Into the Mist follows a woman running from heartbreak who is drawn to the mysteries behind the walls of the abandoned Victorian home she stumbles across. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

In the mostly rural area I live in it is not uncommon to see abandoned Victorian houses tucked away here and there along the country roads. As I began writing Into the Mist, I thought again of those lonely old mansions, some of them still standing strong, and I instantly pictured the main character Cheyenne, in her emotional distress, being drawn to one of them out of desperation. And then while she’s still reeling, experiencing a sort of disconnect from reality as she seeks to escape her own life by obsessing over the previous inhabitants of the home, which in turn leaves her susceptible to certain effects. And the story just evolved from there.

What are some things that you find interesting about the human condition that you think make for great fiction?

How people cope with life’s ups and downs, in particular when ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances are jarred out of their normal lives and how they react to it — the good, the bad, and my favorite, the absurd.

Time travel fiction always intrigues me. What do you find is the key to getting it just right? 

I believe the key is to focus on the characters and what they are experiencing, providing just enough explanation and detail to make it believable while not getting mired down in the methodology and technicalities of it, especially if you don’t have the necessary background and know-how. The mind-boggling and possibly long-term ramifications of time travel to me holds much more weight than any theoretical mechanism causing it to occur. The wonder of being able to step into the past, or the future, and experience it firsthand is what I think makes it truly compelling.

Can we look forward to more work from you soon? What are you currently working on? 

I do have one novel, The House on Chestnut Circle, that I recently completed coming soon. In it a man follows his ex-wife to another state to be near his son and moves into a house that soon has him embroiled in a decades-old mystery involving a woman’s disappearance. And, in addition to that book, I am also working on a collection of short stories and a dystopian novel to follow sometime after.

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