The Guardians of Kawts follows a young boy with a passion for books who must first face a harrowing ritual and the threat of execution before achieving his goal of apprenticing as a librarian. Where did the idea for this novel come from?

In my eighth grade English class, we had a unit on Dystopian books. Our primary text for the unit was Lois Lowry’s The Giver, but being an avid reader, it did not take me long to finish the book. As it turned out, this was a bit of a problem, because we had a big packet of worksheets that we needed to fill out along with the assigned readings. I talked with my teacher, and we decided that I would spend the rest of the unit reading other dystopian books from the library. As I was reading them, I began to see certain similarities between them (which, in hindsight, should not have been surprising). For some incomprehensible reason, I decided that I would write a dystopian book myself. And that’s where Kawts was born. In terms of the characters, though, a lot of them actually came from the super hero games me and my sisters would play growing up. Most of the named members of the rebellion were originally created by us for our games. It’s the combination of those two things that really laid the groundwork for The Guardians of Kawts.

How long did it take you to imagine, draft, and write the world your characters live in?

From that first idea to publication, it took about seven years. Granted, it wasn’t seven full years – after every round of editing on The Guardians of Kawts, I worked on other books in the series. One of those other drafts that was particularly impactful on the later stages of the book was a prequel focusing on the rebellion’s leader, Gearwire, and the origins of Kawts. A lot of the histories, characters, and events that I made for that were subsequently written back into the original book.

What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?

As a committed Christian, it was important to me that in any fictional world that I created, Christian theology would be true. At the same time, I wanted to explore these questions of faith in a non-dogmatic way, letting the characters wrestle through such questions instead of simply “forcing” them to accept it. Because of this, a major theme in the book is wrestling with faith.

Another theme that was hugely important was the power of stories. In Kawts, there are some pretty heavy restrictions on books. These very books, however, end up being pivotal to the decision of several characters to resist the Council’s control. These stories are in conflict with the story that the Council tells, and it’s this tension that creates a lot of the troubles in Kawts.

I was especially taken with the emphasis on the importance of books. What is one thing you hope readers take away from your story?

In today’s world (especially in the United States, which is where I live), there is an awful lot of book banning going on right now. And in some ways, it makes a lot of sense. Stories are powerful things because they capture the imagination and the emotions, which tends to be much more effective at influencing people than a logical argument would be. But banning books that peddle a story you don’t like is only going to lead to more conflict; not unity.

Author Links: GoodReads | Website