For Sparks in the Dark, I wanted to write a classic episode of a new sci-fi serial series, along the lines of the popular science fiction T.V. shows I enjoyed growing up (and still enjoy).  I’m a huge geek for these series, and have always wanted to see a character like me in them – a big, burly dude who just happens to like other big, burly dudes.  But I didn’t want that aspect of my characters to be the focus of the story – I wanted the sci-fi element to really shine through, first and foremost. Sparks in the Dark is an action-adventure story at its heart, with the bonus of having the main characters being gay bears who are into each other.  Also, I wanted to showcase the vast unknown that uncharted space has to offer, so that even if our heroes are space-faring adventures, there’s still so much out there for them to discover.

What character gave you fits and fought against you? Did that character cause trouble because you weren’t listening and missed something important about them?

In Sparks in the Dark, , it was most definitely Alison Ng, the Lead Engineer.  I wanted to create her as an antagonist for Cutter, but not have her come across as the stereotypical overbearing boss that everyone loves to hate. I wanted to show that she was capable, brave and a highly determined professional, but prone to being blind to anything outside of the mission – a person that is too focused on success, which is why Cutter doesn’t like her.  Cutter is more about the experience than the result (it’s the nature of his people to want to learn), and so Alison is his foil, in that all she cares about is getting the mission accomplished. It was tough not to make her the villain of the story in that sense, because it would have been easy to do, and so I needed to carefully step into her shoes to make sure her actions stayed true to her motivations. Most people who’ve read Sparks in the Dark dislike Alison (to the point of mentioning it in their reviews), and I kinda regret that – she’s a complex character whose flaws influence her, but not define her.

Who has been your favorite character to write and why?

Though I loved writing Buzz and Cutter’s chapters, it was Sparks who was my favourite, only because a trans-dimensional immortal entity comprised solely of energy is not one you get to write about every day. The unmitigated arrogance, the haughty coldness, the bizarre motivations – it was delicious charting out what he (it?) would feel and think, and how he would react as he slowly learned more about the universe he was exploiting.  It’s one of the most enjoyable aspects of writing villains – the ability to discard all the constraints of being good and just getting to sink your teeth into being your wicked self.

What was the hardest part of writing this book?

Balancing the action with the romance.  It was a tough call, because the goal for this book was to create a sci-fi spectacular with a little bit of mushy stuff, and at times, I was torn between providing more erotic content versus more space exploration.  I didn’t want to soak the book with sex because despite that being a sure-fire way to get attention, it wasn’t the motivation behind writing the story.  I did want to show some mature content, but that it wasn’t the driving force behind the character’s motivations – maybe it was a way to show that there’s more to LGBTQ+ people than their sexuality?   I’m not entirely sure myself for the reasons, but I am sure I wanted to write a kick-ass space adventure, and so that’s what I ultimately decided to favour when choosing what scenes I wanted to show.

Tell us one thing about them that we don’t learn from the book, the secret in their past.

Ha ha, no way!  That’s what future episodes are for.  There’s a reason their called spoilers after all.  One little hint, then?  Cutter has led multiple lives … maybe this wasn’t the first time he’s met Buzz …?

What was the weirdest thing you had to Google for your story?

Ways to accomplish faster than light travel.  I always knew that space was big, but … seriously, it’s incomprehensibly huge, and physically travelling between distances is going to be a challenge for humanity.  The nearest star system to our own, Alpha Centauri, is four lightyears from us – which sounds like nothing until you realise it’s four years travelling at the speed of light, which is impossible if you’re not light (apparently it takes an infinite amount of energy to reach the speed of light, and an infinite amount of energy to slow down back to normal).  I had to Google warp-speed, and discovered a whole lot of plot holes in Star Trek episodes because of that – there’s just no way a starship can come charging to the rescue after receiving a distress signal, so you just have to ‘go with it’ and accept that space, from a literary perspective, has to be worked around, rather than worked with.  Put it this way, given the distances they travel in the movies, there’s more magic in Star Wars than there is in Harry Potter – there’s just no other way to account for how quickly they get from solar system A to B.