In The Mourning Locket, an empath confronts the owner of a unique agency comprised of sentient heirlooms capable of remembering their owners and seeks to uncover its long-buried secrets. Where did the idea for this novel come from?

The idea started with my own family heirlooms. I grew up around old photographs, jewelry, keepsakes — things that didn’t look like much from the outside but held entire histories inside them. I always wondered what they’d “say” if they could talk.

When I started writing The Mourning Locket, it was my way of honoring those stories that get lost between generations. I wanted to capture that feeling of holding something that once meant everything to someone who isn’t here anymore. The book grew out of that love for family history and the questions we never get to ask the people we miss.

How did you go about capturing the thoughts of the heirlooms?

To write the heirlooms, I imagined them the way we imagine the stories behind things we inherit. When you hold something that belonged to someone you loved, you automatically think about what it meant to them.

That’s the energy I wrote from. Their thoughts come through impressions, not sentences — a heaviness, a chill, a warmth, a pull. The emotional tone of the object shows up long before the mystery does. It made them feel alive without ever stepping outside of realism.

Were you able to relate to your characters while writing them?

Absolutely. I related to my characters in different ways, sometimes in ways I didn’t even expect. Rowan’s determination, Piper’s anxious overthinking, Cassian’s quiet intensity — those all come from real emotions I understand. And then there’s Sable, whose sarcasm and perfectly timed humor felt like the pressure valve everyone needed.

I relate to her a lot — that instinct to lighten a tense moment, or to say the thing everyone else is only thinking. Writing her was almost like letting the honest, unfiltered side of myself onto the page.

Each character carries something human and familiar, and that connection made writing them feel less like creating fictional people and more like spending time with versions of myself and the people I love.

Can you give us a glimpse inside Book 2 of The Inheritance Bureau series? Where will it take readers?

Book 2, The Music Box from Ashford, drags the Bureau into its darkest investigation yet. What begins as a simple heirloom assessment turns into a trail of buried evidence, altered records, and a past that someone worked very hard to erase.

The music box at the center of it all isn’t just an antique — it’s a trigger. And once it resurfaces, everything the Bureau thought it understood about its own origins is shaken.

This book pulls readers deeper into the hidden corners of the Bureau: the cases that never made it into the official files, the mistakes no one was supposed to uncover, and the people who paid the price for trying. Rowan gets pulled into the heart of it, Piper and Sable uncover secrets that were never meant to see daylight, and Arden is forced to confront what leadership really costs.

The investigation reaches back more than a century, and the past refuses to stay quiet this time.

Without giving too much away — Book 2 opens a door the Bureau can’t close, and what waits on the other side changes everything heading into Book 3.

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