James Cantrell

Work in Progress — I

Historical Horror · 1842

GandamakThe retreat went down into the dark, and the dark was already occupied.

During the catastrophic British Retreat from Kabul, at the height of the First Anglo-Afghan War, a group of soldiers fleeing Afghan forces discovers a network of vast subterranean caverns hidden beneath the Hindu Kush.

What begins as shelter becomes a descent. Cut off from the column, from daylight, and eventually from one another, the survivors confront the psychological toll of isolation — and the nonlinear logic of survival when every choice forecloses the next.

First Anglo-Afghan War Subterranean Psychological dread

Work in Progress — II

Alt-Reality Procedural · Near Future

Protocol 49The city is under siege from below. The job is still the job.

In a near-future New York City — diminished but still standing — the department's remaining officers face an incursion that no academy prepared them for: a supernatural breach of high-fantasy creatures spilling into the five boroughs.

There's no manual for this. So they reach for the one they have. Protocol 49 follows cops working established procedure against the impossible, drawn directly from a career spent inside New York City law enforcement and IT.

Police procedural High fantasy incursion Reduced NYC

Writer · New York City

James has been fascinated by speculative fiction, sci-fi, and the historiography of military history for most of his life. As a preteen, he realized it wasn't just the facts of history that gripped him, but the butterfly effect of nonlinear systems on events — and what that meant for humanity's future.

That impulse traces back to age twelve, when — armed with pen and paper and a mother wielding an IBM Selectric — he rewrote the end of World War II shortly after reading about it for the first time. A career spanning law enforcement and IT now feeds the worlds he builds. James lives in New York City with his photographer muse.

Residencies

Rooms where the work gets made.

Time and quiet earned at two places built for it — one a children's-book homestead in the Poconos, one a painter's island off the Maine coast.

Returning fellow

The Farm at Boyds Mills

Uncle Jack's Cabin · Milanville, PA

Two separate stays at the Boyds Mills retreat center (formerly the Highlights Foundation), both spent writing in the Jack Myers Cabin — named for the children's science writer whose presence still anchors the grounds.

Week of July 4, 2026 Fully-funded scholarship

Great Spruce Head Island Art Week

The Porter Family "Big House" · Penobscot Bay, ME

A week at the summer home of painter Fairfield Porter, where twelve artists and writers are selected each year to work in the historic family house. James attended on a fully-funded scholarship.

Writing Workshops

Where the craft gets tested.

Workshops taken in rooms that carry their own history — because the work sharpens in company.

July 27, 2026

Fraunces Tavern Museum Writing Workshop

Battle in the Margins Series · 54 Pearl Street, Lower Manhattan

A workshop in the Battle in the Margins series — a collaboration between New York State Parks and Black Gotham Experience exploring Black life in Revolutionary-era New York. Writers from across the five boroughs gathered at the historic tavern to grapple with the Revolution's contradictions: a fight for liberty in a society where enslavement remained legal. James attended as part of the workshop cohort.

Back the Work

Help keep two manuscripts moving.

If these worlds pull you in, a coffee goes straight into the writing time that builds them.

Buy me a coffee