Grimholt Hollow

by H.A. Carlson · September 2026

Asta leaves Hearthmere searching for unicorns, freedom, and a life that actually fits. But she finds herself in a world where magic is caged, harvested, and sold. When she lands at Grimholt Hollow, a sanctuary run by a scarred, secretive caretaker named Sorren, she discovers the line between monster and protector is far thinner than she was taught to believe. Asta thought leaving Hearthmere would be the hardest thing she’d ever do. She was wrong. When a mercenary's cruelty alters her path, Asta flees into the fenwilds with a dying magical creature in her arms. She stumbles upon Grimholt Hollow, a hidden sanctuary sheltering rare and broken creatures. Its keeper is no different. Sorren lives in self-imposed exile, tending monsters by day and guarding his solitude with iron resolve. His hands are skilled at mending torn flesh, yet the quiet around him feels less like peace and more like punishment. He gives Asta sanctuary within the Hollow’s wards but keeps her at a careful distance. Distance proves fragile. As mercenaries close in and whispers of old atrocities begin to surface, Asta starts to see the fractures beneath Sorren’s restraint. The man who saves broken creatures may once have been a monster himself. Safety in the Hollow comes at a cost. In a forest that hides both miracles and monsters, Asta must decide whether a past written in blood can ever truly be rewritten… or whether some sins stain too deep to be forgiven.

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Dear Reader,

There is something I have spent a good portion of my life learning: Sometimes, no matter how old you are, you can still find yourself trying to fit into a shape that was never made for you. A box someone else built. A version of yourself that makes other people comfortable. A life that looks right from the outside while something inside you whispers, This isn't where I belong. I know that feeling.
Maybe that's part of why I have always loved fantasy. Growing up, I read everything I could get my hands on. I loved the impossible places, the creatures that couldn't exist anywhere but between the pages, and the feeling of stepping through a door into another world.
Fantasy gave me somewhere to go.
Eventually, I realized I didn't only want to visit those worlds.
I wanted to make them.
Grimholt Hollow began with a simple question I talked my husband's ear off about: What if there was a magical creature rescue?
Then the idea grew wings. Characters appeared. Creatures followed. Secrets found their way into the story, and before I knew it, that little idea had become a world of its own.
This book is a piece of the things I've been creating my entire life—and perhaps my answer to every box I've ever been expected to fit inside.
I wanted characters who were afraid and kept going anyway. People who fought for what they believed in. Monsters that weren't always monsters. Heroes who weren't always certain they were heroes.
Because beneath the magic, danger, and strange places, Grimholt Hollow is about something very human:
Finding the courage to become yourself, even when the world has already decided who it thinks you should be.
So I hope you escape here. Wander into its forests. Fall in love with its creatures. Worry about its people when they make terrible decisions—which, I promise, they will.
And more than anything, I hope you find a little piece of yourself here. The part that never quite fit. The part that still dreams of impossible things.
with love,

— H.A. Carlson