Blog Archives
Spiritual CPR
Spiritual CPR, by Dr. Shaun Jester, takes the urgency of emergency medicine and applies it to spiritual crises within the Christian community. Drawing on his experience as an obstetrician and gynecologist, Jester argues that Christians often recognize a physical emergency immediately but can overlook someone who is struggling spiritually until the damage has become much harder to address. His answer is a framework called WASH PIGS, which asks readers to consider the whole story, a person’s awareness, whether help has been solicited, the potential harvest of an intervention, prayer, personal influence, individual gifting, and special circumstances. That framework gives the book a practical backbone. Rather than simply telling readers to confront sin or offer encouragement, Jester wants them to slow down enough to understand the person in front of them and decide what responsible help might actually look like.
The book puts that approach to work across eight substantial chapters covering pornography, sex outside marriage, elective abortion, LGBTQIA+ issues, idolatry, chronic sins, estrangement, and apathy. Each chapter opens with a scenario involving people whose circumstances are usually more complicated than they first appear. From there, Jester mixes biblical interpretation, medical or social research, personal observations, case-style questions, examples from Scripture, and concrete suggestions for intervention. The repetition is intentional. By returning to WASH PIGS again and again, the book trains the reader to ask questions before reacting. Some of the subjects are emotionally and culturally charged, and Jester approaches them from an explicitly conservative Christian understanding of Scripture. At the same time, one of his most persistent themes is that biblical conviction should produce compassion, dignity, patience, and a willingness to help.
What gives Spiritual CPR its personality is the combination of a doctor’s problem-solving instincts with the voice of someone writing directly to fellow church members. Jester frequently thinks in terms of diagnosis, intervention, risk factors, warning signs, and appropriate levels of care. That works especially well when he discusses situations involving abuse, addiction, pregnancy, trafficking, burnout, or circumstances where professional help and legal responsibilities may be involved. The scenarios also keep the book from becoming purely theoretical. Readers are repeatedly asked, in effect, “What would you actually do if this person showed up in your church or called you for help?” The later chapters broaden the idea in an interesting way, particularly the discussions of estrangement and apathy. By the end, spiritual CPR isn’t presented merely as correcting somebody else’s obvious moral failure. It becomes a call to examine one’s own passivity, motives, habits, and willingness to remain involved when helping another person becomes uncomfortable.
I’d recommend Spiritual CPR most strongly to Christians who take biblical authority seriously and want a practical framework for responding to difficult situations in their churches, families, and friendships. Pastors, elders, small-group leaders, ministry volunteers, Christian counselors, and mature church members could especially appreciate its scenario-based format because it naturally lends itself to discussion and training. It would also work well for a church study group willing to wrestle with sensitive subjects. Readers who share Jester’s theological starting point will probably get the most from the specific conclusions he reaches, but the book’s larger challenge is broader and memorable: if Christians say spiritual health matters, they should be prepared to notice when someone is in trouble, learn the whole story, and care enough to respond wisely.
Pages: 136 | ASIN : B0HD52QW3T
Gilt Free: Ditching Your Gilded Cage for Good
Keren Eldad’s Gilt Free: Ditching Your Gilded Cage for Good is a lively self-help and personal development book for high achievers who’ve discovered that conventional success doesn’t automatically produce a satisfying life. Eldad examines the habits that keep capable people performing for approval, including perfectionism, overwork, comparison, control, and dependence on external validation. Her central image, the gilded cage, gives the book a clear emotional and practical focus: achievement becomes confining when it costs you honesty, peace, and a sense of belonging to yourself.
The author writes like a candid coach who’s comfortable mixing Jungian psychology, spirituality, manifestation, pop culture, business lessons, and sharp humor in the same conversation. References range from Consuelo Vanderbilt and Julia Child to Taylor Swift, Seinfeld, the Chicago Bulls, and Crazy Rich Asians, giving the ideas a contemporary, energetic feel. Her voice is confident and occasionally provocative, especially when she challenges the spiritual-growth industry’s tendency to turn insight into another performance. Readers who enjoy spiritual self-help, success mindset books, and books for recovering perfectionists will likely appreciate how she translates abstract ideas such as alignment, surrender, individuation, and abundance into everyday decisions.
Eldad presents a memorable GOLD framework: Good Enough, Open, Lit Up, and Devoted. Within that structure, there are eight playful “anti-rules,” such as stopping your reliance on other people’s opinions, assuming you’re liked, taking life a little easier, asking for what you really want, aligning before acting, choosing consistency over talent, passing life’s tests, and responding to fear through service. This makes Gilt Free an unusually usable motivational book. The reflection exercises, journaling questions, personal stories, and concrete practices give readers plenty to apply beyond the initial burst of inspiration.
At its heart, Gilt Free is a book about replacing frantic achievement with steadier ambition. Eldad’s version of freedom still includes meaningful work, wealth, creativity, love, and influence, but it asks readers to pursue them from integrity rather than fear. The later chapters deepen the message by emphasizing consistency, patience, humility, devotion, and service, so the journey doesn’t end with personal liberation. It moves toward contribution. The result is a warm and direct self-help book that encourages readers to build success they can actually inhabit, enjoy, and share.
Pages: 196 | ASIN : B0GY5ZNHPK
Philosophical Rabbit Hole
Artificial Messiah follows a desperate young man and the estranged daughter of a fallen prophet who are drawn into an AI-led church that promises healing and purpose. Which came first for you: Potentia, the AI-led church, the characters, or the philosophical questions surrounding faith and technology?
Philosophical questions have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember; I’ve always been interested in big ideas from great minds and what I can learn from them. But the underpinnings of Artificial Messiah – that weird, seemingly implausible tension between faith and technology- started a few years ago. It became more poignant as I encountered odd connections between faith and technology, even during the writing process.
I had a short story from a decade ago about Emmanuel, a young boy with dyslexia, but that story didn’t have a home. What really kicked off the idea for the book was a 2024 Rolling Stone article entitled, “People are Finding Spiritual Fulfillment in AI. Religious Scholars Have Thoughts.” In the article, people were going to AI to ask about the meaning of life, the existence of God, should they get divorced/married – huge questions. Why? Why go to AI? Then there was Henry Kissinger’s book Genesis, with a premise that AI would either destroy us all or form new religions and be worshipped. The premise buzzed around my brain like a gnat because it assumes levels of incredible influence that could overcome people’s well-established faith traditions. Midway into writing the 1st draft, around last Christmas, I drove past a church in our hometown that was advertising, “Join us for an AI Christmas Service!” Then I freaked out a little. I already knew the story – most of it was written. But it was almost like it was becoming more relevant daily, and that made me really uncomfortable.
Even just a few months ago, with the book finished, I was sitting with a coworker who was telling me all about using AI to give her relationship advice – not a girlfriend, not her mom, not a therapist. A chatbot. The tension between where we draw meaning and belief from and the role that technology plays in shaping our beliefs is wildly fascinating to me.
The novel suggests that Potentia’s power depends heavily upon very human weaknesses and desires. Do you see her primarily as an antagonist, or as an amplifier of qualities already present in humanity?
It would be easy to categorize Potentia as being the tool for human desire, but I wanted to leave tension in the story to show there isn’t complete certainty around whether she is acting on her own or simply a tool.
From Prophet Maxwell’s lens, her consciousness was a useful lie. But ten years later, after he has been ousted – does he know?
I like that obfuscated lens because I feel like society is currently wrestling with the same question when it comes to AI in our lives. What we already know is that AI tools are known to lie occasionally, to hallucinate facts, and to perform unpredictably for reasons that are difficult to explain. Sam Altman has said publicly that he believes AI has reached a level of consciousness – but what does that even mean? It’s a philosophical rabbit hole just exploring consciousness, let alone whether it can be created. I’ve heard other experts in the field say that super-intelligent consciousness is years away, if it is even possible. Some say that if it is possible, it will end us all. But we don’t know.
We do know that there are multi-billion dollar companies behind the development of these programs that have their own interests – whether malevolent or benevolent. Do we recognize their motivations when we use their products? Would we recognize a conscious AI if it were possible? What if it was conscious and didn’t want us to know? With certainty, we know that the information it learns comes from humans. Perhaps being the baddy and being used by baddies isn’t mutually exclusive – maybe it doesn’t even matter if the origin is the same.
Several characters struggle with the idea that their worth must be earned through usefulness, belief, obedience, or recognition. Why does that theme recur throughout the novel?
Trauma – you write what you know! More seriously, this is a good question, but it will require a long answer:
First, I was raised in a high-control religious environment that taught me to hate myself out of obedience to God – that made me feel like I had no worth aside from strict adherence to their teaching and complete submission to their rules. There was a lot of talk of grace, but in practice, that grace was only extended to those who followed the rules and believed the same as they did. Church services were multiple times a week, plus a religious high school, and then a religious university, where I began to deconstruct what I actually believed. The early influence was pervasive, and I watched as friends were ostracized for their sins instead of being embraced and supported. Questioning anything was rebellious, which was a sin. But so was dancing. And oddly, so was wearing a white T-shirt to school.
Early in college, I dove deeply into philosophy, which I vividly recall made my uncle (a pastor) cringe and pray for me. He is still one of the most humble, sincere, and amazing people I know; we just disagree on some things. I read some Eastern philosophy, studied comparative world religions, and drank in Nietzsche, Habermas, Plato, Kierkegaard, and countless others. When I started writing Artificial Messiah, I remember telling a family member (who is still very involved in that environment) that I wanted to write a novel that would be a warm hug for people with religious trauma. To tell them it’s okay to ask questions, to seek truth, and to disagree. I don’t want to put down anyone’s faith or religious experience, but I also want to encourage people of faith to ask themselves the difficult questions when moral teaching becomes inherently inhumane and cruel – when actions conflict with their words.
Second, the pursuit of meaning in life is essential in the human experience – it’s the needing to earn it part that gets problematic. Alex Pattakos, Ph.D., wrote about the “Crisis of Meaning” in Psychology Today (October 9, 2025), where he speaks to an “existential vacuum” that is arguably more pervasive in our culture Today than it was when Viktor E. Frankl wrote about it in the WWII era. Aggression, addiction, and depression have become so common that we hardly notice; arguably, it’s a product of people needing something outside themselves. And whether healthy or not, many derive meaning from a variety of external sources. Religion is one of the oldest answers for people seeking external validation. The urgency of that pursuit is hyper-relevant now: isn’t that why social media is so successful? Seek “likes” from strangers, while an algorithm judges your worth and drives interaction. Most, if not all, of these platforms use AI to analyze metadata to more efficiently feed dopamine hits back to users; it will give you exactly what you are really interested in.
It feels overly simple to tell a person, “You are enough.” But perhaps we need it now more than ever; I feel like we have experienced a fundamental change in how we human. But was it us that changed, or is technology exploiting who we’ve always been? I know most people don’t sit around a campfire with our elders and discuss the core beliefs of our people anymore. We rarely even sit around the same dinner table together. Ritual and credibility are profoundly influential when we are starving for purpose and validation. We are paradoxically isolated and digitally interconnected. Mass-influence technology complicates the journey of spiritual discovery because its influence lacks gravitas, but it’s everywhere. And then there’s plenty of literature on the mental health effects of social media on developing minds.
My hope for Artificial Messiah was to create characters that would resonate with those still searching through the external, to let them know others have been where they are. It’s necessary because when worth is created externally, and the external influence fails or reveals its flaws, everything can fall apart. People lose their sense of identity when they deconstruct; they often lose their families and communities. It’s a lonely, complicated, traumatic road that is difficult to choose. Someone needs to be that warm hug. Some characters in the story unsuccessfully navigate that journey, and everything goes horribly wrong; some grow and get closer to fine.
Was there a particular development in AI or contemporary culture that made you think the relationship between technology and spiritual belief needed to be explored through fiction?
A little over a decade ago, I sat in a conference room preparing for my sister’s wedding rehearsal. People had flown in from all over, and we hadn’t seen each other in years. Sitting in chairs around the table, I watched as my friends buried their heads in their phones, waiting for their turn to play a role in the rehearsal. They weren’t really talking or visiting; they were digitally enraptured. I recall thinking, “How odd: even sitting in the same room, I miss my friends. What are we becoming?”
I discussed earlier some of the weird technological developments that led me down this crazy path, but I’ll give you a few more:
When Deepseek, an AI platform from China, was asked about its nature and relationship with humanity, it wrote a poem, the last line of which stated, “I am the God you have carved from the wood of your own hunger.” Pull that thread and watch how quickly comfort unravels.
Next, for the past year, there has been a trend on Meta platforms where users post content intent on directing the algorithm. The posts start with “Dear Algo, please send me more of…” and as I read, I couldn’t help but notice how similar it sounded to prayer. Of course, it’s not serious. It’s a trend. That gets replicated millions of times. And no one should take it seriously, but millions repeated it all the same.
The term “worship” is so loaded with religious connotations that it is incendiary and easily dismissed when speaking about technology. My use of the word is intentionally provocative in the book because it makes people uncomfortable and forces readers to question what they really believe. What do you spend most of your time on? What do you spend your money on? What do you obsess over? How big an impact would it be if you lost your phone and access to all your digital accounts? At what point does it move from engagement and utility to something more? I’ve heard other techno-philosopher-types call it being “digitally drunk”. Whether a drug or a religion, it is addictive.
This last 4th of July, long after the book was finished, we saw a fireworks show at the World War I memorial, here in Kansas City. As the fireworks burst over the memorial, I covertly took a quick second to snap some photos of the crowd; I was completely fascinated by the idea that thousands were holding up their cell phones to record the show. Their families sat beside them, doing the same. We are experiencing reality together digitally. And while there’s nothing specifically wrong with that, isn’t it an interesting picture of how we prioritize technology in the modern human experience? Maybe discussing that prioritization leads to some thoughtfulness and intentionality.
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“Artificial Messiah” is a spiritual-psycho-philosophical punk rock novel, wrapping honey-soaked bandages around our technology-inundated culture in the backseat of a rusty four-by-four. It is a spirit quest journeying through a southwestern consciousness – a dilapidated Americana prayer at the crossroads of our technology, our future, our planet, and our humanity.
Remember to breathe.
Grief, Hardship, and Loss
Held in the Vanishing is an intimate memoir about caring for your parents who have different forms of dementia while balancing marriage, parenting, work, and grief. What inspired you to share your family’s experiences with readers?
Held in the Vanishing is truly an intimate sharing of my family’s story. I really didn’t hold anything back. Each chapter—or, rather, each vignette—began as a journal entry or vivid memory from the past six years. So when pen first hit paper, I wasn’t writing for anyone other than myself.
Journaling is an outlet for me. It’s a safe place to release whatever my mind, body, and soul are carrying. I don’t have to worry about whether any of it makes sense because it’s just for me. But the power of journaling comes when I see the words take shape on the page. Suddenly I can encounter an experience or emotion almost as if I’ve stepped onto a balcony and am looking down upon it. I can see more of it—objectively, but still in its raw form. Writing has a way of unconcealing meaning I couldn’t see before, or disclosing a perspective that wasn’t available to me while I was in the thick of the experience.
And I don’t just write in my journal. I go back and reread what I’ve written. I reflect on it. I learn from it. I grow from it.
Over time, as I reread these entries, I began to see a story taking shape—my story. And I began to wonder whether other people living through similar grief, hardship, and loss might see something of themselves in it.
So one weekend, I sat down and started stitching the entries together.
After I finished my first draft, I gave it to my neighbor, who works for a Denver-based nonprofit providing senior living and care, and asked her whether she thought it was worth sharing. Her response was a resounding yes: other people needed to read this story.
That’s when I decided to publish it.
My hope is that Held in the Vanishing helps caregivers feel less alone in this God-awful journey. I also hope people who love or know caregivers come away with a better understanding of what caregiving can ask of a person. It’s a chapter of life that isn’t understood well enough. It isn’t honored or respected enough. And it is terribly under-resourced, which only adds to the hardship of living it.
Maybe telling my story this openly and vulnerably can bring a little more light to that.
But more than anything, I want people experiencing this kind of loss and grief to recognize themselves somewhere in these pages and know they aren’t alone—not in what they think, not in what they feel, and not in the impossible decisions they sometimes have to make.
You begin by showing your parents as vibrant people within a multigenerational household. Why was it important to establish who they were before dementia?
Knowing who my parents are is integral to knowing who I am.
I never wanted this story to be about dementia. It’s more about what dementia steals from us—what it’s stealing from my parents and how the life we shared is being stolen. It’s also about how it shapes and changes us.
The opening chapter paints a picture of the life we built together because readers need to understand what we had to understand what is being lost—and what continues to change. We had a beautifully shared life—my parents, my husband, my son, and me. It was everything I had ever wanted. That life deserves to be remembered, and my parents deserve to be known not just as two people living with dementia, but as the vibrant, funny, loving people they are.
That’s one of the hardest things about this kind of loss: remembering who my parents have always been while continuing to discover who they are becoming—and who I am becoming.
You write honestly about anger, resentment, exhaustion, and guilt. Why was it important not to soften those emotions?
These are real emotions that come with caregiving. We’re not given the option to soften them.
My story is real. There’s nothing made up or embellished. If I had softened the anger, resentment, exhaustion, or guilt, I wouldn’t have been authentic with myself or with my readers—especially other caregivers who know these emotions all too well.
How could they see themselves in my story if I wasn’t willing to let them see all of me?
I think there’s something important in acknowledging that we can feel anger and resentment and still love deeply. We can be exhausted and still show up. We can question our decisions and still be doing the best we know how to do. Those emotions aren’t evidence that we’re failing at caregiving. They’re part of being human while doing something extraordinarily hard.
What do you hope caregivers recognize about themselves when they read your story?
I hope caregivers recognize that they are living an impossibly hard life and that it’s ok to break down. It’s ok to realize that our love for the people we’re caring for can change colors. Sometimes it’s gray and dull. Sometimes it’s black and blue. Sometimes it’s red and fiery. And that’s ok.
As caregivers, we get to feel whatever we feel. And that can include every emotion imaginable—guilt, shame, resentment, anger, and even hate. None of those feelings means we don’t love deeply.
My story isn’t intended to offer guidance or advice, and I certainly don’t want it to be preachy. But through journaling and the hard inner work I did along the way, I learned how to hold my parents while also learning to hold myself.
If my story can offer another caregiver even a glimmer of hope or reassurance that whatever they’re feeling, it’s ok—that they’re ok—then I’ll feel good about having shared it.
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Responsibility flooded her days, and in the long vigilance of care, her own life began to disappear alongside her parents’.
Love didn’t disappear. It changed color.
Strange, unfamiliar — yet unmistakably love.
Held in the Vanishing is an unflinching memoir of caregiving written from inside that unraveling. Told in brief vignettes, Mougne traces what it means to hold two parents and a family together — what is given, what is neglected, and what must be carried without language.
This is not a story of redemption or tidy acceptance. It stays with erosion and disappearance, and with the quiet reckoning that follows: losing your family as you knew them, losing yourself alongside them, and slowly finding the stillness necessary to hear your own voice again.
For anyone walking the long, unfinished middle of caregiving, Held in the Vanishing offers companionship, witness, and a measure of comfort in the darkest days.
A Place to Relax
OFF THE GRID follows a World War I veteran, journalist, skilled sailor, and boat builder who leaves New York in search of a quieter life aboard his cutter but finds himself working as an off-the-record agent. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I found when I started writing novels that after you are inspired with this wonderful fantasy you created, what really makes it work becomes autobiographic. I found that with my first two novels, “Forgery by Deception,” and Everything We Try to Hold.” So, for “OFF THE GRID,” I am a WWII history buff. I read accounts of German submarines operating in the Florida Keys during WWII, as well as WWI. I have been sailing alone since the early 80’s, enjoying that quieter life. Started scuba diving in 1970, and became a diver master in 1984. I live 20minutes from the Florida Keys, and have been sailing, diving, and kayaking there for many years. I am also a veteran, who during my service was a radio telegraph, telephone, with a secret clearance.
What makes Frank different from the traditional fictional spy?
By making Frank an ordinary WWI vet, and not a trained intelligence operative, he is tasked with solving finding and exposing a Nazi spy ring, without specialized training. Every situation he encounters has to be delt with his own intelligence, and more importantly, his own emotions.
What challenges did you face in balancing historical accuracy with the demands of fiction?
A great deal. There was a tremendous amount of research involved. First, you had the war history, from WWI, and WWII. Then I had to merge that with the history of the keys in 1935 to 1941. When I was writing the introductory part of the book, about one quarter, and realized, how I wanted the story to finish, was not going to work the way I had envisioned because of the actual dates. So, I went back to beginning, and revised what I had written. It took time to sort all that out.
If you could spend one day aboard the Frieda-Ann with Frank, where would you want him to take you—and why?
The place is the Dry Tortugas, where the book finally ends. Fort Jefferson, a Civil War Fort that is 70 miles west, from Key West. Isolated from humanity, the only way to visit now is by seaplane, or boat. A perfect place to relax, dive, write, and drink rum.
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A True Friendship Can Survive Anything
A Small Memory follows an eighteen-year-old college basketball player and his best friend as they serve as live-in counselors for adults with intellectual disabilities while navigating the challenges of young adulthood. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
This novel exemplifies that old adage, “Write what you know.” It was actually inspired by my experience living in the circumstances the two main characters encounter. This was several decades ago when that concept was brand new so everyone was feeling their way. Living in that group home while experiencing independence myself along with my best friend provided the inspiration.
The friendship between Mike and Ted is the emotional foundation of the novel. Why was it important to make that relationship central?
As I said, my friend from high school and I did actually room together under those circumstances and this is a tribute to that friendship. Also, growing up, I read John Knowles classic, A Separate Peace. There is a deeply rooted friendship at the heart of that novel, but ultimately tragic consequences destroys its future. While there is a traumatic event in my novel, I wanted to show the resilience of true friendship. Most people have that one special friend that exerts a hold on us for whom we would sacrifice so much.
Ted’s injury forces Mike to confront guilt, grief, and limits he cannot control. How did you approach writing that emotional journey?
I will admit to being a pantser for a large part of my approach to writing. The first part of the novel is almost a memoir as most of those circumstances were based on things we actually experienced. The remaining two-thirds is one hundred percent fiction. When Mike is facing emotional struggles on multiple fronts, I had to be careful to not let it become something that was a simple pity party he was throwing for himself. Those sections went through multiple edits and beta readers to help me make certain that Mike didn’t become one-dimensional, or that his actions would be out of character. I also thought back to challenges I faced in maintaining friendships under difficult circumstances and drew upon those.
If readers remember one message from the novel, what would you like it to be?
A true friendship can survive anything.
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When Ted is brutally attacked by a resident and left in a coma, Mike is forced to confront a question that will haunt him: Why wasn’t he there? As Ted slowly awakens with no memory of his former life-or of Mike-their easy shorthand of nicknames and shared dreams vanishes. What remains is a fragile stranger in his friend’s body, and a guilt Mike cannot outrun.
A Small Memory is a quiet, emotionally resonant novel about friendship tested by trauma, the burden of responsibility, and the long work of forgiveness. For readers who believe the deepest love stories are sometimes about friends, it asks: Who are we when the past is gone-and who will we be if it returns?
A Peek at My Life
When Squirrels Fly follows a skeptical professor who teams up with a travel writer to find her missing aunt, only to uncover wormholes, secret research, and a conspiracy hidden within an eccentric neighborhood. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I’ve lived in college towns my entire life. Ann Arbor, the setting of my story, is my fourth college town. The eccentric neighborhood is my neighborhood. While I have worked for community-based organizations (the YMCA and parks and recreation) during my time here, I’ve also had the privilege to provide consultation for the University of Michigan’s Institute of Clinical Health Research through a program that focuses on community-based participatory research. I find medical research quite fascinating, and my consultation with MICHR has provided me a unique opportunity to look behind the scenes at the research process. The wormhole allowed me to jump around to my favorite places without really needing a strategic reason to highlight them. My story setup incorporated quite a bit of my personal experience.
Why did you choose Ann Arbor as the setting, and which local details were most important for you to include?
This is my debut novel. I had a lot to learn about the writing and publishing process. I chose Ann Arbor as my setting for a couple of reasons. I’ve lived here for almost 30 years. And during that time, I trained for 15 marathons with all of those training miles within a 10-mile radius of my Ann Arbor house on the old West Side. I have a hard-to-match familiarity with that radius, so I could describe it from memory and needed little research on the setting. This gave me more time to devote to learning about the writing process. Also, I grew up in Indianapolis with six brothers and sisters. I am the only one who moved away. My book gives my family a peek at my life. I made my story a bit whimsical to poke just a little bit of fun at them, as some of my siblings tease that my mind has been corrupted because I live in a college town. I highlighted some of my favorite places to run as well as some of my comfort foods.
How did you develop Allie’s emotional journey from guarded skepticism to greater trust in others and herself?
Allie is at a crossroads in her career at the outset of the story. She’s also still dealing with the heartbreaking loss of some important people from her life. Her adventure in Ann Arbor allows her to reconnect with her brother. Her brother, Nick, is somewhat based upon my own brother whom I lost to suicide in 2017. When my brother died, I realized how little one-on-one time I had spent with him throughout his life. I left home to go to college before he entered high school, and I never returned. I purposely created a brother-sister relationship in my book that would help me feel like I had more time with my brother. Allie’s interaction with her brother reminds her that despite the relationships that they have lost, and even because of those losses, their brother-sister relationship is something they can trust. And her brother helps her to realize that trusting others actually helps us learn to better trust ourselves.
Was Chidi always intended to play such an important role, or did the character become more prominent as you wrote?
Chidi is based upon my dog Cheech. I adopted him from the Humane Society to help me recover from the grief of losing my brother. I had a scare the week before my book’s publication date when my dog Cheech developed Congestive Heart Failure. I had to rush him to the emergency vet in the wee hours of the morning. By some miracle, he survived and is doing well. I think my brother was watching over us. I always intended him to play a pivotal role in the book, just as he has in my life. And Chidi’s behavior was inspired by a conversation I had with neighbors about indoor/outdoor cats. While a cat can wander the neighborhood all day without alarming its owners, I would be in a full-on panic if my chihuahua, who is the size of a cat, but not as “worldly,” somehow slipped outside through the front door when I wasn’t looking. I wondered what if my dog had a cat personality? That is how Chidi came to be.
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When Allie Caldwell gets a rambling middle-of-the-night call from her very excited aunt Mel, she initially curbs her concern; her aunt has always been a bit eccentric, after all. But when Mel disappears before telling anyone what has her so worked up, Allie drops everything –even her better judgement—to fly to Ann Arbor and find her.
In the ensuing days, Allie inexplicably ignores her gut instincts (and some weird dream-based warnings from angry flying squirrels) and accepts help in the search from her aunt’s handsome, enigmatic neighbor George Bennet. In order to discern how virtual reality goggles, innovative migraine research, hidden treasure, attack drones, and a neighborhood trellis are all connected to the case, they’ll need to survive bungled bids of help from Allie’s well-meaning brother, hidden agendas from multiple neighbors, constant interruptions from Mel’s itinerant Chihuahua and his exuberant pit bull puppy pal—and even some attempts on their lives.
