Light in the Abyss follows the crew of a space frigate who are on a mission to recover a stolen artifact from an alien. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

I took my inspiration from the broad tradition of swashbuckling adventure, where the “villain” isn’t necessarily evil, but merely working in opposition to the establishment – as if our heroes were fighting Robin Hood or Aladdin.

I liked the idea of a mastermind thief whom our heroes must match their wits against as much as their swords or cannons – but the thief is also from another species, so there’s a whole new level of complexity. The mission itself is straight-forward: recover the stolen artifact. But having an intelligent, cunning, alien adversary allows for many twists and turns.

There was a lot of time spent crafting the character traits in this novel. What was the most important factor for you to get right in your characters?

My characters are very important to me, so my immediate instinct is to answer “everything”. But kidding aside, what I really want to aim for in my characters is balance. The swashbuckling genre has a long history of heroic men and damsels in distress, and I want to ensure that none of my characters fall into these stereotypes. The men are still heroic, but they’re also kind, thoughtful and mostly humble. The women occasionally still need rescuing, but they’re all strong, intelligent, brave and have agency. I respect each one of my characters and I want to give them, in their own way, the best chance to shine.

I find the world you created in this novel brimming with possibilities. Where did the inspiration for the setting come from, and how did it change as you were writing?

I started with the real scientific idea of solar sails, whereby we could propel spaceships toward the outer planets by riding on the “solar wind” that pushes away from the sun. But I realized immediately that this wouldn’t be very interesting in a solar system like ours, where the solar wind only flows in one direction (outward) so I imagined what it might be like in a dense star cluster. All the solar winds from the tightly packed suns would interact with each other, creating currents, storms, etc., which our heroes would need complex sailing ships to navigate. From there I started to imagine a society where civilization was focused in toward the densely packed stars of the Hub, but out in the sparser stars of the Halo, adventure awaits.

It was fun to use the 18th century Age of Sail motif as a starting point for my world-building, although I knew immediately that the racism and sexism of those days had no place in my writing. Introducing the tension between the nobles and commoners helped to fuel early sources of conflict, and having intelligent alien species allowed for the existential threat needed to fuel the need for a powerful space navy.

What will the next book in that series be about, and when will it be published?

The next book in the series is going to bring the Sectoid military threat back to the foreground, and it’s also going to delve deeper into the politics of the aristocracy. And for fans of Sublieutenant Charlotte Brown, she’s going to have a chance to shine.

The release date hasn’t been set yet, but I’ve heard it’s going to be late 2025. I have about 10,000 words downrange so far – I guess I better get cracking.

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