The Fall is an unsettling psychological story following one night in the life of a man battling opioid addiction, withdrawal, and the lasting wounds of childhood trauma. Where did the idea behind this novel come from?

This story came from necessity. In the Terms Series, readers see Sebastian’s overdose from the outside and watch him fight his way toward recovery. What they never saw was the night from inside his head. Showing him at his worst gives readers a fuller sense of how far he travels across the series.

It’s also personal. I’ve watched loved ones struggle with addiction, and I know the toll it takes. The disease twists someone’s personality and morals during their hardest moments. My goal was to explore the difference between who Sebastian is beneath his addiction, how the disease changes his behavior, and the pain that led him there. I kept it to a single night on purpose. Addiction shrinks a person’s whole world down to the next fix, and I wanted readers to feel the suffocation Sebastian felt that night.

The hallucinations give the story an almost horror-like quality. Did you consciously draw on horror conventions?

No, actually. When I sent the first draft to my beta readers, many of whom had firsthand experience, they told me to push the hallucinations further. They shared their own specific experiences of drug-induced psychosis for me to draw from as I shaped the story, and that changed the book. If it reads like horror, it’s because that’s how they told me it felt.

The structure came from the same place. The fragmented sentences, the repetition, and the abrupt jumps between memory and the present mirror how Sebastian’s mind works in withdrawal. His thoughts loop, his past keeps intruding, and he can’t always tell what’s real. Then, as the high takes hold, his mind warms, and the sentences grow longer and more fluid to carry that shift. I wanted readers to feel trapped in that cycle the way he is.

What do you hope readers feel toward Sebastian, even when his behavior is difficult to accept?

That’s a hard question. When I set out to write the Holt Universe, my goal was to tell stories, not to interpret them for the people who read them. Everyone who picks up The Fall arrives from a different headspace, with different lives and different experiences, and all of that shapes how they read it. Someone who has loved a person through addiction may see Sebastian very differently from someone who hasn’t, and both readings are valid. So, I guess, I don’t have a hope for how readers feel about him. That part belongs to them.

What I can say is that I didn’t write him to be excused or condemned. I don’t sanitize hard material or soften it to hold a reader’s hand. I wrote him to be honest: cruel and frightened, selfish and lonely, all at once. Flawed and human, just like the rest of us.

Is there another character in the Holt Universe whose story you are especially eager to explore?

Absolutely! I’m especially eager to explore Rosie, the matriarch of the Holt family, and Ava, a sleeper character in the Terms Series with a much bigger role to play than readers realize.

Their stories intertwine, and that’s what excites me most about the Holt Universe. At its heart, it’s a multigenerational family saga, stretching from Rosie’s youth to her grandchildren and beyond. What one generation lives through shapes the next, and I want to explore those lives through the eyes of the people who lived them.

The stories often overlap in time, meaning two characters can live through the same moment and walk away with completely different truths, shaped by their own histories, experiences, and biases, much like readers do.

That’s also why I love the idea of rereading these books. On a first read, you might question a character’s motives or finish with unanswered questions. But people aren’t omniscient, and neither are my characters, my readers, or even me. Each book reveals another piece of the larger picture, changing how you understand everything that came before it.

Rosie and Ava are where that really begins. Trinity, releasing January 30, 2027, follows Rosie’s journey to becoming the woman readers know from the Terms Series. Running alongside it is Ava’s Golden Trilogy, beginning with Shattered, which explores those same years from her perspective. Readers will encounter the same events and the same people, but through two very different sets of eyes.

And that’s the part I can’t wait for readers to discover. Neither woman has the whole story, but together, they offer readers a perspective neither could provide alone.

Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Amazon