tlevs press: 2025

Wednesday, August 13, 2025

Be Our Guest

Be Our Guest
A retelling of Beauty and the Beast

Now available on Amazon:
Paperback $7.39 + shipping
Kindle $2.99
Free on Kindle Unlimited
(paperback link not working temporarily for some reason)

This tale is part of the Global Beasts Series in which every book features a different country. This one is set in Thailand, against the government shutdown of Tiger Temple, a famous tourist theme park in Kanchanaburi. It's a tale as old as time, but it can be seen in many ways, with a wide variety of characters. The original tale was written in 1740, and this one brings the original to light against the traditional ideas of karma, reincarnation, and animism that have been in Thailand since before Buddhism ever arrived.

Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Beginner's Guide to Quakerism

Beginner's Guide to Quakerism
by Maurine Pyle, Margaret Katranides, Thomas Leverett, and Fernando Freire
$3.83 + postage on Amazon
$0.99 on Kindle

Followers of this blog and the press will recognize this as the pamphlet, published in 2021 and printed at home by me for $0.80 each + postage. It will still be available in pamphlet form, printed more professionally, and possibly cheaper; stay posted. This Amazon version is at least available now, here from this site.

It was intended to give the average outsider a good general overview of what Quakerism is. It is, after all, a discipline to live by Truth and integrity, and to have as your community people who may feel differently about the exact role of God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the literal doctrines of mainstream Christianity. Many Quakers today do not call themselves Christian; if so, what do they have in common? This pamphlet will explain.

Stay current here.

Sunday, January 12, 2025

Mario's Dystopia

Announcing the book of my son, Noah Abraham Leverett
Mario's Dystopia
$4.99 + postage, paperback $2.99 on Kindle
free on Kindle Unlimited

He has also written poetry, which I will try to highlight.

Welcome!

tlevspress, along with its proprietor (me), wife, three teens, and dogs and cats, is now in Galesburg, Illinois. The mountains depicted above are merely an apparition or a memory. I will soon come forth with better Illinois visuals (mostly trains, which are common here) but in the meantime, accept these old symbols and graphics. I have been writing for a while, and use my free time to write several things: short stories, a novel, haiku, family-related biography, and Quaker plays. You'll find most of it here. I am 100% indie; I do my own art, and my own proofreading (extremely difficult, proofreading your own) - but, with ten children, I can't take money from the family budget to get started. I'd rather write what I want and enjoy the freedom of whatever success will bring me. It's been an interesting journey - glad you're joining me for a while!.

About my work

I am part of the "self-publishing revolution," as my work is among millions that people publish themselves, mostly through Amazon and Createspace. But it's not because I dislike publishers. It's more because 1) I want to keep the rights to my own work, and 2) because, having ten children, I'm too busy to send things out and maintain relationships with publishers.

As an ESL teacher, I've always written my own material; it was more current than any textbook. I could also tailor it to my students' interests. I sometimes picked up news reports and rewrote them, so that we were in effect examining something that had just happened, or a change brought on by technology. It kept my classes interesting and it kept me in the habit of writing.

A greater source of my inspiration, however, was my travels, which spanned a couple of years in the early seventies, and covered a territory from Guatemala to Alaska. On that trip I was determined to really get to know the USA but also explore the different options for making a livelihood. I have been lucky to be basically happy teaching ESL; it has allowed my to develop my music and my writing without having to depend on it. Now I would like to see if I could make a career out of either writing or music or both; this is my feeble attempt to try the former. Enjoy!

If you have encountered an issue or something you would like to correct, or need to contact me for any reason, feel free. I cannot guarantee a response.