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Forces Outside Our Control
Lily Starling and the Storm Riders follows the captain and crew of a starship who, while on a routine rescue mission, get ambushed by a group of raiders wielding the power of a cosmic tempest. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The first book is about agency—Lily finding her own way, claiming an identity, learning she has a voice in her own story. For the second book, I wanted to put her up against something she couldn’t just outwit or outfight. There are forces in life that are simply bigger than us, no matter how defiant we feel. You can raise your middle finger to them all you want, but they don’t go away.
So the storm became that unstoppable force. It isn’t just a backdrop, it’s a presence—something ancient and impartial that challenges the crew at every turn. Lily has to confront what it means to face chaos after she’s already defined herself. She’s grown, but she’s still running from her heart, still scared of commitment, and still making messy, very human decisions. Some of the consequences this time around are unavoidable. I wanted to see how she—and the people around her—hold up when survival itself is on the line.
The supporting characters in this novel were intriguing and well-developed. Who was your favorite character to write for?
Xynn, without a doubt. She plays a much bigger role in this book, and her dynamic with Lily is becoming one of the central threads of the series. They’re opposites—Xynn is organized, methodical, practical, while Lily is impulsive and emotional—and that tension makes every scene between them spark. I hit a point while drafting where I realized something was missing, so one night I sat up in bed and wrote an entire novella about their time together on Adius II between books. That’s how real they feel to me—sometimes the story just demands more space for them to breathe.
Beyond that, I had so much fun bringing in new voices. Charlie and Tevya were a blast to write, and Ronin—well, who doesn’t love a good villain? But Xynn and Lily together are where a lot of the emotional heart of Storm Riders lives.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
A big one was the idea of forces outside our control. The storm is a metaphor for that—chaos that no one can outrun. I think the pandemic left us all with a deeper understanding of how uncontrollable events can reshape our lives, and how our reactions to them can send us in completely different directions.
Another theme is faith twisted into extremism. I grew up in a religious environment, and while that gave me empathy and perspective as an outsider, I also saw firsthand how beliefs can be damaging or dangerous when taken too far. That’s woven into Leviathan’s Hand in the book, which is less about any specific faith and more about how conviction can be distorted into violence.
I also wanted to explore Earth. Lily didn’t want to go back—she dreaded it—because she already knew it could never be the place she once imagined. And she wasn’t eager to reopen her own past. That visit forces her to confront the tension between leaving the past behind, letting it haunt you, or finding some middle ground. For her, it’s not nostalgia—it’s reckoning.
And threaded through all of this is a layer of hypocrisy. If you look closely, it comes up again and again: institutions, leaders, even individuals who claim one thing but act in another way. That contradiction is part of what the crew—and Lily in particular—are wrestling with in Storm Riders.
I hope the series continues in other books. If so, where will the story take readers?
The main arc will be at least five books—possibly more if spin-offs grow out of it—but there’s a clear throughline I’m building toward. Book three, Lily Starling and the Death Machine, continues some of the threads from Storm Riders while taking a few turns I don’t think readers will expect.
The central theme this time shifts toward the institutions we put our trust in every day. When you start peeling back the layers, you may find less to believe in than you hoped. Any organization with great power, even one with the best intentions, carries secrets. The questions become: where is the line that finally causes you to lose real trust? Is it possible to do good from within a flawed or corrupt system? Or does integrity mean walking away?
And of course there will be plenty of adventure—space chases, a manhunt across the stars, friends pitted against each other, and a mystery or two to keep readers guessing. I’m just as excited as anyone to see where the adventure takes us.
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Lily Starling thought she’d finally found her place among the stars. But when a routine rescue mission turns into a devastating ambush, she watches in horror as the Storm Riders—a ruthless band of spacefaring raiders—vanish into the chaos, taking her closest friend with them.
Now, with the Salamander crippled and the galaxy on edge, Lily must convince her crew that the Storm Riders are more than just pirates. They are zealots, wielding the power of a cosmic tempest the Union refuses to understand—one that may have been set in motion long before Lily was even born.
As the hunt takes her to the farthest reaches of known space, Lily must rely on unlikely allies, question everything she’s been taught, and face the growing storm within herself.
Because the leader of these zealots is hiding a dark secret.
And if Lily can’t stop them, the storm will swallow everything.
Lily Starling and the Storm Riders
The book drops us straight into a storm of action and emotion. Lily and her crew are thrust back into danger when a rescue mission spirals into chaos, colliding with an ancient cosmic storm and a fanatical enemy who wields it like a weapon. At its heart, this is a story about survival, love, and the weight of choices when the universe itself feels like it’s stacked against you. The pace moves between quiet, intimate moments like conversations, stolen touches, inner doubts, and scenes of sheer calamity, where ships burn and loyalties fracture. The writing is vivid, cinematic, almost like watching a film unfold one cut at a time, and it never lets you forget that every storm has both destruction and renewal at its core.
I found myself swept up not just by the big set pieces, but by the little moments of humanity tucked inside them. The way Lily clings to fleeting closeness with Xynn, even when she can’t say the words that matter. The way Calan feels the burden of leadership pressing on his back, even in the rare seconds of rest. These characters feel authentic. They make mistakes, lash out, and then turn right around to hold each other up. Sometimes the dialogue felt a little on the nose, but I forgave it because the raw feeling underneath was honest. The ideas the book wrestles with, like faith twisted into violence, what it means to belong, whether love can anchor you through chaos, stick in your head long after the action cools.
What I enjoyed most was the storm itself. It isn’t just a backdrop, it’s a character. It moves like a god, ancient and impartial, swallowing whole colonies without malice, carrying both ruin and rebirth in its wake. That idea sat heavy with me. It made me think about how much in life is out of our control, and how we cling to each other anyway, even if we know the tide is going to take us eventually. There were moments where I had to stop, take a breath, and remind myself these are fictional people because the grief and yearning bled off the page like it was mine. That’s not easy to do, and I admire the author for leaning into the messy vulnerability of it all.
I’d say this book is for readers who love their space operas messy and full of heart. If you want battles alongside bruised relationships, if you like a science fiction story that can swing from humor to heartbreak in a single chapter, if you want characters who feel like friends you’re worried about, this book is for you.
Pages: 412 | ASIN : B0FHG94GBQ
LITERARY TITAN 