David Telford
Author | Poet | Essayist
Featured Story
The Sound of You
What does happiness sound like to you?
In the wake of unimaginable loss, Pax Butler is learning how to breathe again. Through music, found family, and the fragile beauty of unexpected friendship, The Sound of You weaves a story about grief, hope, redemption, and the unspoken courage it takes to keep going.
This is a novel about the people who save us—sometimes without knowing it—and about how a single moment, a single note, or a single word can change a life and lead us back to ourselves.
Continue the Journey
Companion Playlist: Listen to the music that helped create the story
The Sound of You - Spotify
The Sound of You - Amazon Music
Download Playlist Beats Guide (PDF)
Book Club Resources
“…a celebration of love, loss, and the transformative power of self-discovery.”
“I finished it in 2 days, I needed to know how the story ended.”
“I absolutely loved this book.”
Novels, Novellas, and Short Stories
Essays
Blog Posts
About Me
I’ve been writing for over 50 years.
Sometimes the stories come in a dream. Sometimes they show up in something I observe. Sometimes, like with The Sound of You, they show up in pieces of other people’s stories that somehow meld together.
The joke has always been that I write “whatever the voices tell me to write.” And that’s true to an extent. I hear dialog between people I have never seen. I see images of places I have never been. So the only way to quiet the voices and the images, is to let them flow through my fingers.
No matter what I’m writing—literary fiction, speculative fiction, essays, or simply trying to make sense of the world—the same themes find their way onto the page.
Self-discovery
Curiosity and belief
Agency and obedience
Choice and control
Ultimately, I write about what it means to become aware of ourselves, and how that awareness shapes our relationships, our work, our future.
Every story, in one way or another, asks the same question.
Who am I?
And every story begins with the same answer.
I am.
Every story begins as a conversation
If you’d like to continue this one, please join my reader list.
"Pregnancy is fine. But Birth is out of the question."
In a world where every question must be asked through the Temple… and every answer is law… one woman dares to ask why.
When a man returns from the sacred Asking, he brings the answer that will define their future.
The decree of the mysterious Lohj cannot be questioned.
The law cannot be challenged.
The soldiers enforce obedience.
But she remembers a different world—a time before the rules, before the priests, before life itself was regulated.
And she wants Birth.
What begins as a quiet argument beside a bowl of intoxicating mist becomes something far more dangerous:
a question about power, truth, and who has the right to decide where joy begins and ends.
The Lohj is a haunting speculative tale about belief, control, and the rare courage required to choose joy in a world that forbids it.
From the author of A Gentle Leap and The Dove, part of the expanding Genesis Rift: Tales From a Future War series.