The Seasonal Killer follows five misfit friends who suspect they’ve witnessed a serial killer disposing of a body, but when adults dismiss their claims, the friends launch their own dangerous investigation before the murderer strikes again. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

The Seasonal Killer began as a celebration of a time in my life and the friends I had then. Having the protagonists face off against a potentially prolific serial killer was a way to demonstrate, in an extreme way, the insoluble bonds between the characters. Further, I liked the idea of pitting the alleged killer, a man with the veneer of normalcy and conformity, against a group of young outcasts.

How did you develop the five members of the Subpar Squad and their individual personalities, and what role do music, arcade games, comic books, and other cultural details play in establishing the boys’ personalities and friendships?

Developing the characters was the easy part. At that age, these were my best friends. A couple of the main characters were composites of people I grew up with. But the real Subpar Squad knows which characters were modeled after them.

Their shared interests and other cultural details are critically important. Having common interests solidifies their bonds, but the choice of interests is also important. They weren’t athletes or scholars. They didn’t have a support network of parents or teachers. Their interests were escapes. No matter what was happening at school or home, they found an escape in a song or a comic book or game of Dungeons and Dragons. In those worlds, they could be whoever they wanted to be—the only limit was their imagination.

How did you approach building suspense while keeping the boys’ reactions believable for their age and experience?

Keeping it believable based on their age and experience while handling grown-up situations was a challenge, but it was also the most rewarding part. Though my friends and I never investigated a possible serial murderer living next door, there were plenty of adventures and intense experiences from that time to draw from, extrapolating what might have occurred given the personalities involved.  

What do you hope younger readers discover about growing up during that period, and what might older readers recognize from their own childhoods?

Certainly, a lot of older readers will recognize, and hopefully enjoy, the cultural trip down memory lane, reliving the sense of freedom and power of imaginative play. For the younger readers, it may be informative about their parents’ childhood, but also, I think the story transcends the period backdrop. After my son read my book, he found the debate about rock guitarists particularly entertaining. He didn’t know the musicians and wasn’t a fan of the style of music, but he could relate it to the spirit of the conversation. He recalled similar lively discussions among his friends about basketball players and teams.

Also, I think most will relate to the friendship bonds at that age. Those bonds allowed you the comfort to passionately speak your opinion while vehemently disagreeing with your friends’ views, occasionally throwing in a brutal insult, still knowing that you were in a safe place. Regardless of what was said, when it mattered, they’d still have your back. It was a golden but transient time, timelessly bittersweet.

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