Eclipse: The Silence of Heaven centers on a warrior known as the Holy Avenger who faces a city that has mistaken silence for divine judgment. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

The entire novel started with one historical fact. I was reading about the volcanic winter of 536 AD, when the sun was dimmed for roughly eighteen months. Historians have called it one of the worst times to be alive. Crops failed, famine spread, disease followed, and entire civilizations struggled to survive.

My first thought was, “What a perfect time for vampires to thrive.”

But as I dug deeper into the period, I realized something even more interesting. Religion was at the center of everyday life. People looked to God for answers, protection, and hope. When the sun disappeared and the world seemed to be falling apart, I started wondering how people would react if they believed Heaven had simply gone silent.

Some would lose their faith. Others would cling to it even more fiercely. Then I added vampires to the equation, creatures that had suddenly inherited a world without sunlight, and it became the ultimate test of faith. What happens when everything you believe about God, good, and evil is challenged by the impossible?

That’s where Eclipse was born. The historical event gave me the setting, but the characters and their responses to that silence became the heart of the story. It’s a novel about faith, doubt, sacrifice, and the choices people make when they can no longer tell whether Heaven is watching.

The novel explores what people do when they believe their prayers go unanswered. Why did that idea become the emotional center of the story?

I think everyone has experienced a moment where they’ve prayed for something and the answer never seemed to come. Whether you’re religious or not, we’ve all had times when we’ve wondered if anyone was listening.

In 536 AD, people didn’t have science to explain why the sun disappeared. Their faith was their foundation. They looked to God for meaning, protection, and hope. When the world descended into famine, plague, and darkness, I couldn’t help but wonder how they reconciled that with everything they believed.

That’s why unanswered prayer became the emotional center of Eclipse. Every major character responds to Heaven’s silence differently. Some lose their faith. Some become angry. Some convince themselves God has abandoned them. Others continue believing even when they have every reason not to.

Then I introduced vampires into that world. They don’t just threaten people’s lives. They challenge everything people believe about God, good, evil, and salvation. The monsters become the external conflict, but the real battle is happening inside each character.

Which aspect of Veyne’s character proved the most difficult to write?

Veyne was by far the most difficult character to write because I wanted his relationship with faith to feel authentic. It would have been easy to make him either completely lose his faith or remain unwavering from beginning to end. Real life usually isn’t that simple.

At his core, Veyne is still Brother Sebastian. That part of him never truly disappears. He’s a man who has witnessed unimaginable horror, carries tremendous guilt, and questions God more than once, but he never completely abandons the man he once was.

Finding that balance was the hardest part. I wanted readers to understand why he struggled without ever feeling like he had become someone else. His doubts are real, his anger is real, but so is the compassion, humility, and sense of duty that defined Brother Sebastian from the beginning.

I think that’s what makes him relatable. Faith isn’t the absence of doubt. Sometimes it’s choosing to keep moving forward even when you don’t understand why God seems silent. That, more than anything, is Veyne’s journey.

How do you see Eclipse fitting within the tradition of religious horror?

I think Eclipse fits within religious horror, but it approaches the genre from a different direction. A lot of religious horror focuses on possession, demons, or the conflict between good and evil through the lens of the Church. Those stories can be fantastic, but I wanted to explore something different.

In Eclipse, the horror doesn’t begin with evil. It begins with silence. The greatest fear isn’t that God doesn’t exist. It’s that He does, but He isn’t answering.

I also wanted faith to be more than a backdrop. It’s the emotional foundation of the novel. Every major character has a different relationship with God, and the darkness exposes who they really are. Some lose hope, some become consumed by fear, and others discover a faith they never knew they had.

The vampires are certainly the monsters of the story, but they’re also a way of asking much bigger questions about suffering, sacrifice, redemption, and what it means to keep believing when everything around you suggests you’ve been abandoned.

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