The Dark Without follows a young woman living in a world where the Earth is dying, who is abducted by aliens and becomes a powerful mystical leader charged with bringing Earth back from the brink of death. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

When I first started, I had no idea where it was heading, but I knew it had to be along the lines of a total power failure and the ensuing outcome of what that brings. But by the third chapter, things started to veer sideways and new ideas hit me all at once. Having aliens in the mix wasn’t in the plans at first. But if I’d kept to the original, it would’ve been pretty drab and predictable, with the backdrop of an Earth falling dreadfully into a dystopian apocalypse with no hope of ever coming out of it. I did toy around with having the aliens as the good guys, but that would’ve been boring, and again, predictable. So I made the protagonist, Esme, the morally grey character – one who the reader would hopefully root for, yet be unsettled with her choices.

The inspiration for the “original” story came about several years ago during a power cut. I sat there feeling absolutely stranded and at a loss of what to do next. No power meant no WiFi, television, or even the air conditioner. What a cushy, entitled life we live in now, right? And from there, a thought bubble formed and a story – what if the power never came back on, what would happen? What would people do? And that ended up the base of the story.

I find the world you created in this novel brimming with possibilities. Where did the inspiration for the setting come from, and how did it change as you were writing?

The setting just sort of manifested organically. I keep a list of names for future characters in future books (which author doesn’t, right?), and I grabbed “Esme” because it sounded right for the story. A simple, classic name, and a little unusual from the norm. From there, I went with it, and decided she didn’t have to be the typical “English-speaking” protagonist, and why not have things happen in Spain, rather than the usual places…and from there, it spiralled onto a wider platform.

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

Not anything in particular, but by the time I was a quarter way into the first draft, I knew this was going to be a dark story. A vengeful story. One that would reflect humans at their core, as in what and how we would react in extreme situations and conditions. Just seeing what’s happening around the world is enough to understand what we can and will do, especially to another human being. That was the motivator for Esme’s character. A normal, young girl who is thrown into an impossible, horrific reality. What would she do, and how would she do it? And to what extremes would she go to, to get it done?

Will there be a follow-up novel to this story? If so, what aspects of the story will the next book cover?

Tempting, but no. While the end of the story left things ambiguous, the story is done. I enjoyed writing it.

Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Threads | Instagram | Facebook | Website | Amazon