Other Fiction · 2026 · Novel

Between Lives

The Vanishing Man

Synopsis

Douglas Hartwell wanted to prove there was more to reality. He never intended to disappear from it.

At forty, Douglas maintains hotel computer systems by day and pursues an impossible idea in his garage at night. Once considered a brilliant young mind, he now lives a quiet life built around a question he cannot abandon: What if other realities occupy the same space as ours, just beyond our ability to perceive them?

Then his homemade experiment works. And something goes terribly wrong.

Douglas begins slipping out of the world. Time freezes around him. His body can no longer hold its place in reality. When two mysterious travelers find him standing in a motionless street, they offer him a chance to survive, if he will leave everything familiar behind.

Beyond Earth lie living cities, healing worlds, and an ancient network connecting dimensions. There is also Elowyn, a woman whose twelve centuries of life have not protected her from loss. With her, Douglas discovers something he had almost stopped expecting: the possibility of belonging.

But something else moves between these worlds. The Thren have learned to infiltrate the network, and Douglas’s emerging abilities have drawn their attention.

Now the man who only wanted answers must confront what his discovery has awakened, and whether a human lifetime can hold the love he has found.

An adventure across dimensions, and an intimate story of second chances, unexpected love, and finding a home in a universe larger than you ever imagined.