Every Silent Thing follows a shy and deaf twenty-three-year-old woman working in the U.S. Embassy in Paris who discovers a gunshot victim in the bathroom, where she is given a mysterious thumb drive. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

The inspiration for Every Silent Thing involves several avenues: Claire and Megan’s characters were derived from my identical twin nieces. Having lived in Europe for a few years, I wanted to use a European setting for the story. Another niece had spent considerable time touring Paris (a city I never had the chance to include in my journeys) so with her support, I created the Paris settings. My own hearing impairment gave rise to exploring deafness in a fictional story. Desiring a deaf woman as my protagonist, I consulted a deaf female author I knew from Canada to obtain her perspective on deafness.

Claire is a young and excited woman who is starting her dream job in Paris when everything changes in a moment. Do you think there’s a single moment in everyone’s life, maybe not as traumatic, that is life-changing?

I absolutely do believe in life-changing moments, having had several such moments in my own life – traumatic and non-traumatic.

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

The themes of importance to me in the creation of Every Silent Thing were mistaken identity, the family dynamic, sibling love, a Phoenix Rising theme for both Claire and Megan, and personal growth.

Can you tell us more about what’s in store for Claire and the direction of the second book?

The second in the trilogy, Never Say A Word, is the story of a fanatical Italian millionaire’s kidnapping scheme to make Claire his wife. The story is set in Rome, Italy, and Paris, France, and involves themes of Stockholm syndrome, sibling love, mistaken identity, and aberrant behavior. The third book in the trilogy, Breaking Silence, will be released this summer.

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