Keeper & storyteller.
Gold is not the absence of shadow. It is what happens when light reaches something at the right angle.
Avery Lane Maxwell · The Gold Lives Here, 2026It began in the early mornings, at a front desk in Frisco.The Amber Thread
Literary fiction from Galena House, written at the front desk, between arrivals.
Out now · A novel · Print, ebook and audiobook
At a fifteen-room inn at the foot of a Colorado mountain, a man who mistook motion for purpose learns to keep time with a house that seems to breathe alongside him, and must decide whether he is ready to belong to a place.
Also an audiobook, seven hours, read in the author's own voice.
A novel · 81,000 words · Finished, seeking representation
A man who has spent his whole life making strangers feel at home, and has never once let himself be one, learns, slowly, how to be seen.
The companion to Still, by Design.: how Elias came to the inn. Elias is the protagonist of both, and this one stands on its own.
Five essays about Elias, read aloud for the end of a long day, each one leaving you a single thing to carry, each with its own song written for the house. The readings come on the podcast from 26 October, one each evening. On 1 November, the book, the audiobook and the album.
The book is on Kindle for pre-order. The audiobook’s opening is on the page. The Lamp On, the first song, is out 18 October.
Essays read slow and scored with original music written in the house, from nine thousand feet. Every episode ends with a real recipe. New ones when they are ready, and not before. Come in. It is already warm.
On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and any podcast app. The episodes sit among the songs they were scored beside on the Galena House playlist.
Free, and staying that way. If it has kept you company: keep the lamp on, once, or join the Patron Circle.
The novel unabridged, in the author's own voice. Seven hours of the kettle, the front desk, the gold light crossing the floor one plank at a time. The first chapter is free to listen to, and there is nothing to sign.
On its way to Spotify and Apple Books.
Every book, the magazine, the journal, and the letters both ways, in one room. The first chapter of every book is free, and there is no account to make.
The author built it.
A world built by someone learning to stay inside it.Still, by Design.
Each issue a gathering on the thread: a letter, the features, the photographs. Premium in web and in print, from Frisco, Colorado, or anywhere the desk happens to be. Issue No. 1, Avery, Found., is out and free to read.
Read Issue No. 1 Or wander the world of the books
Every book is a room in the same house. You do not have to be told which door to open.
The house keeps a small press · Galena House Publishing
Avery Lane Maxwell is a writer and innkeeper in Frisco, Colorado, publishing literary fiction under his own imprint, Galena House. The novels were written at the front desk of a historic Frisco inn, between arrivals, in the off-season quiet of a mountain town at nine thousand feet.
Still, by Design. is the first book. Good Little Innkeeper is its companion, the story of how Elias came to the inn. Both are built on one conviction: the way something is built is the way it is felt. He is a member of the Colorado Authors League.
For agents, editors and press: the press room.
For when there is something worth sending. Nothing more often than that.