Samuel and Jessica Taber have found a way to turn their passions into a business of their own.

In February, the husband-and-wife team will open Forged of Echoes, a bookstore that will sell novels written primarily by independent authors, at 121 S. Jefferson St.

Samuel is a nurse at the Missouri Veterans Home. He self-published his first novel, “Echoes of Fangs and Thorns,” in April 2025. The dark-fantasy young adult fiction novel began as a small project in a writing group in high school that sparked his inspiration for the soon-to-be three-part series “Forged of Echoes,” which is what he named the store after.

“I just like the name,” Samuel said. “It has interesting connotations.”

The store will also feature fantasy-themed candles that are handmade by his wife Jessica, who will be an integral part of the bookstore.

“While he’s at work at his main job, I’m at the store,” Jessica said.

Jessica’s love for candle-making began after Samuel bought her a soy-wax kit while she was pregnant with their first child.

“I have a lot of hobbies,” Jessica said. “I went from beading jewelry to crocheting to cross stitching then to candles.”

Her creations will complement the fantasy world Samuel created in his novels using molds that look like dragon heads, book stacks, ravens as well as tea cups and mugs. Many of Jessica’s scent combinations are also fantasy themed with names such as “Leather and Lore” and “Storyteller.”

“I want this to be community-driven,” Samuel said. “If the community wants certain types of books, let me know. If they want certain shapes of candles, let us know. We have the ability to do custom candles for sure.”

In addition to Jessica’s candles, Samuel plans to sell other small items such as jewelry, stickers and tote bags.

“I want people to be welcome when they come in,” he said. “Eventually, we’ll have a little reading nook set up; we’ll try to have a little kids area.”

Samuel is also looking into the possibility of serving hot tea to customers.

“The goal is to mostly carry independent authors,” he said.

As an independent author himself, Samuel said he understands the difficulties they face getting their books into the hands of readers. Through his journey of self-publishing his own book, he has forged many relationships with other authors through the app TikTok. He often refers to the book-focused community he is a part of as “BookTok.”

There, Samuel said he jokingly mentioned opening a bookstore to one of his friends a year ago. While it may have been a joke at the time, Samuel began doing research and he found that books and candles have “a pretty good market.”

“I always wanted a bookstore,” Samuel said. “We’ve been selling candles forever and I have a lot of BookTok friends, so getting the bookstore just made sense.”

Samuel and Jessica will be getting the keys to their new storefront Jan. 15 and they are planning to open to the public Feb. 1.

“For the first few weeks, we’ll have a limited book supply just because it’s going to take a little bit of time to get books in, unfortunately,” Samuel said. “We’ll have a lot of candles, I'm hoping to have some of our stickers and tote bags by then, and I should have four or five different authors to start with.”

In addition to his book, Echoes of Fangs and Thorns, Samuel will start stocking shelves with the works of some of his BookTok friends including Lynn Taylor and Corey J.

Samuel is no stranger to self-marketing and said he is prepared for a difficult journey ahead.

“You got to go in knowing you’re not going to profit for the first year — it’s just not possible.” he said. “The overhead is high to get started and unfortunately, a lot of people don’t buy books physically anymore. You just gotta have the drive to do it.”

However, based on conversations on BookTok and Facebook posts he has made about the store, Samuel said he has received a decent amount of community support.

“In the first six hours of posting about the bookstore I had like 70 likes,” he said. “I had a string of comments that were like, ‘We need this.’ People are very excited about it.”

While most of his attention will be spent on getting the new store up and running for the next few weeks, Samuel continues to work on the series that started it all as he finishes up his second book that has the working title, “Echoes of the Broken Crown.”