The Soul-Sung centers around a village boy who becomes the unwilling bearer of a world-shaping force called the Song. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

The inspiration for this story came from a short story I wrote late one night while on third Shift. The idea wasn’t really about one boy bearing responsibility, but about the Idea of change as a whole and how it affects everyone and everything. Denny is just one aspect of that. The one whose destiny is forced on them. The song represents the force of change in the world.

How did you approach writing a character who carries something so large while still feeling small in the world?

I approached it the same way you would approach a boy who has a weight dropped on him in the real world. I was raised early on in very troubling times and circumstances. This was not my fault or my family’s. But I had a weight, a burden pressed onto me. I was the last male heir to my family’s name and line. I know what it’s like to carry a burden and have to find a way to swim against the current while also having undiagnosed ADHD.

The novel suggests that remembering can be both necessary and painful. How do you navigate that tension?

Memory, good or bad, is a forge. It creates who we are. Looking back on who we were and what we have done is painful, but it gives us a chance to continue. To learn and to grow. I am the person I am today because I never once forgot where I came from. I never once looked back and saw only pain. I saw purpose. I saw love. I saw all the tools that would push me to be all that I could be. Remembering is pain. In the novel, I lean on this. Everybody carries a part of their past, and that past drives their actions. 

Can you give us a peek inside the second book in The Vaeritas Saga? Where will it take readers?

The Second Book will expand the world. The theme of change becomes a pressure cooker. Characters that we thought we knew become lost in their own ideology. There are a few surprises in store. It’s important to note that no one in the world of Vaeritas is safe from their own choices. Every Character we have met thus far who has lived will return. And we will even see the arrival of a Draken that makes Albion seem kind. His own son.

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