Stupid Gravity follows a sharp but disgraced software engineer who is on probation, witnesses the abduction of a girl from a homeless shelter, and has to find a way to save her without breaking her parole. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

I created Alex/Liliane as a secondary character in my first attempt at writing a novel. That particular Not Ready for Primetime manuscript went into a drawer and never came back out, but the rocky backstory of the strange little hacker girl with the gray-fendered Mustang stuck with me. A few years later, I brought her back in a NaNoWriMo project that morphed into a full first draft, Shadow Girl. A discussion with Hank Phillipi Ryan at a writer’s conference led me to realize that what I had really written was the second book in the series and that I needed to go back and develop the origin story. The result was Stupid Gravity.

Alex can’t seem to catch a break and just wants to get her life back on track, but the universe seems to have other plans for her. What was your inspiration for their characters’ interactions and backstories?

Back in the Nineties and Aughts, I used to hang out at a carriage house on Capitol Hill where first one and then another of my friends lived and sold weed. I’ve sometimes reflected on the irony of that little business operating comfortably and profitably for over twenty years while hundreds of more technically legitimate Denver businesses came and went. Visitors stopping in for pot or just a cup of coffee and conversation included lawyers, college professors, two dominatrixes who lived next door, one published poet, a former Penthouse pet, numerous players in the local recreational pharmaceuticals scene, a PO stopping in to buy weed from his probationer, and many more unique Capitol Hill specimens. The incidents and people from that carriage house still provide a wealth of inspiration. 

Do you think there’s a single moment in everyone’s life, maybe not as traumatic, that is life-changing?

I think many people have dramatic changes in their life path due to some personal or shared tragedy. We certainly hear about individuals driven to careers in medicine, law enforcement, religion, etc., by such events. In recent years, it would be hard to calculate how many lives were drastically altered by 9/11. For most of us, though, I think life is a little more like billiard balls caroming about on a pool table. I know I’ve frequently thought back on the way seemingly innocuous decisions changed my life—a college course taken, a chance encounter in a bar, a job offer accepted or turned down, etc.

Can you tell us what the second book will be about and when it will be available for fans to purchase?

Set two years after the series opener, Shadow Girl is in the final stage of beta reads and should be released in early 2026. Still the employee-from-hell at HappyMart, still rooming with Cici, and still on probation, Alex/Liliane has developed a side gig doing what she likes to call street-level detective work. That knife-edge balance of an existence comes under threat when a stalker threatens to expose her litany of probation violations. His price for keeping quiet is a hacking job as liable to land her in prison as keep her out.

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