring. Through irony, she asserted that if women’s external choices were limited—often reduced to the necessity of an advantageous marriage—their inner lives were anything but small. For her, the performance of social norms was both revealing and faintly ridiculous. And it was not only women who suffered under this.

In this sense, Austen’s literature is not one of overt resistance, though it is quietly revolutionary. She does not stand outside society to condemn it. She participates, observes, explores, abides by its rules, and even performs them while laughing, pitying, mocking, and understanding. In a society so confident in reason as the engine of progress, Austen shows us how profoundly unreasonable life can be.

Today marks 250 years since her birth.

Happy birthday, Jane.