Supplicant follows a mother and son being used as fuel to keep the undying elite alive, who rebel and fight to liberate the supplicants. The idea that prayer can be measured, directed, and weaponized is central to the novel. When did that concept first take shape for you?

Like many veterans, I have found myself in places where there were few atheists. Prayer is an important, powerful force to me. The idea for Supplicant came when I watched Pope Francis hang on to life against impossible odds. “What if …” I thought. “What if such awesome power could be measured and replicated for others?” I wondered what the effects on an already unstable society might be.

KAX’s story carries much of the novel’s emotional weight. What drew you to her perspective?

KAX represents the lowest common denominator in a world where life has been made cheap. She holds within her the awesome power humanity gives each of us — a power that asserts itself in the worst of times. So, she became the obvious force behind the story.

The creation of supplicants raises deep ethical questions about autonomy and exploitation. How did you approach building that system?

Foundations for the world I imagined in Supplicant already exist — and may be far closer to realization in some laboratories than we care to imagine. Mankind’s ugliest concepts have never failed to find fertile soil. I only had to imagine the progression leading toward them. War, terrible disease, economic ruin, and the availability of a small privileged group to avoid them were not hard to envision.

The novel engages deeply with religious ideas while also challenging them. How do you hope readers interpret that tension?

Each of us is truly “hardwired” (in our parietal cortex, to be exact) toward faith in forces greater than ourselves. The greatest of us, along with the worst addicts, strive to attune ourselves to this reality — but life and the friction of living almost always get in the way. KAX and her son were led to their faith through a terrible experience, as others among us have been as well. I have seen hints that others have found their way to the enlightenment that religion promises. Still, it eludes almost all of us. I hope readers will find hope in my small book that most of us will, eventually, follow.

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