In Stranger in the Valley, a former soldier finds himself the prime suspect in a murder investigation and begins the search for the killer with the help of a group of supernatural sidekicks. Where did the idea for this story come from?

The idea for this story is a bit of a love story itself. When I first met my spouse 18 years ago, she suffered from PTSD-related night terrors that were affecting her health. I started reading her to sleep at night, and it helped immensely. After a few weeks, her night terrors ceased completely, so I kept reading. I read the entire Harry Potter series to her, which she loved and wanted to follow along, but since she fell asleep after just a few paragraphs, it took nearly 10 years to complete the entire series. Then I read it to her a second time, which took half that time, and then she wanted something new. We tried lots of different stories, and none were working for her, so she finally asked me to tell her a story of my own creation, and that night I invented the character of Digger. She loved it and wanted more. So I started writing this story every day, knowing I needed to keep far enough ahead to have new material to read her to sleep. I completed the novel in 2019, and spent a year editing and revising it to its final form. Now I’m nearly finished with the second novel in the series, and I still read my spouse to sleep every night.

I find your characters to be fascinating. Do you have a favorite among the characters in your novel?

That’s a hard question because I love them all in their own ways. The character of Brighed is based on my spouse, who is a hospice RN, but otherwise very similar in looks and strength and independence. So, she’s up there. Digger is my most fun character to write. She’s a quintessential Dwarf trying desperately to change her own fate. I’m also deeply in love with the character of Skinner. He’s a man of real integrity. I think my favorite of them all, however, is Fergus. He’s a complex character who basically is the head of a crime family of werewolves. What I love most about Fergus is the purity of his motivations. He will always put the best interest of his wolf pack ahead of all others, regardless of the rules or the law. He is fiercely protective of his pack, even more so than of his own children. He’s an anti-hero, with centuries of wisdom under his belt.

Within this book, you flawlessly blend mystery and the paranormal. It takes exceptional talent to blend the two genres. How did you go about blending the two genres without disrupting the story?

Thank you for the compliment. It is indeed a real challenge, which is part of why I wanted to do it. I have always loved both genres, and the story structures of each can be complimentary if you focus on the characters’ personalities rather than their fantastical elements. There is an old writing axiom about writing great stories, sometimes attributed to Mark Twain, which says to take a few characters you like and place them in an unusual situation to see what they would do. That was my approach, to create and build a story that is about these unusual characters, who can be anything from a werewolf to a sasquatch to a human. Those are just their attributes. How those kinds of characters might behave if presented with a mystery is what I wanted to write.

Can you give readers a peek into book 2? When will it be available?

I am hard at work on Book 2 and am scheduled to have the completed final draft by mid-march. It takes about six months for my editors and others involved in the process to move the book from final draft to publication, and the release date is tentatively scheduled for mid-September. In the meantime, I will be releasing the audiobook version of Stranger in the Valley this spring. Some things readers can look forward to in Book 2: A major character is kidnapped, Fergus is found, the Queendom Council meets for the first time in 80 years in Mystic Valley to consider intervening in the fate of humanity, there is a reckoning for Aengus, and readers will finally learn who is the real Magnivald. Book 3 is already in storyboard development.

Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Amazon