Overlord follows a group of unlikely companions who form a team to survive amidst multiple catastrophic natural disasters due to climate change. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

I read a New York Times magazine article several years ago about incarcerated women pressed into service as firefighters to combat wildfires.  The occasion of the article was that one of the women had died while fighting wildfires.  What struck me was that despite the experience they were gaining their criminal records would prevent them from ever becoming firefighters in real life. 

What sort of justice is this?  What kind of a thank you for people risking their lives?  To me, this wasn’t justice, this wasn’t a thank you, this was the state using people as disposable assets to do with what it saw fit. 

That was the inspiration for the hopeless salvage team that is the core of the Overlord salvage team, and it seemed right that it be led by a woman who has been through a lot by the time the readers meet her. 

The other core of the novel, rapid onset climate disaster, was inspired by a what if that I’ve been thinking about for awhile – an awful lot is happening all around us, particularly if you start with Hurricane Katrina where we effectively lost a city for a long period of time.  I put the two ideas together and that’s how Overlord was developed.

Each of the main characters is unique, and despite their differences, they blend well together, forming a cohesive team. Did you create an outline for the characters in the story before you started writing, or did the character’s personalities grow organically as you were writing?

Since Madison was a given as a female (and Cuban-American given the way the story starts out) and as the lead, I built the cast around her and what I thought would be a good group of skills and experiences to have – they work well together in the field, but it’s not like they are buddy-buddy when they are not working.

This novel touches on more than just how Climate Change impacts the physical land. What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?

1. That we are not remotely prepared for anything like this to happen. 
2. That we never want to let things get to this point because once they do, we’re effectively done for.
3. The incredible negative impact anything like this would have on the US and the world, in terms of the global economy, which is only hinted at, as well as food production and a whole host of other things. 

Will this novel be the start of a series, or are you working on a different story?

My next novel is a continuation of a different series, one that got me started as a writer many moons ago. 

But Overlord is the beginning of a trilogy which I am hard at work writing now. 

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