The Exiled Kin follows a sixteen-year-old Puerto Rican teenager with autism whose world is changed by bullying, betrayal, loss, and the shocking discovery of a truth about the father he thought was gone. What inspired you to create this foundation for the story?

As an autistic author who is also of Puerto Rican descent, I felt it was important to represent my community in my stories. Growing up, I didn’t always see that on paper or on screen, so when I had an opportunity to showcase a character that looked like me, I took advantage of it. Basing my main protagonist, Luke, off my own personal history was easy since I live those experiences in my daily life. An important aspect of autistic individuals is routine, and when that gets broken, disrupted, or upended, it can be difficult to adapt. Luke’s discovery of his father’s whereabouts is a life-changing revelation that would shake anyone’s world. For a teenager with a strong sense of justice and a deep reliance on structure, the impact is even more profound.

How did you approach writing a character whose differences are an important part of him while also showing his humor, strengths, fears, and ambitions?

Authors usually write what they know, and it’s vital to be self-aware of one’s own strengths and weaknesses, and how to apply them so you’re not in a tough situation. An important realization as I got older is that having a disability makes one different, not less. People get so focused on what makes individuals on the spectrum different that they fail to see our similarities. So, fleshing out Luke to showcase his humor, fears, strengths, flaws, and ambitions humanizes him to the reader and thus humanizes people on the spectrum.

The story explores Puerto Rican identity within a late-1990s Tennessee setting. How important was it for you to include cultural experiences, family traditions, and questions of identity in Luke’s story?

I was raised in New England, so I knew and met many people of different backgrounds throughout my young adult life. A highlight of my books that readers have mentioned is that the characters are so diverse that there’s someone relatable for everyone. When it comes to Luke, I felt it was important for the audience to understand his experience as a young Puerto Rican male on the autism spectrum. The best way to do that was to emphasize his family, his culture, and his struggles. Additionally, I grew up in the 2000s when there wasn’t a lot of representation for certain cultures or groups, so making identity a prominent focus in my stories wasn’t mere creative choice; it’s something deeply personal to me.

Can you give us a peek inside the next book in the Looked Down Upon series? Where will it take readers?

So far, I have written and published two books in the Looked Down Upon series, and as I grew as a writer and a person, Luke grew alongside me. I wrote The Exiled Kin right after high school and A Masked Wickedness while in college. Now that I am an adult, we’ll get an idea of what Luke is like as a full-fledged adult in the workforce and what challenges he has to go through in the final book of the trilogy series. Without giving too much away, one of those challenges will involve the Outcasts, a group I introduced in book two. Their return will play an important role in Luke’s journey and the conclusion of the series.
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