Flight of a Prodigy follows an eight-year-old street kid in ancient Rome who, after witnessing the death of his only friend, is captured and thrown into slavery, where he is trained to become an elite warrior. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

The inspiration came from my fascination with how traumatic events, particularly in our formative years, can affect the type of people we become, and how our perception of such events can either damage or expand our minds. I wanted to explore what happens when innocence refuses to yield to a predominant evil, and ancient Rome provided a platform where brutality and glory coexisted.

The death of the boy’s only friend symbolizes the loss of all he had, including his dreams and his childhood itself, while his capture into slavery reflects the harsh truth that fairness is rare. The exceptionally brutal training he is thrown into could be perceived as a punishment or a transformation, an allegory for resilience, identity, and strength through suffering. I wanted to reimagine them in a historical setting that feels both raw and epic.

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

What fascinates me most about the human condition is that, first of all, we are emotional creatures driven by hereditary traits in addition to our learned traits. And when we are forced into confrontation and must defeat the challenge or fall to it, emotions can be cast aside for incredible resolve or enhanced for a potential final stance. We all experience grief and hardship, but what makes great fiction is seeing how characters rise or fall when tested. I’m drawn to resilience because only in due time can we appreciate sadness for providing happiness, or weaknesses for providing strength, or hatred for providing love. For me, fiction thrives when it explores innocence colliding with a brutal reality, weakness evolves into power, and the eternal search for meaning in a chaotic world continues.

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

I enjoy a good coming-of-age story, so one of the most important themes to explore in this book was the loss of innocence, how a kid is forced to confront a brutal reality and reshape his identity in a world that never allowed him to be a child. How, after his escape from servitude, he teeters on a fulcrum between good and evil as he strives to learn more about himself and how to survive in civilization.

Another key theme was poking a little fun at humanity’s futile need to understand everything. What we cannot fully wrap our minds around must be magic, the will of the gods, preordained fate, or perhaps ancient aliens. I leave it for the readers to decide.

Ultimately, I am fascinated by how transformation from grief, through struggle and survival, can propel someone into an event larger than life. Those explorations felt essential to me because they create the kind of epic, emotionally charged fiction I love to read and write.

Will this novel be the start of a series, or are you working on a different story?

Although I would never say never to a sequel, Flight of a Prodigy was written as a stand-alone story. I try to write what I want to read, no endings left open or loose ends untied, no poor editing to save time, and no short stories disguised as a book.

I am currently working on a new Historical Fiction, and I’m starting to get excited for it. It has the potential to be my best work… if I don’t screw it up.

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