Trace of Arcane follows a teenage girl navigating life in a fractured society as she struggles to find autonomy while facing the pressure of the coming ceremonial passage. What was the idea, or spark, that first set off the need to write this novel?

What drew me to this story, and to Eden as a protagonist, was the challenge of portraying the neurotype colloquially known as psychopathy with nuance and texture. Over four years, I had extended conversations with individuals living with this form of neurodivergence. I wasn’t interested in the usual caricatures. I wanted to understand them not as villains, but as whole, observant, complex human beings. Eden’s voice emerged from those conversations, and Trace of Arcane became a space to explore deeper questions around conscience, survival, and the systems we live within.

Early on, I noticed that many neurodivergent individuals don’t automatically adopt social structures the way neurotypical people often do. Instead, they examine these systems critically and only mirror them to the extent necessary to avoid social exclusion. This observation made me reflect on the psychological mechanisms embedded in our institutions—religious, political, and cultural. These structures often act as filters, helping people manage the complexity of life. But for those with shallow affect or atypical emotional processing, these filters don’t function the same way. They mimic them, rather than experience them. That dissonance opened up new questions for me: about belonging, about power, and about how easily such systems can be co-opted to marginalize outgroups or consolidate control.

I also did not want the views of the neurodivergent characters to remain unchallenged within the story. Around that time, I came across the work of Dr. Zoran Josipovic, who has studied the brains of meditating monks and found heightened activity in the prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain associated with empathy. By contrast, researchers like Dr. James Fallon have shown that in psychopathy, this same region is often underactive during decision-making. That contrast fascinated me. It felt like the two neurotypes (even though those who have meditated for many years are not a neurotype) were engaging with the world in fundamentally different ways, and I wanted to explore what might happen when they collided.

This led me to dive into monk-centered spiritual teachings, which eventually inspired the creation of other key characters—individuals whose worldviews would directly challenge the neurodivergent characters within the story. Their interplay became a core tension not just in Trace of Arcane: Viridis, but across all three novels in the series.

The science inserted in the fiction, I felt, was well balanced. How did you manage to keep it grounded while still providing the fantastic edge science fiction stories usually provide?

My primary focus wasn’t on science fiction in the traditional sense. My attention was on the social and psychological structures people use to navigate the world—institutions, belief systems, hierarchies—and how those structures shape identity, belonging, and power. The science in Trace of Arcane: Viridis emerged as a secondary layer, more as a tool for exploring those dynamics.

The story follows a neurodivergent girl trying to cope within a fractured, post-apocalyptic world, and I was more interested in her internal logic: how someone with her cognitive wiring might perceive and respond to systems that often demand emotional conformity. That lens helped keep everything grounded. The speculative elements are there, but they’re tethered to real-world dynamics and grounded human experience.

In Book Two, I do lean further into the science behind the fiction—especially in terms of technology, cognitive science, and surveillance systems—but even then, it’s all in service of the characters and the ethical questions they’re grappling with. The “fantastic edge” becomes sharper as the story unfolds, but it’s always rooted in something psychologically or politically real.

What was one scene in the novel that you felt captured the morals and message you were trying to deliver to readers?

There’s a scene early in the novel where Eden recalls using a hidden path to avoid Amaia’s constant lectures on respect. At first glance, Eden comes across as brash and disrespectful, especially in how she speaks to characters like Amaia, and I wanted the reader to sit with that impression. But as the story unfolds, we begin to see Eden’s inner world more clearly. That scene becomes a pivotal lens: Eden isn’t reacting; she is mirroring.

She sees adults demanding respect without offering it, and when she reflects their tone back at them, she’s punished for it. There’s a line where she thinks, “If she hates it so much that I mimic her, then why not change to the behavior she wants reflected?” That moment, to me, captures the core moral tension of the book: Eden is labeled as the outsider, the disrespectful one, but she’s actually holding up a mirror to a society that is itself contradictory and hypocritical.

This becomes a quiet call to the reader: when we encounter something in someone else that unsettles or irritates us, what does that reaction reveal about us? Eden challenges the social norms around her not by preaching or resisting outright, but by reflecting them back. The discomfort that causes isn’t a flaw in her—it’s a diagnostic of the world she lives in.

That’s the heart of Book One: Eden is learning, engaging, adapting—and in doing so, forcing others (and the reader) to confront the assumptions they live by.

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

Having finished the Trace of Arcane trilogy, the next book I’m working on is called Angel of Death. It follows Azrael, a character introduced in Trail of Arcane: Book Two of the Trace of Arcane series, and dives deeper into his journey: before, during, and beyond his interactions with Eden. While Trace of Arcane was focused more on societal structures and psychological dynamics, Angel of Death leans further into the science of the science fiction. It explores the technologies, surveillance systems, and hidden architectures of power that govern the post-apocalyptic world.

At its core, Angel of Death is a character study about a teenager who begins as an idealist, committed to truth and justice, but slowly transforms into someone willing to break the very rules he once upheld in order to expose systemic injustice. As society fails to respond ethically, and as the costs of truth-telling mount, he becomes increasingly disillusioned. His ideals fracture. Inevitably, he learns about what it means to evolve without losing oneself.

It’s a more expansive story in some ways: technically intricate, politically charged, and emotionally layered. It also offers a more grounded, hard science-fiction tone, exploring how systemic forces can shape a person into exhibiting behaviors we label as psychopathic—while still holding a mirror to the systems that create those very outcomes.

As for the release date, I’m currently deep in the writing process and will announce more details soon. But if Trace of Arcane asked what it means to survive within broken systems, Angel of Death asks what it means to resist them, and what it costs to do so.

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