Have You Seen Him follows a weary public defender who discovers a missing-person ad bearing his childhood face and a stranger’s name, leading him to unravel a buried past, a vanished family, and secrets hidden by his adoptive father. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

Soon after we meet the book’s main character, David, he’s sifting through his mail and sees a missing child ad with his own face. The inspiration for the book is a scenario somewhat similar to that—I was sorting my mail and saw an ad for a child who went missing when he was 10. The computer-progressed image showed him at 40 years old. I thought about how this boy’s family had been searching for three decades, never giving up trying to find him. The faces haunted me. I tore it out and carried it around in my bag for a while, then sat down to write a story about it.

Was the character’s backstory something you always had, or did it develop as you were writing?

When I first began this story, I was in the process of reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a nonfiction book that chronicles actual events in medical science. I took a few facts from that book and created a “what if” scenario—imagining what would have happened if a number of things had played out differently than what actually occurred in the true story. The backstory developed organically from there.

Do you think there’s a single moment in everyone’s life, maybe not as traumatic, that is life-changing?

I do think that at some point in life we each come to some wise realization—about ourselves, our purpose, the nature of our existence—that deeply impacts us and points the way forward. It could be as simple as a brief encounter with a wise stranger, an event that forces us to rise to the occasion, or even a long, winding journey to trusting in our own strength. I believe we each have key moments that, in retrospect, put us on a certain path to finding out who we really are. In his quest to find his true family, amidst all the action and adventure, David deals with all of the above.

What is the next book that you are working on, and when can your fans expect it to be out?

Have You Seen Him is the first in a trilogy, so it’s back to my notebook to work on the second installment. Readers say the ending is satisfying, but I also left a few questions open, so it’s pen to page to see what happens next with these characters! The goal for this new book is fall of 2026!

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