Lightning in the Collied Night follows a group of scientists who embark on a bold mission to harness the power of a newly discovered wormhole in a desperate bid to secure the survival of the human race. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

The original story idea came to me several years ago. Back then, it was a simple story about a young physicist who overcomes personal and external challenges to travel to the future through a wormhole and discovers… well, I can’t get into that as it’s the crux of the story! I can say that there were multiple inspirations for the story, from literary and sci-fi sources; those are brought out in the novel. Over time, I added twists, layers, and characters to my story until I thought it might be suitable for a novel. When I retired in 2023 and had time to learn how to write fiction, I decided to share my story.

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

Probably the most important factor was that I wanted the characters to be relatable to readers. The story is set (mostly) about 30 years from now. I wanted readers to be able to understand and feel what these characters were going through as they overcame many challenges, both from within themselves and the outside world. One of the ways I did that was to try to make the dialogue seem “natural,” like people actually talk, and liberally use interior monologue to let readers get “into the heads” of the main characters.

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

Probably the most important theme was the power of love and forgiveness to transform a person… or perhaps a world. Another theme is that AI can be an extremely powerful and useful tool when used appropriately, but it’s not the best solution for every problem. There’s a difference I think between what AI could do for humankind, and what we should allow it to do. Finally, I wanted my novel to reflect our wonderfully diverse world, and thus I strove to have the characters be representative of that diversity.

Will there be a follow-up novel to this story? If so, what aspects of the story will the next book cover?

I hadn’t planned on a sequel. But I’ve fallen in love with the characters (most of them, anyway!) and believe there’s much more of their story to tell. Thus I’ve started outlining a sequel, with a planned release of Summer 2025. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but I will share that the draft tagline is, “How far would you go for love?” The sequel will be more of a traditional sci-fi story than Lightning, but still approachable by people who aren’t quantum physicists. Like Lightning, it will be focused on the characters, their relationships, and their struggles. I think it will be entirely based on Earth of the future–no trips to wormholes, this time. And, like Lightning, the title will be from Shakespeare. 😉

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In the mid-21st century, a brilliant American physicist joins a secret mission to travel through the galaxy’s lone stable wormhole. When a series of challenges threaten the project, she must find another way to accomplish its objective: save the human race. With help from an unexpected ally, the young scientist races to harness the universe’s mightiest force and preserve humanity’s future.