The Name and the Key follows a woman grieving after her mother’s disappearance and death, who experiences visions and finds herself pulled into a magical world. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

As a very visual person whose brain likes to mash things together, I was inspired by a combination of images: John Everett Millais’s painting of Ophelia, and the nightmares I had after my father suddenly died while I was in graduate school. For the magical world itself, filled with demons and alchemy and mirrors, I was inspired by the anime Fullmetal Alchemist and the young adult novel Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson. I’m also interested in medieval and Renaissance art; the colorful paintings of St. Michael slaying the devil or knights killing demons have always stuck with me. I thought there was a way to tie all these strange things I loved together, and that’s how I started developing the story.

This isn’t actually the first go-around with The Name and the Key. It was my graduate thesis in 2013 from the Writing Popular Fiction program at Seton Hill University. Lots of things were happening in my life during graduate school that made their way into the book, although the version you have read that will debut July 21, 2026, has been rewritten considerably to be developed into a trilogy.

Lily’s first-person narration feels very intimate and emotionally immediate. How did you develop her voice?

I’m so glad you feel that way about her! She was a challenging character to write. Some of her voice came directly from me when I’d reflect on certain feelings or situations from my life that were written into The Name and the Key; sometimes Edward Elric’s voice from Fullmetal Alchemist popped in there. But overall, whenever I wrote Lily, I did hear a distinctive voice in my head when I was working through her narration.

Mirrors play a particularly haunting role—what made them the right symbolic and narrative device for this story?

Mirrors have fascinated me for a long time. When I was a little girl, I used to stand in front of the mirror, either in dim light or almost total darkness, and make hideous faces until at some point I no longer resembled myself or a person, but a monstrosity. This is a legitimate phenomenon known as the Caputo Effect. In addition to trying to frighten myself as a child, I had heard over the years the stories and history of mirrors being portals or ways to see the dead. According to Kate Golembiewski of Atlas Obscura, “Ancient Romans believed that mirrors had the ability to trap the soul.” There are countless other cultural beliefs like that in existence. Mirrors are also a symbol in alchemy, suggesting the mirror of the soul in transmutation, and also relating to the mirror’s historical affiliation with mercury, which represents the spirit. I could forever go down a rabbit hole about this stuff. But the most important thing was tying alchemy together with my world of death and spirits and mirrors, and I was able to find a precedent for it, so I could do it.

Can you give us a peek inside the next installment of The Darkening Gate series? Where will it take readers?

The Step and the Walk is the second book in The Darkening Gate, written as diary entries from the perspective of Andresh, whom readers met in book one. It centers on his time at university, where he first learned about demons and dark magic. Andresh has a lot of secrets, and while readers think he might have come clean with them in The Name and the Key, they would be wrong. The Step and the Walk fills in all of the blanks regarding Andresh’s recent past right before the events of his reuniting with Lily in The Name and the Key. For example, readers will see how Andresh met and made a pact with the demon Isabelle. It’s been so much fun to write. I just finished drafting it at the end of March and am working on the second draft now. I hope to submit it to my publisher at the end of this month, if not in early May. Please look forward to it!

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Some doors are sealed for a reason—and some names should never be spoken aloud.

At thirteen, Lily Bellamy finds her mother’s body in the marshes. What haunts her afterward is worse.

A corpselike spirit that looks like her mother follows Lily through every reflective surface—mirrors, glass, still water—whispering for Lily to open the door and let her out. Lily has no idea what the door is, how to stop the visions, or whether saving her mother is even possible. The haunting stretches into her young adulthood, eroding her sanity and dragging her closer to a breaking point she can feel but cannot escape.

When Lily is eighteen, Andresh Zatavier returns—the boy who once knew her better than anyone, and perhaps still does. Changed by years overseas, Andresh confesses his study of dark magic and forbidden knowledge beyond human limits. He believes he knows the key to Lily’s curse—and how to end death itself.

But every secret Andresh carries comes at a cost.

As Lily is drawn deeper into a world of dark gates and dangerous names, she must decide how far she is willing to go to save the woman she lost… and whether opening the door will free her mother—or unleash something far worse.

Kristina Elyse Butke launches a chilling new dark fantasy series with The Name and the Key, weaving grief, forbidden magic, and aching connection into a story where love tempts fate—and some doors should never be opened.