Subjects of Interest:
Candle Face Chronicles
Isabel: The Forgotten Daughter of Ll Llorona
It’s been a month since my last journal entry. That wasn’t by accident. I’ve been busy behind the scenes planting seeds that will, hopefully, help expose more of Isabel’s story. Some of that work has focused on reaching new readers. Some of it has been spent searching for Caretakers—people willing to protect the Fugitives from the Master Shadow while we continue our efforts to understand Candle Face’s history. The silence on the journal doesn’t mean the work stopped. If anything, it’s been the most active month yet.
Now I finally have something worth sharing.
I’m excited to announce that there is now a paperback edition of Candle Face Chronicles: Isabel: The Forgotten Daughter of La Llorona [Book Three]. This version is being printed and distributed through Amazon. It includes all eleven books, each with eight flipable lines per page, just like the premium version. But this one comes uncut. You’ll need to make the slits yourself using the dotted guides provided.
Why? Because Amazon doesn’t allow pre-cut or specialty formatted pages in its print-on-demand system. The only way to make a book like Isabel available through Amazon was to leave the final assembly in the reader’s hands.
If you’ve seen the spiral-bound premium edition, you know that each page comes pre-cut by hand. That version takes me over three hours to build, one page at a time. I assemble it carefully so that every strip flips cleanly, allowing the text to shift and reorder with each reading. The spiral version is available exclusively through Branching Plot Books and sells for $39.
The paperback edition, on the other hand, is priced at $21.99 and will be available on Amazon very soon. The price is in line with other 8.5 x 11 books over 200 pages, but it’s significantly more affordable than the spiral-bound premium edition. While it costs less, it does require something from you—about an hour of your time to prepare it. You’ll need to cut each page along the dotted lines. It’s not hard, and you only have to do it once, but it’s deliberate. It takes effort.
And maybe that’s the point.
Isabel’s story wasn’t handed to me neatly. It came through scraps, dangers, warnings, and contradictions. If you take the time to cut the pages yourself, you’re not just unlocking the interactive format. You’re stepping closer into her world. You’re slowing down, paying attention, becoming part of the process. Maybe even becoming part of the story.
One more thing: While Isabel is labeled as Book Three in the Candle Face Chronicles, it’s a complete, standalone experience. You don’t need to read Books One or Two beforehand, though doing so might deepen your understanding of the broader world Isabel exists in.
Once the paperback version is live on Amazon, I’ll post the direct link. In the meantime, thank you for continuing to help me piece together a story that was never meant to be told.
UPDATE (21 May 2025:)
The paperback edition of Isabel: The Forgotten Daughter of La Llorona is now available on Amazon. You can order it here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1736339281.
Is Candle Face real?
This is a complex and deeply personal question. On the one hand, there's the possibility that Candle Face is a manifestation of my childhood trauma, a figure created by my mind to cope with fear and emotional turmoil. On the other hand, the consistent details, physical evidence, and shared experiences with others suggest that Candle Face may be a genuine supernatural entity. Whether Candle Face is real or a creation of my psyche, her impact on my life has been undeniably profound. Ultimately, the answer to this question is up to you.
How are you able to communicate with the dead? Are you a psychic or medium?
I don’t consider myself a psychic or medium, although many in the paranormal community believe I have some kind of gift, perhaps one that I haven’t fully tapped into yet. Unlike those who claim to communicate with any spirit, my ability seems limited to connecting with Candle Face’s victims and Candle Face herself. While I’m not sure how this works, the connection is strong and focused on these particular Lost Souls, allowing me to share their stories and seek justice for them.
Do you use AI to create your content?
From October 2023 to around March 2024, I personally wrote the short descriptions you see on Google and social media platforms when my web pages or journal entries are shared or found in search results. These descriptions are those brief, 160-character summaries that pop up beside the URL. It was challenging to condense complex ideas into such a small space.
By March 2024, I began letting Wix, my website host, handle this task for me. Their AI generates these summaries much faster and often with more precision than I could manage within that tight character limit. It was a practical decision to let the system take over this small aspect of my work, allowing me to focus more on my writing and investigations.
The web pages and journal entries themselves are entirely my own. My writing encompasses a wide range of topics, including the testimonies of the Lost Souls, my investigations into Candle Face/Isabel, my books like Isabel: The Forgotten Daughter of La Llorona and The Haunted Handbook, as well as other works and research. Everything I write is rooted in my decades of experience in writing (over ten books in 15 years) and my 30+ years of expertise in intelligence analysis, missing persons cases, and human trafficking investigations. The core content you read always comes from me.
By early March 2025, I decided to create a Shopify account to sell copies of Isabel: The Forgotten Daughter of La Llorona, The Haunted Handbook, and to look for caretakers for The Scrolls of Souls. It was a tremendous amount of work to manually transfer all 130 journal entries from Wix to Shopify and recreate the Google SEO titles and descriptions for each entry. Shopify’s blogging platform also required a summary for each journal entry. Summarizing my work was taking around 30 minutes per entry, which became overwhelming and unsustainable.
To streamline the process, I allowed AI to create the summaries for me by uploading each journal entry and letting the AI generate the SEO descriptions, summaries, and ALT text for images. Here's a clear breakdown of what is AI-generated:
- Some journal entry titles.
- Nearly all SEO journal descriptions (up to 160 characters).
- Nearly all summaries (which are only available in the backend and not visible to the public).
Everything else you read comes from me, whether it’s documenting testimonies from the Lost Souls, researching Candle Face/Isabel, or writing my books. The AI simply handles the tedious, mechanical parts of the process, leaving the writing, storytelling, and investigations entirely in my hands.
I review all AI-generated summaries and descriptions to ensure they accurately represent the essence of my writing. My decision to use AI for these backend tasks is about maintaining efficiency and allowing me to focus on what truly matters: writing, storytelling, investigations, and giving voice to the Lost Souls, protecting the Fugitives, investigating Candle Face/Isabel, and exploring new projects. Your experience as a reader is shaped by my work, not by AI.
Why did you end the podcast?
I decided to cancel the Candle Face Chronicles Podcast for two key reasons. First, while the Get Haunted Network is a fantastic community for paranormal entertainment, it wasn't the right fit for the serious and important nature of my work with Candle Face Chronicles. The network's lighthearted tone didn’t align with my mission.
Second, the friends and family of one of Candle Face's victims reached out and asked me to stop discussing their loved one on the podcast because it was causing them too much pain. Their request made me realize that my work, while well-intentioned, was unintentionally hurting those who are still living and grieving.
These reasons led me to end the podcast, but I remain committed to continuing my mission to uncover Candle Face’s origins and methods with a renewed focus on compassion and respect for the living.
Why did you stop using www.candleface.com and start using www.branchingplotbooks.com?
I have had the branchingplotbooks.com domain since 2012, but I transferred the domain to Shopify to use it as my storefront. I needed to do this because Isabel: The Forgotten Daughter of La Llorona can't be published or sold via Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing because of its spiral binding requirement. The same goes for The Haunted Handbook.
I decided to sell them, along with most of my other books, on Shopify because it allows me to provide a more streamlined and reliable experience for my readers. It also enables me to have full control over my work and how it reaches my audience. Additionally, all my books are still available on Amazon (paperback and Kindle), except for Isabel: The Forgotten Daughter of La Llorona and The Haunted Handbook due to their unique binding requirements.
I also chose to use Shopify’s blogging platform, keeping all books, my journal, and the shopping experience located in one place.
I plan on keeping www.candleface.com up for the interim, but it will likely go down as well, or at least be redirected to www.branchingplotbooks.com. In the end, I want my work to be more streamlined and easier for the paranormal community and my readers to find my work, read and help the lost souls, protect the fugitives, and care for the Scrolls of Souls.
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