King of the Lair follows a group of people in a 1980s rock club who, over the course of one night, experience a chain of events that reveals a dark, tragic story of jealousy, obsession, betrayal, and violence. Since the story originated as the rock opera Grendel’s Lair, how did the idea evolve from a musical production into a novel?

I didn’t initially set out to write a novel. Grendel’s Lair existed as a sung-through rock opera, with the songs carrying the plot and allowing the characters to reveal themselves through the music. When we began preparing for our first listening party, my son Colin pointed out that people needed a way to experience the complete story, not just hear individual songs. He encouraged me to write it, and he was right.

The novel gave me room to go inside the characters in a way the rock opera couldn’t. I could explore Jenny’s conflicted feelings, Johnny’s transformation, Delilah’s desperation, and the vulnerability beneath Vlad’s power. It also allowed me to make the Lair itself a character. The club watches, seduces, rewards, and ultimately consumes those who surrender to it.

The music remained the spine of the story. I didn’t simply turn lyrics into prose. I built the scenes around the emotions and confrontations already living inside the songs. The result is a novel that can stand on its own, but readers can also listen to the album and hear the characters come alive.

How did you develop Vlad’s larger-than-life personality and carefully constructed mythology, and what does Johnny represent that makes him such an immediate threat to Vlad?

Vlad revealed himself to me gradually. He doesn’t need the Lair or the crowd to make him powerful. He simply is. He commands any room he occupies.

That quality was always present in Vittorio, but he didn’t understand it when he was younger. Once he assumed the Vlad persona, he recognized the effect he had on people and learned how to wield it. The name, clothes, hair, confidence, and theatricality don’t create his power. They focus it. Vlad is Vittorio fully aware of what he possesses.

The Lair is the perfect kingdom for him because it reflects and magnifies that presence. He doesn’t become King because the club gives him power. The club responds to the power he already has.

Johnny is an immediate threat because he’s young, gifted, fearless, and unwilling to submit to Vlad’s authority. He walks into Vlad’s kingdom, attracts Jenny, captures the crowd’s attention, and challenges him musically. He doesn’t fully understand what he’s provoking, but Vlad does.

Johnny also represents succession. He has the talent and hunger to become the next King, but he believes he’s nothing like Vlad. The tragedy is that once Johnny takes the throne, he begins to become the man he defeated.

Beneath the music and spectacle, what did you want to explore about emotional control and personal freedom?

I approached the story as a modern Greek tragedy. Each character enters the Lair believing they’re making independent choices, but those choices are shaped by obsession, jealousy, ambition, fear, and the need to be loved.

Vlad’s need for control, Johnny’s pride, Delilah’s jealousy, and Jenny’s emotional attachment all push them toward the tragedy. They aren’t simply victims of fate. Their own choices help create it.

The Lair functions as part kingdom, part arena, and part Greek chorus. The crowd rewards power, encourages conflict, and helps crown one man while tearing another down. Music becomes the language through which the characters challenge, seduce, threaten, and expose one another.

Within that structure, personal freedom becomes the central question. Can Jenny break the cycle, or will she remain bound to the people and patterns that have controlled her? The three endings allow that question to play out through three different choices and three different consequences.

The spectacle may be rock and roll, but the tragedy comes from something ancient and deeply human: people recognizing the truth only after their choices have carried them too far.

Why did you choose to offer multiple possible conclusions for Jenny?

I didn’t want to give Jenny one neat, definitive ending because people caught in controlling relationships don’t all make the same choice. Some leave. Some return. Some survive in ways that may not look like freedom to anyone else.

Each ending grows from something already present in Jenny. Her fear, anger, love, addiction, grief, and desire for independence are all real. Depending on which part of her becomes strongest in that final moment, a different conclusion is possible.

The multiple endings also let me push against the inevitability of the Greek tragedy. The events inside the Lair have already carried the characters toward catastrophe, but Jenny still reaches a point where she can choose what happens next. Fate has brought her to that moment. It doesn’t get to make the final decision for her.

I also wanted the reader to participate. The ending a reader finds most believable, hopeful, or disturbing may reveal something about how that person understands love, survival, and freedom.

The three conclusions aren’t alternate endings added as a gimmick. Together, they form the complete ending because each one represents a different truth about Jenny and the choices available to her.

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