Pilgrims is a riveting near-future dystopian epic where humanity faces moral decay, societal collapse, and alien annihilation, forcing desperate characters to grapple with their darkest choices. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

I’ve never felt satisfied with first-contact sci-fi stories where aliens show up at Earth and we learn we’re not alone. That’s because the reasons the aliens come to Earth don’t usually stand up to scrutiny. For example, the aliens in Independence Day come to Earth because they want our “resources” despite the fact that if you can travel across interstellar space you will encounter all the resources you could ever want on lifeless rocks that don’t have pesky Earthlings defending them. The same goes for The Three Body Problem. Incredible novel, but the Trisolarans have such amazing technology that they don’t really need Earth for their species to survive. The motives are usually weak.

So I wanted to create a first-contact sci-fi story where the aliens’ reason for coming to Earth stands up to scrutiny. And, as outlandish as it sounds, aliens that are devout believers of an Earth religion (in my novel – Catholicism) have a very compelling reason to travel all the way to Earth. It’s such a good motivation in fact, that I was shocked to see no other writer had ever addressed it. And so, I took it upon myself to do so.

Austin DeSantis is an intriguing and well-developed character. What were some driving ideals behind your character’s development?

Pilgrims is a sci-fi retelling of Saint Augustine’s Confessions which was published sometime around 400AD. Now that’s an old book, and yet we still study it because it paints such a brilliant portrait of a troubled man finding his redemption. That’s something we can understand across the ages.

So I kept Saint Augustine as a vision when crafting my protagonist – Austin DeSantis. He is struggling at the beginning of the novel but, through the various trials he encounters, he grows, albeit in an enormously painful way.

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

Forgiveness – why we need it and why it is so hard. That is the core theme. But the book also explores why it can be so difficult for us to change our minds sometimes because of the things that are unknown even to ourselves that hold us back.

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

Austin’s story is not over. The book concludes about fifty days after aliens arrive on Earth and proclaim to be Catholic. What happens to society ten years after such a momentous event? Fifty years? There is still so much story to tell. And I expect the sequels will be coming out over the next few years.

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