The Devil’s Hand follows a man playing a high-stakes card game with the Devil, who in the process, is evaluating his life and confronting his fears. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

I once heard that Herman Melville’s classic “Moby Dick” was a metaphor for England, and his and Captain Ahab was meant to reflect the King. I felt this was a good place to start. I was also inspired by the symbolism F. Scott Fitzgerald used in “The Great Gatsby.” I wanted to write a contemporary story that reflected the US’s psyche at this particular time in history. I have heard many times throughout my life that America has a schizophrenic reputation. I took an innocent boy who had the potential to do great things (America) and added the element of money, power, affluence, and greed. This gave the book its depth and made it a real challenge to write. I wanted it to have many layers so that readers can get what they want out of it. In the end, Uriel is left right where we are now, lost in an identity crisis with the hope of a better future based on better choices. The book is about one man’s self-destruction and resurrection to life and true liberty and happiness. It was my hope that I could create a book of our time, reflecting our time for all time. Only time will tell if I was successful or not.

Uriel has a dark past, and his journey is a twisted path into his psyche, revealing his deepest fears. What were some driving ideals behind your character’s development?

It was the idea that the subconscious is more in charge of your actions than the conscience. Many of the answers we seek are right inside our own heads. We lament our pain and derive our identity from it to validate our existence. Who would we be if we hadn’t suffered? Uriel is tricked into seeing the world like a psychopath, i.e., that dog-eat-dog world without a heart. He was given two paths. One by his great uncle Walt and the other by his Uncle Matt. He simply chose wrong, and his subconscious knew it. Schizophrenic dilutions can be triggered by guilt. In Uriel’s case, the dilutions came after he found out about the death of his uncle Walt. This started his spiral into hell to find the truth.

What intrigues you about the horror, especially from the psychological perspective, that led you to write this book?

Fear exists in one place and one place only – in our heads. It is the fight-or-flight impulse. To someone like me, it is a chance to pull back the curtain on our own fears and guilt to expose the underlying truth about ourselves. I didn’t start out writing a Horror book. Indeed, it was I who put it in the adult fantasy/fiction genre, but I was corrected by my publisher, Austin Macauley. Of course, you can’t write a story with Satin in it without twisting it, can you? This is how Uriel defines hell. In the end, we are the Demons and Angels we choose to be.

What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?

The next book I have written and had edited is called The High Side of the Mountain. It is about a nineteen-year-old non-verbal autistic boy who is left alone on a mountain in Kentucky. He was adopted by one of the nurses at the orphanage. His caretaker dies early in the book, and he is left to the utter solitude of that mountain. Through his adventures on the mountain, he learns a new skill and how to communicate with others. His loneliness causes him to kidnap a caseworker who comes to the house. When she is found by the authorities, a misunderstanding occurs to put him in direct conflict with the law – a world he has never known. This book is about understanding and the need for family and companionship. It’s a real feelgood book with an autistic slant. I probably won’t get it published until I see an interest in my writing. If you liked my style and want to read more of it, my first book was a (YA) fantasy fiction novel entitled. The Legends of Lynquest. Give it a gander. It won the Kirkus star as well as a four-star review from Clarion. It sports lots of Dragons, Wizards, Knights, Sirens, and a creature called a Black heart. I’ve been told it is well worth the read.

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