But in a few weeks, I’m doing something a little different.

No clones. No time loops. No interstellar conspiracies.

Just cards.

And risk.

And a crew of brilliant, messy people trying to beat the system.

That’s right—I’m releasing a sleek, grounded literary thriller about a blackjack team taking on Las Vegas.

Now, if you’ve been following me for a while, you might be wondering:

Wait… where’s the tech? Where’s the terror? Where’s the genetically engineered snow leopard?

Valid question.

Let me start by saying: I haven’t abandoned sci-fi or horror. Far from it. Those worlds still pulse in the back of my brain like a reactor core about to overload. I’ll always love the thrill of a good twist in physics or a creeping unease that suggests the universe isn’t quite as friendly as we hoped.

But sometimes, an idea grabs you by the collar and says, Now. Write me now.

This story—the blackjack one—has been with me for years. It’s been floating around behind my other projects, waiting patiently like someone holding a straight flush just out of view. I tried ignoring it. I even considered dressing it up in sci-fi clothing. I thought: What if it’s a blackjack team on a space station? Or betting on predictive AIs in a surveillance dystopia?

But it didn’t feel right.

Every time I added a sci-fi hook, it felt like I was diluting the story, not enhancing it. The heart of the idea wasn’t in the future. It was in the now. In the subtle manipulations of card counting, the ethical gray zones, the psychology of risk, the pressure of trust and betrayal in high-stakes environments.

This wasn’t a story about technology—it was about people.

And it needed to be told that way.

That might sound simple, but if you’ve written mostly genre fiction, you know the impulse to add a twist is always there. You want to elevate, to make it strange, to give it teeth. But this time, the tension came from something wonderfully basic: the human mind, math, money, and morality all sitting at the same table.

This is the kind of story I would have devoured even before I knew what a warp drive was. It’s grounded. It’s fast. It’s character-first. It’s about ambition and discipline and all the beautiful, inevitable chaos that comes when people try to control a system that doesn’t want to be controlled.

So why now?

Because it was the right time. Because the idea wouldn’t leave me alone. Because I wanted to prove to myself that I could step outside the gravity well of genre for a moment and still tell a story that hits hard, moves fast, and leaves something smoldering in its wake.

I still love sci-fi. I grew up on it. I’ll always write it. But being a sci-fi writer doesn’t mean only being a sci-fi writer. Sometimes, you need to swap out the stasis pods and plasma pistols for hotel rooms and heat maps.

Sometimes, the boldest leap isn’t to another planet—it’s to another genre.

And I can’t wait to show you where this one goes.

Stay tuned—I’ll be dealing the first hand soon.

Leif J. Erickson is a science fiction and fantasy author from a small farming community in west central Minnesota. Using his time wisely when he was a farmer, Leif developed many ideas, characters, and storylines to create over fifty unique first drafts and outlines for stories. From his start in a small town school, to college at North Dakota State University, back to his family farm, then to the bright lights of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and back to his small farming town, Leif has always had a love of writing.

When Leif isn’t writing he can be found with his wife hiking in state parks, canoeing local lakes and rivers, exploring local and regional ghost towns, experiencing museums, or simply reading or hanging out with friends and family. Leif draws on the local nature and ecology to find inspiration for his writing while he also asks what’s possible for technology and the human race, weaving them together for amazing stories that will stay with the reader for years to come. Leif looks forward to having many novel and story releases in the years to come.

You can see all of Leif’s Books here: Leif’s Amazon Author Page