Donors follows a brilliant scientist whose revolutionary program for growing organ-compatible biological hosts spirals into a fight over identity, freedom, and who has the right to own a life created by science. What sources informed this novel’s development?

The earliest spark for DONORS started with a group conversation about becoming an organ donor. That conversation evolved into organ wait times, surgery costs, and success rates. Eventually, someone brought up the idea of transplanting organs from animals. After that conversation, I didn’t think much about it, but one idea stayed with me. Could we grow viable organs? However, I didn’t want to hurt animals. Then, could we grow a vessel? From there, the story took shape, and questions emerged. What would the human stories behind those breakthroughs be? The scientists wrestling with moral boundaries, the patients waiting for miracles, and the philosophical questions about what makes a life “authentic.” Those emotional threads, together with some good old-fashioned intrigue, wove into the foundation of the novel.

Joseph begins the novel convinced that Donors are biological tools rather than people. What interested you about making someone with that worldview the character through whom readers confront the question of personhood?​

I wanted to explore the worldview that Donors were tools rather than people. Joseph gave me a way to explore personhood from the inside out. I was drawn to the tension of a character who is brilliant, well-intentioned, and potentially wrong. By filtering the story through Joseph, readers experience the slow erosion of certainty as he confronts the consequences of his own beliefs. His perspective forces us to sit with uncomfortable questions: If you create life for a purpose, does that purpose define life? At what point does responsibility become complicity? Watching Joseph struggle with those realizations made the moral journey more intimate and more honest.

The alternating “NOW” and “THEN” structure gradually changes the meaning of earlier events. How did you plan those two timelines so that the revelations would feel surprising but still earned?​

I wanted the dual-timeline structure to feel like a slow-burning fuse. I mapped both threads side by side, making sure each “THEN” chapter planted emotional or thematic seeds that would bloom in the “NOW” storyline. The goal wasn’t to hide information, but to let meaning evolve. The reveals weren’t meant to be “twists.” They were intended as shifts in understanding. When the timelines finally collide, the reader should feel both surprise and inevitability, as if all the pieces were quietly aligning from the start.

Beneath the conspiracy and action, the novel keeps returning to identity, belonging, and the right to choose your own life. What do you hope readers are still thinking about after they finish the book?​

At its core, DONORS is about identity, belonging, and the right to define your own existence. I hope readers walk away thinking about how we assign value to human life, and how easily systems can strip that value away, especially when convenience or profit enters the equation. I want them to reflect on the fragile line between innovation and exploitation. I want people to realize it takes courage to claim autonomy in a world determined to categorize you. If the story lingers, I hope it’s because readers see echoes of these questions in their own lives and in the choices society is making right now.

Author Links: Website | GoodReads | X | Instagram | Facebook | TikTok | YouTube