The Roar of a Dragon follows a soldier who discovers a far future ruled by an ancient evil and grapples with the choice to save the past that exiled him. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?

From conception to completion, this book took ten years to formulate and write. The movie Dragonheart was a major inspiration. I loved the idea of exploring the friendship between man and dragon. What I mainly struggled with in coming up with a story for the book was the antagonist. Once I came up with Sirak and the Ther-lor, the story really started to come together. As far as Aidan goes, I love a dark, brooding protagonist–a character that begins with a more happy, conventional backstory, and then something major and traumatizing happens and then they’re a completely different, darker character. I love things like that.

Aidan is an intriguing and well developed character. What were some driving ideals behind his character’s development?

Aidan always dreamed of being a knight. In the first half of the book, he believes strongly in the ideas of honor and sacrifice, and all the other things you would expect a knight to believe in. In the second half of the book, Aidan is much more bitter and believes he’s been betrayed. Deep down, he still believes in all the ideals of a knight, but now all these other emotions are pulling him in different directions. As with most main characters, I think most authors put a lot of themselves into them, and that’s certainly true here.

What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?

Friendship was first and foremost. As I said earlier, Dragonheart was a major inspiration for this book–I loved the relationship between Bowen and Draco in that movie. I really wanted Aidan and Iskandor to have that same kind of relationship. The friendship theme is also explored in the relationship between Aidan and Derrick. They have a very different dynamic, but the same type of bond. Betrayal is another theme, of course. I think it’s fascinating how different people can deal with things like that. Closer to the end of the book, the theme is love is explored, and it goes more in depth in The Treachery of a Weasel and The Cry of a Raven.

What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?

With The Roar of a Dragon series done (and there will be more in that world to come, so stay tuned!), my main goal is to finish the zombie apocalypse book that I’m currently working on. I made characters for my two boys in it, so it’s very important for me to finish it. The tentative title of the book is All We Have Left, though that’s likely to change since there’s already a well-known book by that name. As to when it will be available, I’m shooting for the end of 2021, maybe early 2022.

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