The Wolf Esprit follows a 17-year-old carnival performer in 18th-century France who is hiding dark secrets that, when they come to light, threaten everything he has. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

A central theme of my wolf novels is the outsider who finds strength of character through physical transformation. And while there are queer characters in all my stories, they’ve never led the tale. So, I couldn’t think of a better outsider than a young gay man, who would be invariably closeted because of the period, while living among people who are social outcasts themselves. Esprit’s is a life of constant change as his family travels from town to town performing, so he already has the constitution for the transformation ahead of him from the first page. I wanted to know what a young gay man could do with that nearly invincible power.

I’d fallen in love with Gabrielle, the POV character from the previous chronicle, Wolf Omega, and decided she would be the perfect springboard to bring Esprit into the lycan world. Gabrielle finds herself living in France after nearly three hundred pages of her story, but she tells the reader very little about her time there before leaping her tale forward in huge bounds from the 18th to the 20th century. So, I started Esprit’s tale there and let him find and lose himself again and again while he struggled with transitioning from one challenging life to the next.

Werewolf love stories are a popular theme, with certain aspects that readers expect. How did you come up with the unique characteristics while blending traditional motifs in this genre to create the captivating characters and storyline you have?

For starters, I’ve never read a single werewolf love story! In fact, the closest I’ve ever come to one was when a friend dragged me to watch Twilight fifteen years ago. And my stories bear little resemblance to Stephenie Meyer’s. So, I have no idea if I’ll rise to genre reader expectations when Esprit finds love. My goal was for him to fall for an older man (a common enough trope) who would guide him through the challenges of young romance and ultimately change Esprit’s life. And because they are werewolves living through several potential lifetimes, I hooked him up with the hottest, oldest guy to be found.

But since this is a dark fantasy tale, the actual romance was the least interesting part of that romance in my eyes. Observing love through the lens of a 48-year-old man, I knew well enough how the frenzied tale would likely end. In fact, Esprit begins his story by playing the title character in Romeo and Juliet on stage, the best way I could think of to foreshadow how the dopamine high of adolescent love tends to meet its match.

Espirit Lenoir struggles with his identity and his desires. His story of self-discovery and coming into himself is awe-inspiring. Was there anything from your own life that you put into the characters in your novel?

All my characters, whether they’re regular people living with everyday challenges or fantastical beings facing impossible odds, each approach their struggles with my imagination to get them through. So, everything I’ve ever lived through comes into play to some extent. Beyond my imagination, Esprit lives through his transformation, armed with all I learned from my own struggles as a gay youth. His altercations with his father, who despises Esprit’s truth, mirror my own.

Every father role I’ve ever written contains elements of my real father in the character’s voice. In A Perfect Night, the eight-year-old Richie lives with the world’s sweetest, most loving father. Seventeen-year-old Esprit lives with a father who cannot speak to him without contempt in his words. Both men were true to my experiences with my real father when I was the boys’ ages.

What is the next book that you are working on, and when can your fans expect it to be out?

I have just begun an untitled sequel to last year’s A Perfect Night, which will continue my Haunted Women series. It is the story of a young girl who discovers she comes from a bloodline of women who possess the ability to see spirits. The tale will take Fran, the central character, well into adulthood as she faces the truth of what her lineage has in store for her. I expect the novel to be out in the fall of next year.

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