The Fifth Anomaly follows an urban exploration team who are investigating an abandoned prison known for paranormal activity, where they discover their data and sense of time start to bend around the anomaly. What inspired Hillrose Penitentiary as the central setting?  

That’s actually a funny topic. The entire story started from an approach of “Could I compose a good creepypasta.” Found footage, especially ghost hunters played a part in that, and penitentiaries carry a lot of weight in those circles. From the outside, it’s a set of walls containing dark things and keeping them from bleeding into the world. I just leaned into that containment failure.

The central idea that “observation changes the observer” drives the story. Where did that concept originate?  

There’s not a lot in the horror space that scares me anymore, but one thing that has never ceased to unsettle me is the idea that “our assumptions about our world are inaccurate.” Look at the film Oculus for example. There’s something terrifying about “My mind tells me I’m biting into an apple, but it’s actually a lightbulb”. That extends into the premise of the book in the sense that  “our world is not a closed system, it is a feedback loop.” Cosmic horror to me is basically anxiety codified into prose. Once you start thinking that way, everything looks fluid.

Do you see the book as horror told through technology, or horror about technology?  

Horror told through technology. The horror comes from realizing how small we are and how little control we have over objective reality. Technology is just the lens. Discord logs, camera feeds, digital timestamps that stop making sense are just the artifacts we see through them. Yomi uses technology as a medium because she understands observation and documentation better than the humans do. The screens aren’t the threat; they’re just showing you what was always there.

What will the next book in that series be about, and when will it be published?  

The next book, The Chuin Cascade: A Threshold Chronicle, has a complete first draft at 70,000 words. I’m currently doing a revision pass based on what I learned from editing Book 1. Cleaning up show-don’t-tell issues, tightening sentence structure, all the unglamorous craft work that makes the difference. Once that’s done, it goes to professional editing. I’m targeting late 2026 for release. The companion album, Threshold II: Catharsis, is already live on Spotify – the mythology was built first, so I could release the music ahead of the book.

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