Charles Wiegand - Author

This an update on the status of the new books I'm working on. I expect to be publishing at least 2 books, possibly 3, in 2026. I've been working hard on these books, all are now in their 3rd or 4th drafts. I expect to do at least 2 more drafts of each.

Ritmo y Pasión

Ritmo y Pasión follows Marisol, a nationally known Peruvian folk dancer who takes a huge leap of faith: leaving Cusco to open a dance studio in Arlington, Virginia. What begins as a simple studio quickly grows into a cultural hub, where kids, teens, and adults come not just to dance, but to reconnect with heritage, language, and community. Along the way, Marisol finds new friends: Elena, a Peruvian-American woman searching for her roots, and Ángela, her Chilean-American, firecracker assistant. Together, they help Marisol discover that home can be something you build with other people, step by step.

The story blends traditional dances, bicultural identity, and the messiness of starting over in a new country with a quieter thread of obsession and danger, embodied by a photographer who doesn't understand boundaries. Around Marisol and Elena, there's plenty of warmth, humor, and chaos thanks to Ángela's attempts to woo Jon, the shy print-shop guy across the street. It's a story about art, love, safer spaces, and what happens when someone decides they don't respect the limits everyone else honors.

Logan's Meadow

Logan's Meadow is a quiet, rural story about family, grief, and the kind of love that grows slowly, like a field coming back after winter. Logan is a young man holding his family's farm together after the loss of their parents, with help from his twin sister, Savannah, and their much younger sister, Dakota. Brooklyn, an accountant from the city, meets Savannah, and the two become friends. Through visits to the farm, Brooklyn stumbles into a life she didn't know she wanted, a life that smells of hay, coffee, and rain on dirt roads.

The book leans into the contrast between small-town and big-city rhythms: shared meals, early mornings, and long silences under open skies versus exhaust, smog, and the constant press of traffic and noise. Underneath the gentle surface runs a deeper emotional current of illness, old wounds, and hard choices that force everyone to decide what "home" really means. It's a character-driven novel with a tender romance at its heart, centered on resilience, chosen family, and the quiet, everyday courage of staying when things get difficult.

Kidnapped Again?

Kidnapped Again? is a crime-flavored, emotional suspense novel built around one very bad secret: twin brothers separated at birth. Gabriel grows up wealthy and respectable; Ganon grows up poor and angry, drifting into crime and eventually orchestrating the kidnapping of Andrea. Nothing about the crime goes cleanly, Paula is taken twice by mistake, loyalties fracture, and a seemingly straightforward ransom job unravels into a web of family lies.

As the story progresses, Paula is pulled into the mystery and starts helping Ganon in exchange for her life and freedom. Shared faces, missing records, and a powerful family pulling strings all feed into questions of identity, nature versus nurture, and what happens when people who've been defined by secrets finally start asking the right questions. It balances tension, emotional stakes, and complicated relationships rather than focusing on gore or procedural detail, more "tight, personal thriller" than police-heavy crime saga, with a side of humor.

I hope to have Making Scents published in Spring, 2026. That will be followed by Ritmo y Pasión mid-Summer, and Kidnapped Again? in November/December.

For 2027, there's even more coming - I have three novelas in the works. Who knows? Maybe one or two of them will grow into full novels?

Beyond 2027? Yes, I have massive outlines/notes written for two more - a light sci-fi with a positive ending (no world-ending asteroids or human-eating aliens) and a fantasy, possibly 3-volume, series. It too, has a positve bend. Honestly, I've never been thrilled by world-ending apocalyptic stories. My brain doesn't work in such a negative way as to get excited by that kind of story.