In The Bedfordshire Warlock, a warlock gifted with powers he doesn’t utilize begins to question his fate when he discovers the dark secrets surrounding the new town where he and his mother have settled. Where did the idea for this book come from?

I have always been fascinated by the dark history of The Salem Witch Trials. What if there were actual witches and warlocks with supernatural powers in colonial America who were the initial cause of the hysteria and became victims themselves in the execution of the innocents? In addition, when I was a little boy, the thought of having powers like those of witches and warlocks I saw on television and movies was an obsession of mine. So, in a sense, Dorian’s story is the story I wish had happened to me (the powers, not the Ascension plot line) when I was a kid.

What was the inspiration for Dorian’s traits and dialogue?

In my mind’s eye, Dorian Leeves physical description matches what I imagined Dorian Gray looked like in Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece (the inspiration for Dorian’s name in the novel as he points out). My protagonists are amalgams of my personal traits and characters I admire from literature and media. For example, I’m a scientist and an educator so there is at least one scientific teacher in the mix for every novel I pen. As for the active dialogue, Dorian reflects my thoughts on the issues facing young gay men in the early 1990s during the gay liberation movement when I was also a graduate student in the biological sciences.

What draws you to the paranormal genre, and makes it ripe for you to write such a great mystery story in it?

First, thank you for saying it is a great mystery. Second, I have always been drawn to mysteries involving the supernatural, especially those falling into the horror genre. Because I was in higher education for 25 years, I was expected to write and publish research-based articles for scientific journals. So, the last thing I want to write for pleasure is a strictly factual-based story. The flexibility I have when writing about a world outside the natural laws is freeing. Adding a mystery to the storyline makes it more interesting.

What is the next book that you are working on, and when can we expect to see it released?

My publisher bought the rights to my first self-published novel The Malevolent, a graphic ghost story set in Maine in the early 1980’s. The coast of Maine was a favorite family vacation state when I was a teenager in the 1980s. It is written under my nom de plume, P.F. Roquelaure, because I was still a professor at the time and the last thing I needed was for my students to do an internet search and have this disturbing novel pop up! It will be out in 2025. My literary agency is also shopping my latest novel Bloodstone, set in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, which involves pirates and blood magic. Like all of my novels, the setting is a place where I have lived. In this case, it is a love letter to a beach town where my family vacationed for 45 summers in a row!

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