The Gap follows a group of migrants who are forced through the Darién Gap by traffickers, they encounter cruelty, hellish landscapes, and things that blur the line between survival and damnation. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

I had actually been in Panama at the time, preparing to move there with my wife and daughter. Unfortunately, that was an adventure we were unable to complete. I was flying home when the idea for ‘The Gap’ came to me. I had read about the human trafficking problem there, and done a bit of research on the area just out of curiosity. It’s such an interesting place. Primordial and beautiful and dangerous, like Earth must’ve been before mankind walked it. Like Skull Island in King Kong. And I pictured an obelisk, standing in a jungle, and that was it. I was off. I was fortunate; the story came to me complete on that plane, beginning, middle, and end. Many of the characters, the situations, everything.  I didn’t have to fight that part, which was good. The languages were hard enough!

What first drew you to the Darién Gap as a setting for a horror novel?

The fact that no one had ever written any fiction about that area, and the timeliness of it. People were just starting to learn what the Darién Gap was, where it was, etc. The problem of human trafficking was growing in the Gap. And it’s so primordial; I wanted to write a Lovecraftian horror novel, and I couldn’t imagine a better setting for cosmic horror than the Darién. It’s dangerous just to go there, for real. The water is full of parasites and amoebas, the black palms have bacteria in their thorns, the snakes are all deadly, the insects are rampant, tropical diseases like malaria and dysentery are common, the heat is crushing, the rain is ceaseless, the guerillas will make you disappear. It’s a place human beings don’t belong. It seems a perfect setting for the worst possible things to happen.

The novel suggests that the line between human and monster is dangerously thin. Is that the core question you wanted readers to wrestle with?

I wanted to blur those lines, definitely. The creatures in ‘The Gap’ feel a real kinship with Pinche, the lead coyote in the story. He’s just like them; he uses people. When he needs to, he sacrifices them. He’s amoral, ruthless, but still human. It’s his willingness to bring people out there into the Gap that makes everything that follows possible. They monsters, the ACTUAL monsters, need a human conduit to act on their behalf, and Pinche is their man. He’s not aware of his complicity, but he’s doing their bidding in the end. In more real terms, the toll human trafficking takes on people in the the Darién Gap is horrific. The level of barbarism and depravity on display there on a daily basis would make most people wish they’d gone their whole life without seeing it. Anything awful that you can imagine occurring to human beings on this Earth does occur there. Rape, torture, kidnapping, murder, forced prostitution, forced drug smuggling. The buying and selling of men, women and children. Slavery, brutality, all relying on humanity to exist. It’s a hopeless, scary region. Setting a horror book there seemed like a natural fit. Half the work was done for me, because the setting is so dangerous in real life.

What reactions do you expect or hope for after someone finishes reading The Gap?

Well, I hope they tell all their friends and neighbors, and coworkers and complete strangers, even, to go right out and buy a copy. SEVERAL copies!! LOL! Honestly, I just hope they enjoyed the story and that the book scared them. Genuinely made them uncomfortable and grossed out. I think horror stories should be as scary as possible. If people buy a ticket for a roller coaster ride, they should get one! So, I hope my readers think the book did that, scared them and made them feel like they were immersed. Sweating, hungry, picking bugs off their necks as they trudge towards some unknown future. I know the inclusion of foreign languages can be challenging, but I wanted the reader to experience the trip the same as anyone in the book did. Coming to grips with differences in culture and language, having to adapt, just gives the reader that much more truth, in my opinion. I hope that anyone who reads ‘The Gap’ has never read another book like it!

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