So Easily Swept Away follows a disaffected middle manager whose life, marriage, workplace, and town begin to fracture until a hurricane forces him to discover that belonging is built through shared responsibility. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

It is all too easy to slip into our own self-imposed isolation, mistaking fleeting text and online chat for meaningful connections with others. That is especially true of the community that surrounds us; we live among people but can avoid any real shared experience. I know this isolation all too well. Writing this allowed me to give a voice to the low-key sadness that flows from loneliness. Both Jarvi and Scotty are made of small elements of many different people.

Jarvi is allowed to change without becoming an entirely different or suddenly more admirable person. How did you approach writing that kind of gradual, believable transformation?

I am thankful if readers do feel it is believable and genuine. In my own way, I gravitate toward the ‘anti-hero,’ the protagonist that most of us generally don’t like at first. Or simply may overlook. Again, within the theme of community, much of what passes between us is overlooked. Good people, flawed people, are generally overlooked. I didn’t want to make a story with a stark, obvious moral decision point. If this is a redemption story of sorts, maybe only one person was salvaged. But to save one, you can set the momentum for others to be positively impacted, too.

Mary often seems to embody the practical competence and generosity Jarvi has avoided. What did you want her character to reveal about work, recognition, and community?

As an objectively good person in the story, Mary suffers her own isolation by being coldly overlooked at work. I was concerned about adding race as an aspect of the indifference that holds her back, but let’s face it – that is the condition far too many of our fellow neighbors face. I have always liked the phrase “chance favors the prepared mind.” Mary’s advancement in the story is built upon that. Her spirit of character is not set to counter Jarvi. Instead, it hopefully completes the mental circle most of us swirl within on life’s daily moral choices.

Scotty’s attraction to conspiracy theories is portrayed with unusual empathy. What interested you most about the relationship between loneliness, distrust, and the stories people choose to believe?

Originally, conspiracy was simply a character trait for Scotty. Within his mind, he is deeply connected and aware; it allows him to maintain a semblance of intellect and gravitas that he knows is otherwise missing in his daily life. This is why his attention to it online is sensitive; he is trying to convince himself of some self-worth as much as he may be trying to convince others of some dark global force. Today’s massive expansion of innuendoes, untruths and finger-pointing is an unhealthy evolution of mankind’s use of superstition over time.

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