The Unsealing follows two attorneys as they descend into the world of corruption in the upper class during the Gilded Age. What was the initial idea behind this story, and how did that transform as you were writing the novel?

The Avenging Angel Detective Agency™ Mysteries are what I like to call ‘whydunits’ – not ‘whodunits’ as in the classic Agatha Christie type mystery. I like to explore what motivates people, sometimes very ordinary people, to do extraordinary things. (Many of which are criminal, immoral, or in shockingly poor judgment.) In The Unsealing, I explore the slow moral collapse of two initially high-minded attorneys and friends, who succumb to the temptations of wealth, power, and sex. It’s a very human story, but with the additional interest and complexity of being set in a very different time from our present day and one with very different attitudes toward just about everything.

I find that my characters reveal their stories to me gradually. There are times when something appears in my mind’s eye – a scene, a snippet of conversation, a sound or smell – without any apparent connection to the story I think I’m telling at the time. So I wait … and eventually the connections are revealed, and I write them down. I think of myself more as an observer than as a creator: I am emphatically opposed to making things up. If that all sounds a bit mystical, then I am guilty as charged, but it’s the way it happens to or for me. The title The Unsealing was (in part) inspired by this slow process of revelation, in which the characters themselves share with us more and more of their lives and innermost desires as the book progresses. I hope that readers will enjoy that unveiling of a story that my characters knew all along and which they chose me to write down.

Why choose this place and time for the setting of the story?

I grew up in Buffalo, and have always been fascinated by the place. In 1901, Buffalo and its neighbor, Niagara Falls – were the Silicon Valley of the day: a hive of innovation and bustling commerce across a number of industries. Buffalo was at the time the eighth-largest (and fastest growing) city in the United States, and it was in many ways ‘the place to be’ for the young and ambitious. Today, though, the city’s population is smaller than it was in 1890, while the United States’ population has expanded fivefold, and clearly the centers of innovation have gone elsewhere. How that happened and why – what seeds of decay were sown even in the city’s heyday – is a very intriguing and complex story, and one I like to tell. And that, too, is a human story – how it can take many years for bad decisions or bad karma to catch up to you. But they always do.

What were some of your inspirations as a writer?

I suppose that I’ve always been captivated by the written word’s mysterious ability (not unlike music) to conjure up thoughts and emotions in people I have never met, never will meet, or who may not yet be born. My greatest goal is to transport people to another place and time, show them things they can never see any other way, and then bring them safely back. If I think about artists who have inspired me, Emily Dickinson and Jim Morrison would be at the top of the list. Both of them were obsessed with the notion of peering beyond the boundaries of ordinary human experience and guiding us through those sometimes unusual psychological landscapes – and all at no risk to ourselves, other than a challenge to our settled ways of thinking.

Will this novel be the start of a series or are you working on a different story?

The Unsealing is the first in a series of books, the Avenging Angel Detective Agency™ Mysteries. Some of the characters from The Unsealing will continue on in future volumes, but many new ones will appear – and each book is a free-standing, independent story that does not require that one read the books in any order. That said, I think readers who follow along as the books appear will be rewarded with a deeper appreciation of the back-stories of their favorite characters. But it’s by no means a requirement. Thus far I’ve completed four Avenging Angel manuscripts, and they’ll be published over the next two years or so, and I’m working on the fifth now. If readers enjoy them, they’ll keep on coming.

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