Beyond the Extraordinary

I get many book ideas, movie ideas as well, and I never quite know where the spark is going to come from. Sometimes it’s something I dream, other times it’s a stray thought while watching a show or reading a headline, and now and then it simply comes out of nowhere, like a whisper that plants itself in my imagination and refuses to leave. I usually need some magic in it to really get into the story, or at the very least something that leans into the paranormal—a ghost, a spirit, or a world that isn’t exactly like our own. That touch of the otherworldly, even if it’s subtle, keeps me excited as a writer. I’ve always been drawn to mysteries too, detective stories that come with a twist. The traditional whodunit is fine, but I crave that extra layer where not everything can be explained with logic or reason.

That’s why I loved working on I Was Murdered Last Night. In that novel, Detective Olivia Brown comes face-to-face with a ghost, which completely shakes her sense of reality. She doesn’t believe in such nonsense, at least not at first. She’s grounded, skeptical, and her entire identity as a detective is tied to facts and evidence. And then suddenly she’s being forced to confront something she can’t fit neatly into a police report. That friction between what she believes and what she experiences is what makes her interesting. And of course, there’s her Aunt Edna, who very much does believe in ghosts and spirits, and who is eccentric to say the least. Writing Edna was a joy because she brings both humor and wisdom, the kind of character who seems ridiculous on the surface but often speaks the closest thing to the truth.

My latest release, Slaves of Captain John, has been out long enough now that I’m starting to see ratings come in. One of the first was a three-star rating. Not even a review, just the number. I might be paranoid—and I admit that writers often are when it comes to their books—but it almost feels like someone is deliberately trying to drag the book down before it has a chance to gain traction. It’s a strange, frustrating thing about publishing in the modern world. You can pour your soul into a story, spend months or years crafting the characters and world, and then a single star rating can make it feel like it’s all being dismissed in the blink of an eye. Still, I try to remind myself that not everyone will love every story, and that even mixed ratings mean people are reading.

The inspiration behind Slaves of Captain John was unusual. The seed of the idea was that a group of people—blacks in this case—would, after generations of suffering and struggle, finally end up on top. That reversal of power, that reclaiming of dignity and strength, fascinated me. But I didn’t want to set it on Earth or make it strictly historical fiction. Instead, the story takes place in a parallel universe, a place that resembles the 1800s in many ways but isn’t bound by the exact rules of our own history. This gave me the freedom to shape the conflicts, geography, and social order in ways that both reflect our world and depart from it, allowing the story to feel both familiar and strange at the same time.

In this world, wars have raged endlessly, leaving scars across the land. But high above much of the turmoil, at a height of about two thousand feet, rests a flat mountain plateau. On one side of the mountain lies the ocean, wide and beautiful, stretching endlessly toward the horizon. On the other side, the land falls away into thousands of miles of wilderness, punctuated here and there by scattered towns, cities, and communities. Life on the plateau is centered around a large settlement called High Hill. Calling it a village is almost laughable, because it’s too large to be considered a village by any standard, yet the people cling to the name as if it gives them a sense of small-town familiarity.

High Hill thrives, but its prosperity is built on cruelty. The economy depends on the blood, sweat, and tears of black slaves who work the land, serve the wealthy, and endure brutal treatment at the hands of their so-called masters. Order in High Hill is maintained by a sheriff, a man with no compassion, whose grip on the village is enforced by a cadre of rough men loyal to him. Together, they maintain a reign of fear, ensuring that those who might rebel or question the system remain silent.

It is into this environment that a man calling himself Captain John arrives. He travels by stagecoach, accompanied by eight other men, and he is searching for escape—escape from his past, from the hardships of life, and from the ghost of the man he once was. Captain John sees High Hill as a kind of end of the world, the perfect place to disappear and begin again. But instead of settling on the plateau itself, he chooses the base of the mountain as his home. There, he begins building what he calls a plantation, though others view it more as a fortified compound than a simple estate.

Captain John is clever and secretive. At night, under the cover of darkness, he sneaks in more men to serve him. He also buys slaves from the train that stops at High Hill, and he pays more than anyone else is willing to pay. This infuriates the people of High Hill, who find themselves unable to compete with his deep pockets. They already resent his presence, but his willingness to outbid them for slaves makes him an enemy in their eyes.

From his compound, terrible sounds drift across the land. People claim they can hear the cries of slaves at all hours, screaming in pain or terror, though no one dares get close enough to find out exactly what is happening. The whispers spread through High Hill, building an aura of fear around Captain John and his strange fortress at the mountain’s base.

And yet, amid the darkness of his actions, a human connection begins to stir. Captain John finds himself drawn to Sarah, a strikingly beautiful black woman with a complicated past. There is an immediate physical attraction, one he doesn’t want to acknowledge. John is still mourning the loss of his wife, whose death left him emotionally shattered. He has no desire to get involved with another woman, especially not a woman of color in a world where such relationships are considered scandalous at best and dangerous at worst. The irony cuts deep when he learns her name—Sarah, the same as his murdered wife. The coincidence unsettles him, awakening emotions he thought he had buried.

Sarah herself is remarkable. She is one of the few black women to have bought her freedom, scraping together enough to step out of slavery’s grasp. But her independence comes with a price. Many of the white inhabitants of High Hill despise her, regarding her with a mix of jealousy, resentment, and hatred. To them, she is living proof that the rigid hierarchy can be challenged, and that truth terrifies them.

Her freedom is threatened one morning when she awakens in a ditch, bleeding and broken, having been stabbed and left for dead. She has no idea who attacked her, though the list of potential enemies is long. Somehow, by sheer will, she clings to life, but in her weakened state she faces an impossible task: making the long, grueling climb back up the elevated trail to High Hill. Each step is a battle, her body screaming for rest while her spirit refuses to give up.

Her struggle mirrors the larger theme of the story—the fight for survival, dignity, and a place in a world determined to crush her. Sarah’s path will cross with Captain John’s in ways neither of them expect, and their fates will become entwined in a conflict that challenges the very foundations of High Hill.

When I write stories like this, I’m not just trying to create drama or suspense for the sake of entertainment. I’m exploring the tensions between power and powerlessness, love and prejudice, tradition and change. I want to show that even in the darkest circumstances, hope can flicker, fragile but unyielding. And I want readers to feel unsettled, not because the story is bleak, but because it forces them to confront uncomfortable truths about human nature, society, and the past that still echoes into our present.

That, in many ways, is why I keep coming back to ideas with magic, ghosts, or parallel worlds. Reality alone is often too straightforward. But when I bend it, when I allow in elements that can’t be easily explained, it opens the door to bigger possibilities. It lets me write about justice and injustice, love and loss, without being trapped in the rigid lines of realism. It also keeps me, as a writer, endlessly curious. Because once a ghost walks into a detective’s office, or a man builds a fortress at the base of a mountain in a parallel universe, anything can happen.

And that’s the kind of storytelling that excites me the most.