Life After Fall follows a man who spends the greater part of his life mistaking control for peace, tracing his life from the volatility of his childhood to the fear in his adult relationships. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

Eli’s healing is not a straight, linear journey. I did not want to write a story where adversity happens in the beginning and then the character moves steadily upward toward peace. That is not how real pain usually works.

Eli tries to heal, but he also regresses. He returns to anger, resentment, fear, and old patterns before finding his way forward again. To me, that felt more honest. Real tragedy does not disappear simply because someone decides to move on. It can resurface in relationships, in memory, in silence, and in the moments when a person thinks they have already overcome it.

I wanted to show that healing is often two steps forward and one step back. It is a process, and often a long one. Life After Fall is not a fairy tale about wounds magically closing. It is a story about the slow, painful, imperfect work of learning how to live after being broken.

The novel traces how childhood trauma continues to shape Eli’s adult relationships. Why was it important for you to show that healing is rarely as simple as leaving the past behind?

Because leaving the past behind is often what people want to do, but it is rarely how healing actually works.  You cannot “sweep it under the rug”.  Childhood pain does not always disappear just because someone grows older, moves away, starts a career, or falls in love. Often, it follows quietly. It shows up in how someone reacts to conflict, how they receive affection, how they fear abandonment, or how they try to control what cannot be controlled.

With Eli, I wanted to show that healing is not a straight line, which is why in the book it seems he starts healing, regresses back to anger and bitterness, on to healing again. It is uncomfortable, humbling, and often repetitive. He has to recognize not only what happened to him, but how those experiences shaped the man he became. True healing requires honesty. It asks a person to stop running, stop defending, and finally look inward. That was important to the heart of the book because Eli’s journey is not simply about surviving pain. It is about learning how to live, love, and find peace without being ruled by it.

The next book I am working on continues Eli’s journey, but in a very different setting and with a different emotional focus. The working title I am currently drawn to is Trovare il Cuore, which means To Find the Heart. While I am still allowing the story and title to fully take shape, that phrase captures much of what I am exploring.

The story takes place in a small Italian town, where Eli and Anna begin a new chapter of their lives and open an antique shop. At the center of the story is an unusual old clock that does not simply tell time, but represents something deeper—a state of being, memory, love, and the mystery of what it means to truly live from the heart.

Where Life After Fall is about breaking, surviving, and searching for peace, this next book explores what happens after a person begins to heal and must learn how to live, love, and remain open. The book is currently in progress, and while I do not have an official release date yet, I am excited about where the story is going and look forward to sharing more as it develops.

What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?

I only have an outline or idea of this story, so I have no clue when or if it will ever be published. After all Life After Fall is my first published book but second book written.

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