The Scarecrow’s Secret follows Detective Cal Nowak as the murder of a migrant worker in a small-town corn maze exposes buried family secrets, prejudice, abuse, and a past that refuses to stay hidden. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story? 

Inspired by fall in a small Catskill Mountain town, I explored harvest festivals and other seasonal activities, which provided a suitable backdrop for the established characters in the series. The new characters introduced in the story grew out of the rural farm setting, and the crime developed from their means, opportunities, and motivations.

Cal and Demetrius’s relationship gives the dangers of police work a personal cost. How did you approach balancing their relationship story with the murder investigation? 

To weave the mystery and the romance storylines together, I first figured out the crime, and then considered how the investigation might impact their relationship.

The novel explores racism, homophobia, domestic violence, disability, and prejudice toward migrant workers. How did you work to make those issues integral to the mystery rather than separate from it?​ 

The crime and the players involved, Cal and Demetrius’s interracial gay relationship, and the heated mayoral election, inspired the social issues and themes explored in the novel.

The discoveries surrounding the O’Leary family reveal how deeply the present crime is connected to the past. How early in developing the story did you know what the scarecrow’s “secret” would ultimately represent?​ 

From the beginning, I knew the part the scarecrow played in the crime. But the full extent of the secrets the O’Learys were hiding deepened in subsequent drafts.

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