In Fortune Falls, readers follow a man who discovers a dead body and is forced to face his own regrets and a looming crisis threatening his family. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

My initial idea was to focus on a man who needed to face his own mortality. As I approached middle age, I realized how pertinent death was becoming, and yet was still so easy to deny and evade something so unavoidable and so universal and integral to life. The slot machine initially only represented that—it wasn’t telling a fortune, it was merely stating an obvious fact. Jason returning home and then mostly discounting his encounter with it exactly paralleled how we tend to live our lives. The reader will likely be shaking her or his fist and saying, “Why aren’t you dealing with this? Why aren’t you even questioning this?”

As the novel progressed and Jason continued to develop, I realized there are actually so many things in life we do not face or reconcile, and over time, that slot machine truly became the looming threat of inevitabilities that can disrupt or destroy our lives. It tells truths we do not want to face, and it does so in the random spin of fate.

There was a lot of time spent crafting the character traits in this novel. What was the most important factor for you to get right in your characters?

I very much try to write human characters, characters with flaws and regrets, characters who make mistakes. The challenge is to also try to make them relatable and sympathetic. Jason was especially challenging because he falls so far and his reactions become so extreme. It then became that much more important to make is attempt to change and be better as believable and realistic as possible. And, of course, it is up to the reader to decide just how much he actually achieved.

Secondary to that were the challenges of trying to make the supporting characters fully fleshed out and understandable within a 3rd person narrative limited to the main character. Jen is equally complex, but the reader doesn’t get the benefit of being in her head. They are further challenged by seeing her through the eyes of Jason, and Jason’s perspective is not always trustworthy. Nicholas, as well, needed to be written carefully considering the complexities of the situation and of the character. It’s a delicate subject, and one I wanted to portray authentically—but again, twisted within the perspectives and trauma that Jason is facing.

Are there any emotions or memories from your own life that you put into your characters’ lives?

To be honest, this story is the least personal to actual elements of my life. That said, it certainly does reflect upon past and present parts of my life. In many ways, I took my own fears, biases, regrets, and anxieties, put them into Jason, and cranked them up to eleven.

What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?

I have just begun work on my 4th novel, tentatively titled Pawnbroken, about a man who owns and operates a pawn shop just outside downtown Milwaukee. He was extremely close to his brother who disappeared long ago. When a very unique chess set he had given to his brother as a gift shows up in his pawn shop, he decides to trace the object back and try to find out what happened to his brother.

I hope to have Pawnbroken available sometime in 2026.

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Original source: https://literarytitan.com/2024/02/10/the-looming-threat-of-inevitabilities/