Archer Wilder
Archer Wilder writes novels about some of the history that was rescued by the Society for Improbable Discoveries. The first is nearly ready.
The Lantern Beast surfaces October 13, 2026.
Get Ready to Meet the Lantern Beast
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The Lantern Beast will be delivered electronically to a select number of readers before it's released. If you'd like to be considered, kindly leave your contact information.
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Against my better judgement:
The Lantern Beast is available for preorder on Amazon as a Kindle ebook — Paperback coming soon!
Some secrets lie beneath the surface. Some rise to find you.
Photographer Jules Everton has spent her adult life in motion — new ports, new faces, connections shallow enough to leave clean. When dreams she can't ignore pull her to Bracken Ridge, she tells herself it's temporary. Just a winter. Just her aunt's porch swing and a town that loves its local legend.
But Fortune Lake has been waiting for Jules since she was ten years old.
Corporate lawyer Danny Pencroft has built his entire life around a lie of omission — that he doesn't believe in the lights on the lake. Until Jules arrives, and suddenly he's the only one in town who understands exactly what she's seeing. She's the first person he has never had to lie to.
Something ancient lives beneath Fortune Lake. A guardian older than the town, older than any record of the lake — and it is dying. Night by night its cries grow more desperate.
It kept Danny. It called Jules home. They are the only ones who can hear it, and they are running out of time to listen.
For fans of Deborah Harkness and Heather Fawcett's Emily Wilde series — and readers who wished Remarkably Bright Creatures had a love story.
A standalone novel
About the Author
Archer Wilder was raised by Robert Stack and Indiana Jones, and spends an irresponsible amount of time researching cryptids, strange lights, small-town legends, and a historical record that doesn’t always quite ring true. The writing happens in the California desert, between deciphering The Inconvenient Atlas, making lamps out of skulls, and vacuuming up after two Australian Shepherds.
Archer does not appear in photographs, attend events, or discuss sources. Archer may, on occasion, answer a letter, provided the letter is interesting.
You can contact Archer by email.
