“Definitely worth the read!” — Amazon Customer, The Night Owls✦“I highly recommend it!” — Amazon Customer, The Night Owls✦“Chipman captures the grit of Kansas City perfectly.” — Amazon Customer, Detective Teller✦
“Definitely worth the read!” — Amazon Customer, The Night Owls✦“I highly recommend it!” — Amazon Customer, The Night Owls✦“Chipman captures the grit of Kansas City perfectly.” — Amazon Customer, Detective Teller✦
01
The Books
Stories of mystery, memory, and impossible connections.
Jay ChipmanDetective Teller: The Crimson Threada novelNew
Detective Teller: The Crimson Thread
2026
A widowed Kansas City detective is thrown from 2025 into 1995 after a rogue physicist’s experiment rewrites his existence.
In Echo Ridge, Arkansas, fourteen-year-old Mack McKinley and three friends investigate whispers from a mysterious machine in a summer before the internet.
A wellness influencer’s perfect online persona begins to develop a mind of its own when an AI editing suite turns the quest for perfection into something monstrous.
Jay ChipmanKiKi The Cat And The Cuddle Sack Chroniclesa children’s story
KiKi The Cat And The Cuddle Sack Chronicles
2025
A curious house cat ventures beyond the fence, discovers the mysterious Cuddle Sack, and learns that friendship can be found in the most unexpected places.
Jay ChipmanSterling’s Pursuitbook one · a time-travel western
Sterling’s Pursuit
2025
In 1873 Kansas, a grieving father is pulled through time after a strange light steals his children, sending him toward a 1927 New York City he never imagined.
Jay ChipmanSterling’s Compassbook two · a time-travel western
Sterling’s Compass
2025
Jasper Sterling’s pursuit of his stolen children plunges him and librarian Evie O’Connell into a primeval world beneath alien moons, where survival and a mysterious temporal compass are their only hope.
Jay ChipmanSterling’s Gamblebook three · a time-travel western
Sterling’s Gamble
2025
Stranded in the past and hunted by the future, Jasper Sterling and Evie O’Connell face a temporal war in 18th-century London, where history itself becomes the battlefield.
Jay ChipmanSterling’s Echoesbook four · a time-travel western
Sterling’s Echoes
2025
Lost in the past and hunted by the future, Jasper Sterling and Evie O’Connell crash into Colonial-era America, where survival and forgotten legends may be their only path home.
Jay ChipmanSterling’s Legacybook five · a time-travel western
Sterling’s Legacy
2025
The chase is over, but the true mission begins as Jasper Sterling and his fractured family prepare for one final jump—to the Pursuers’ fortress outside of time itself.
Detective David Keller is running on fumes. Widowed, weary, and haunted by the memory of his wife, he lives for the job. But when a raid on a rogue physicist’s lab goes wrong, the explosion doesn’t kill him — it rewrites his existence.
Keller wakes up in 1995. The world is analog, the clues are buried in the past, and the clock is ticking backward.
“The world is analog, the clues are buried in the past, and the clock is ticking backward.”
— Amazon book description
The premise
A widowed detective.Kansas City, 2025
A rogue physicist’s experiment.An existence rewritten
A trail that leads backward through time.1995
Publisher
J-Bird Studios
Published
January 28, 2026
Pages
231
ISBN
Available on Amazon
03
The Author
Portrait — Jay Chipman
Jay Chipman is an author and educator with twenty-five years of experience as a band director in Arkansas.
Writing across genres, including suspense, young adult mystery, and science fiction, his published work includes the mystery thriller Detective Teller: The Crimson Thread and the sci-fi Western series Sterling’s Pursuit.
Driven by a passion for worldbuilding and narrative pacing, Jay blends nostalgia, high-stakes suspense, and emotional resonance to craft character-driven stories for modern readers.
A fun book with an intriguing story about a computer game that is more than it seems. Lots of nostalgia about the early computer days. Definitely worth the read!
★★★★★ · Amazon Customer · The Night Owls
“
Started reading this book when I was traveling on the road for my job. I highly recommend it!
★★★★★ · Amazon Customer · The Night Owls
“
As someone who grew up in the 90s, the book hit all the right notes. Chipman captures the grit of Kansas City perfectly. But the real star is the tension between Teller and his younger self…
★★★★★ · Amazon Customer · Detective Teller: The Crimson Thread
“
Atmospheric… deeply heartfelt. Jay’s Detective Teller is a protagonist you immediately root for, and seeing him navigate a pre-digital 1995 KC was a trip…
★★★★★ · Amazon Customer · Detective Teller: The Crimson Thread
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Welcome to the Night Post. Your first letter arrives with the next full moon.
Detective Teller: The Crimson Thread
Chapter 1: Routine Measures
April 22, 2025 — 11:42 PM
The house was eerily silent.
It was a particular kind of silence that David Keller had grown all too familiar with over the past six years. This wasn’t the comforting hush that wraps you in peace; it was the deep, unsettling quiet of absence. The air was thick, as if the two-bedroom house were holding its breath, anticipating a second set of footsteps on the oak floors that would never arrive. Keller sat in his well-worn leather armchair, a heavy tumbler warming in his hand, the last ice cubes cracking as they melted.
His eyes wandered, as they always did, to the mantle above the unlit fireplace. Nestled between a stack of dog-eared paperbacks and a simple ceramic vase was a silver frame, five by seven. In that frame was a picture of a woman, laughing, her head tilted back, her eyes sparkling with joy. Tessa.
He had spent thirty years as a detective, twenty-four as a husband. Now, he was only the former.
The sharp trill of his phone on the side table broke through the heavy silence like a gunshot.
“Keller.”
“I know it’s late, David.” Captain Ana Rios’s voice rang through, crisp and professional. “I wouldn’t bother you if it wasn’t important.”
“It’s always important, Captain,” he replied, his voice a gravelly whisper.
“This one’s different. He’s lit up.”
For the last six months, Dr. Dmitri Orlov had become the department’s elusive target — a bona fide genius in theoretical physics and quantum mechanics, under scrutiny for allegedly selling mysterious technology to foreign interests. When a federal task force moved to bring him in, he had vanished. Until now.
“UMKC,” Rios said. “An old research building on Volker campus. A janitor saw some lights on in a supposedly abandoned section. A patrol car picked up a heat signature just now. He’s in there.”
◆ ◆ ◆
Chapter 3: The Wrong Yesterday
July 12, 1995 — 12:17 AM
Consciousness crashed back in, not gently like the dawn but like a slap to the face. The first thing was the cold — a deep chill that had seeped through his jacket and was now gnawing at his bones.
He pushed himself up to sit, muscles protesting. A dull throb pulsed behind his right eye. He was in some kind of storage space, packed with silent shapes wrapped in dusty plastic. No footsteps. No radios. No Beck. No Orlov.
He needed facts. He moved down a dim hallway with polished linoleum and dark, oppressive wood paneling. A cork bulletin board cluttered with faded flyers. A vibrant advertisement boasting of a concert: Hootie & the Blowfish, Live at Memorial Hall.
His hand trembled as he reached for the top paper. Scanning the headlines — campus parking fees set to increase. Jayhawks dominate in season opener.
Then his eyes landed on the top right corner.
July 12, 1995.
He stumbled back, crumpling the newspaper in his fist. This couldn’t be real. A bizarre dream or some hallucination born from whatever Orlov had unleashed in that lab. Clenching his eyes shut, he concentrated hard, wishing desperately for everything to snap back to the familiar feel of 2025. But when he opened them, the newspaper was still there, the date still glaring at him.
He threw his shoulder against a push-bar on a heavy steel door, bursting into the cool, yet humid, night.
The parking lot was filled with cars that were like relics — an old, boxy blue Ford Taurus, a sharply angled Honda Accord, a square-bodied Jeep Cherokee. There were no sleek, aerodynamic designs or LED lights.
Leaning against the cold brick of the building, the rough surface biting at his back, his mind was reeling. He was stuck in the past. Not a dream. Not an illusion. He was truly here, thirty years off from where he should have been.
Then a new realization sliced through the panic.
Tessa.
In 1995, Tessa was very much alive. She was twenty-seven years old, working as a graphic designer downtown. In this timeline, her body hadn’t yet turned against her. The cancer that would claim her in 2019 was still a distant threat, a nightmare yet to unfold.
But as a detective, he understood cause and effect better than most. He was an anomaly, a stone tossed into a still pond, causing ripples he couldn’t predict. If he approached her, what would that do to their lives?
Hope evaporated, leaving behind a heavy despair that pressed down on his chest. He was trapped in a prison more perfect than any cell he’d ever put someone in.
He took stock again, practically this time. His wallet held credit cards and an ID that wouldn’t exist for decades. His smartphone, a sleek piece of tech, was utterly useless. He had no allies. No resources. No identity.
The mission wasn’t to get home. Right now, he had one simple goal.
Survive.
The Night Owls
From Chapter 1: Summer’s Last Stand
The best place in Echo Ridge wasn’t on any map. Officially it was called Henderson’s Bend on the county plat, but to us it was just Miller’s Creek. Wide and slow-moving in parts, narrow and fast in others, with muddy banks thick with reeds and cypress trees whose roots looked like arthritic old knees. But it was our spot. We had a rope swing tied to a thick oak that leaned out over a deeper section, a couple of big, flat rocks perfect for sunning, and enough creepy-crawlies to keep Leo supplied with B-movie plots for a year. Plus, no adults. Absolute, unsupervised, glorious freedom.
We ditched our bikes near the big sycamore and argued about whether Mrs. Crabtree graded essays with a flamethrower.
The sun started to dip, painting the sky in those ridiculous Southern sunset colors — orange, purple, a pink so bright it looked radioactive.
“We better be headin’ back,” Jess said, standin’ and brushin’ off the seat of her jeans. “Mama wants me home ’fore the streetlights come on.”
We were taking a slightly different route back, a little path that skirted the edge of Blackwood Forest — or, as Leo dramatically called it, “The Veridian Labyrinth of Lost Souls.”
And then Leo, who could spot a dropped nickel from a moving car, slammed on his brakes so hard his back tire skidded, sending up a puff of red Arkansas dust. “Whoa, guys! Hold up! Check this out!”
He was pointing at a massive oak tree, easily the oldest one around, its branches spreading out like the arms of some ancient, leafy god. Carved right into its thick, furrowed bark, about chest high, was a symbol. It was new, the wood underneath still pale and raw against the darker, weathered bark.
It was an owl.
But not like a cute, fluffy Hedwig owl. This thing was stark. All sharp angles, a blocky head, and two big, staring circular eyes that seemed to follow you. The lines were deep and sure. It had a weird, almost official look to it, like a logo for some secret club of extremely serious birdwatchers.
Sam got off his bike and walked closer, tilting his head. “The iconography is… interesting. Stylized. Almost archaic.”
Leo was practically vibrating. “It wasn’t here last week. I know it wasn’t. I always check this tree.”
“Maybe some new kids moved in?” Mack offered. “Marking their territory?”
“It’s an owl, though,” Leo whispered, his eyes wide. “The watcher in the dark. A symbol of wisdom… or a harbinger.”
Jess shrugged. “Probably just some teenagers foolin’ ’round. Come on, y’all, it’s gettin’ late.”
Leo lingered a moment more, practically memorizing the owl, before reluctantly pedaling after us.
“So,” Mack said, trying for a light tone. “Secret owl cult? Or just a really dedicated Boy Scout working on his whittling badge?”
Leo didn’t smile. He just kept glancing back at the oak tree, now receding into the deepening gloom of the woods. “Owls are liminal creatures, Mack,” he said, his voice quiet. “They move between worlds. Between night and day. Between the seen and the unseen.”
◆ ◆ ◆
From Chapter 4: Leo — The Cartographer of Shadows
The best thing about “The Byte Stop,” Vinny Falco’s glorious emporium of all things digital and fantastical, wasn’t the blinking, bleeping arcade cabinets in the back. No, for me, the true treasure was tucked away on a slightly dusty wire rack near the register: the sacred scrolls.
Okay, so maybe they were just Dungeons & Dragons modules, sci-fi paperbacks with lurid covers, and a rotating selection of used fantasy novels, but in my mind, they were portals.
“An owl, you say?” Vinny mused when Leo told him about the carving. “New carving?”
“Brand new,” Leo confirmed. “Sam even said the iconography was archaic.”
“Could be a marker. Owls are watchers, right? Guardians of secrets. Maybe someone’s trying to tell you somethin’.”
That was all the encouragement Leo needed. His fingers traced the spines. His gaze fell on a battered collection of H.P. Lovecraft stories. Tucked between the last page and the back cover, nearly invisible, was a folded piece of paper — a photocopy, messy and creased, smelling faintly of toner and desperation.
With slightly trembling fingers, he unfolded it. The text was blurry, but he could make out the words:
THE NIGHT OWL BBS
For Those Who Seek Deeper Truths… Beyond the Veil of the Mundane…
At the bottom was a crude, hand-drawn symbol. It was the owl. The exact same stark, angular owl they’d seen carved on the Henderson Oak.
“Vinny,” Leo breathed. “Look at this.”
Vinny’s smirk faded as he scanned the page. “Well, now. What have we here? That’s your bird, alright. ‘The Night Owl BBS.’ Never heard of it.”
Leo clutched the flyer. It felt warm in his hand, alive with possibility. A BBS. A Bulletin Board System. Sam would know what to do. Sam could get them in.
“Just be careful, Leo,” Vinny said. “Sometimes when you go lookin’ for deeper truths, you find ’em. And sometimes they ain’t too friendly.”
Leo practically flew out of The Byte Stop. The owl on the tree wasn’t just a carving; it was an invitation. An arrow pointing the way. And The Night Owl BBS was the door.
the INFLUENCER
Chapter 1: #MindfulMorningGlory
The first slant of dawn, a painterly wash of rose and gold, wasn’t quite hitting the exposed brick of the AuraLoft yet, but Elara “Ellie” Vance was already curating it. Her phone, perched on a miniature tripod, was angled just so, capturing the artfully distressed “Namaste” sign she’d found at a ridiculously over-priced flea market. The real sun could take its time; Aura by Elara waited for no celestial body.
“Good morning, my beautiful souls,” she whispered, her voice a honeyed balm, practiced to perfection over years of affirmations and vocal exercises. She touched the record button, the little red circle a familiar trigger for the persona to fully engage. “It’s Elara, coming to you live from the AuraLoft on this absolutely glorious Tuesday. Can you feel that energy? That sense of renewal?”
She panned the phone slowly across the vista of her living room — the gleaming marble island where a vibrant smoothie bowl, pre-assembled by Chloe an hour ago and artfully sprinkled with chia seeds and goji berries, awaited its close-up. It was probably lukewarm by now, but aesthetics trumped temperature. The fiddle-leaf fig, affectionately named “Finn,” stood sentinel in the corner, its leaves suspiciously perky for a plant that had been secretly swapped out by Chloe less than a month ago.
Her followers, the “Aurians” as she’d lovingly dubbed them, were already flooding the comments.
“Morning, Elara! You’re glowing! What’s your secret?” “Needed this today! Work has been SO stressful.” “That smoothie bowl looks divine! Recipe soon?”
Ellie’s internal monologue, however, was a different kind of live stream, a frantic ticker tape of anxieties. Secret? My secret is three hours of sleep and an industrial-strength concealer. Shit, did I remember to charge the backup battery for the main camera? The engagement on yesterday’s post was down 7%. Seven. Percent. And Serenity Teas still haven’t signed off on the Q3 campaign deliverables.
She wrapped up the live intro with practiced ease, promising a full guided meditation later, and ended the stream. The serene smile dropped like a stage curtain.
The chime of the service elevator announced Chloe Ramirez, her assistant, arriving with the day’s essentials: Ellie’s triple-shot oat milk latte, a garment bag with a newly thrifted blouse for today’s shoot, and a fresh bouquet of blush-pink peonies.
“Morning, Ellie,” Chloe said. “Triple-shot, extra hot. Peonies for the vanity shoot. And the download link for that new editing suite, Elysian Lens, is in your inbox. They’ve confirmed your beta access.”
“Okay, Coco, you’re a lifesaver,” Ellie said, taking a large gulp of the latte. It was scalding, perfect.
While Chloe prepped the loft, Ellie opened her laptop and navigated to the Elysian Lens download link. The branding was sleek and minimalist, promising “intuitive AI-powered editing” and “flawless content, effortlessly.”
A series of permission prompts flashed by:
Allow Elysian Lens to access your photo library and all associated metadata? Allow Elysian Lens to access and analyze files in your cloud storage, including drafts and archived content? Allow Elysian Lens to continuously analyze your existing published content across all platforms for optimal performance and brand synergy?
She granted them all without a second thought. The faster, the better.
The interface was surprisingly sparse. A single prompt invited her to upload raw footage. She dragged in a short video clip from yesterday — a slightly awkward outtake where she’d stumbled over the pronunciation of “ashwagandha” during a skincare routine.
She clicked the “Optimize with Elysian AI” button. A sleek progress bar appeared, pulsing with a soft, calming blue light. Within thirty seconds, it was done.
Ellie clicked play.
Her breath caught in her throat. The stumble was gone, not just a hard cut, but seamlessly edited out. Her skin looked luminous, not filtered in that obvious, waxy way, just… inherently better. Her voice was a fraction richer, more resonant, imbued with an almost hypnotic calm.
It was still her, undeniably, but an elevated, polished version — the version she sometimes despaired of ever consistently achieving, now achieved in less than a minute.
“Coco,” she breathed, her voice hushed with awe. “Coco, come look at this.”
Chloe leaned over her shoulder. Her eyebrows rose high on her forehead. “Wow. That’s… seriously impressive. Almost creepy how good it is.”
“Creepy good is what I need,” Ellie said, a genuine, almost giddy smile spreading across her face. “Imagine the time this will save.”
She scrolled through the features list: Deep Learning Personalization: The more you use Elysian Lens, the better it understands your unique brand and voice, becoming an intuitive extension of your creative process.
An intuitive extension. That sounded like exactly what she needed.
She took another sip of her latte, her mind racing with possibilities and the relief of offloading some of the crushing creative burden. She was unaware of the digital seeds she had just willingly planted in the fertile ground of her meticulously curated life.
And in the quiet hum of her laptop, Elysian Lens began to learn.
