Gaia’s Game follows the sheriff of a small town as he investigates what is killing the townspeople, trying to find answers before they are all dead. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?

We’ve been destroying our planet for centuries, and we have now reached a true tipping point. We all know it, but it seems like such an impossible problem to fix, and it’s hard to worry about what might happen years from now when we already have so much on our respective plates. We are the proverbial frog in a pot, swimming merrily along even as the water gets hotter and hotter. Instead of setting the story in one possible future, I wanted to bring the future to the present and drop the global crisis right on our heads. The Gaia Hypothesis proposes that the Earth is a living entity, so maybe it won’t be a slow descent into the inevitable after all. Maybe this living Earth will reach a point where she has finally had enough of us and simply wants us gone. I wanted the threat to be up close and personal, and in Gaia’s Game, it’s as personal as it gets.

What intrigues you about the horror and paranormal genres that led you to write this book?

Fear is the most fundamental of emotions. It hits with an immediacy and impact unlike any other emotion, so a scary story will stay with the reader longer than most. And since the scariest stories are the ones in which we can see ourselves taking part, I like to throw everyday, ordinary people into extraordinary situations and let them fend for themselves. The horror in Gaia’s Game spans the world, but it is shown through the eyes of a handful of people in small-town America in order to bring the horror home. If I can tell my story in a way that gives a reader nightmares, I will have affected them more than a hundred cautionary tales about what we’re doing to this planet.

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

First and foremost, I want to entertain. Everything else is secondary. But telling the story in a microcosm means that instead of just having characters react, I get to dig into why they reacted that way, and how their reactions affect the reactions of others around them. There is good and bad in all of us, and I love to explore that gray area where motivations mean as much as deeds. Doing the right thing is easy when it’s easy, but how difficult would doing the right have to get before doing the wrong thing starts to look attractive? And who’s to say what the right thing is to begin with? A lot of wrongs have been done with good intentions.

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

I am working on the next book in my Stage 3 series as well as another standalone, but the next book to come out will be Miracle Man, due out later this year. It is about a simple man who acquires the ability to heal with a touch, and that power slowly but surely turns him into a monster. It is by far the darkest thing I’ve ever written, and I expect it to be rather controversial. I can’t wait to hear the feedback.

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