A Madness Unmade follows the last guardian of a crumbling sanctuary for restless spirits, who must navigate a world of necromantic power and unravel the haunting mysteries of her father’s death. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

A whole slew of inspiration hit me at once: within a matter of days, I consumed S.L. Prater’s Street Witch trilogy, followed by Charlie N. Holmberg’s Spellbreaker duology, both of which made me want to write Victorian-inspired fantasy and then, while watching an old episode of Survivor, I got hung up on the word “soliloquy” and began dreaming up a character who talked to herself all the time — no, wait, she wasn’t talking to herself, but to ghosts! Then I decided we needed more friendly ghosts in literature, saw an opportunity to incorporate a sentient house (something I’ve always wanted to do), and it snowballed wonderfully from there.

Laurel Rumbroom is a complex character shaped by grief and burdened with responsibility. How did you approach developing her character arc, and what were the biggest challenges in writing her journey?

There is a lot of myself in Laurel; though I didn’t realize it, in writing her character I was exploring the way my own mind worked, both in the sort of shunting-aside of grief, the almost aggressive forgetting of it, as well as in the struggling to make sense of how the world works and the difficulties faced in learning when you have any sort of attention or information-processing disorder. Sometimes the simplest tasks are the hardest, and I wanted to see that reflected in a character, but without slipping into the clichés or misconceptions about attention disorders — that was the most challenging part, especially since I’m still learning about neurodivergence and all its nuanced forms.

The Underhallow is a beautifully haunting setting with rich gothic elements. Can you share your creative process behind building this unique sanctuary for spirits?

Really, the setting came to life on its own! When starting the story, I was reading a lot of Victorian/gaslamp fantasy, and knew I needed a sprawling old manor. I also knew my main character, Laurel, was mildly agoraphobic and would not be leaving the manor — thus, the idea of a “sanctum” was twofold, as it’s not just a sanctuary for ghosts, but for her as well! It needed to be as cozy as it was gothic, which was a fun dichotomy to experiment with.

In the Victorian era, a large manor such as the Underhallow would typically require a dedicated team of people to maintain its upkeep, but in this case, we have a lone young woman who has no idea how to run a household (nor does she have the desire to), and that was another fun element to incorporate. I did a lot of research on how they did these mundane but necessary things in the eighteenth century. Super intense stuff.

When and where will your book be available?

A Madness Unmade will be released on March 3, 2025, in both print and digital formats, and will be available from most online book retailers!

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