1. What was your inspiration for writing the books?
Someone died. That's where it started. Deep Fate is about grief and about fate you can't change, no matter what you try. The inevitable comes regardless. Deep Exodus is also about grief, but it goes further into depression and sadness. It's told from the perspective of a body being cremated, no longer existing. It's not really about a body, though it's about the planet. Deep Return is about healing on its own timeline. It's about hope, rejuvenation, and actually seeking help for depression and other struggles.
2. What are the main themes?
Grief. Depression. Free will. Death. Rejuvenation. Life.
3. Why fiction instead of a memoir or essay?
Fiction lets me put grief inside characters who aren't me, living normal lives, so readers could see how it shows up uninvited. A memoir only tells you what happened to one person. This felt bigger than that.
4. When did you know this had to be a trilogy?
Once I realised grief isn't one moment — it has stages. Impact, then collapse, then recovery.
Deep Fate
5. Why let the inevitable actually happen instead of giving readers a way out?
Because that's true to life. Sometimes nothing you do changes the outcome. I didn't want to fake an escape hatch just to make readers feel better.
6. How do the characters try to change what's coming, and what does that represent?
They fight it every way they know how. They call in help, refuse to accept it, look for any option. That's just human nature. We don't like being told something can't be fixed.
7. What do you hope readers take from a story about unavoidable loss?
That fighting still matters, even if it doesn't change the outcome.
8. Any character you feel closest to, or found hardest to write?
The character who finally stops fighting. That was the hardest scene in the book.
Deep Exodus
9. Where did the cremation/Earth concept come from?
I wanted to write about total loss. Something disappearing completely. A person's body felt too small for what I was trying to say, so I made it the planet instead.
10. Why cremation instead of a more direct environmental story?
A direct environmental story turns into a lecture. Cremation gave me something final and personal instead, no coming back from it.
11. How does the grief in this book differ from Deep Fate?
Deep Fate is about one moment. Deep Exodus is about what settles in afterwards. The low ongoing weight of depression once the moment has passed.
12. Was it hard to keep something so abstract emotionally grounded?
Yes. I had to write the planet the way you'd write a person dying. Specific, physical, step by step. That kept it from floating away into metaphor.
Deep Return
13. Why end the trilogy with healing and hope?
Because grief that never resolves isn't honest either. People do heal, even if it takes longer than they'd like.
14. Is the healing in this book realistic, or more symbolic?
Both.
15. What does "rejuvenation" mean here?
Not going back to how things were before. That's gone. It's building something that works out of what's left.
16. What does "return" refer to?
I'll leave that one for readers to find out.
The Trilogy as a Whole
17. What emotional journey should someone reading all three books expect?
Impact, then collapse, then recovery... in that order, the way it actually happens.
18. How do the six themes connect across the books?
They're not separate. Free will runs into death in Deep Fate. Life fades into depression in Deep Exodus. Grief and rejuvenation meet each other in Deep Return.
19. Did you know the ending when you started, or did it change?
I knew the shape of it... impact, collapse, recovery before I knew the details. The details changed a lot along the way.
20. Is there a central question the trilogy is asking?
Whether we can survive the things we can't prevent. I don't think there's a clean answer to that.
Closing
21. What do you want readers who are grieving or struggling to take from this?
That what they're feeling isn't a personal failure. It's a process. It has an endpoint, even if it's not the one they expected.
22. Was writing this part of your own healing?
Yes. I won't call it therapy, but writing three books about loss and recovery works on you the same way it works on the characters.
23. What do you wish readers understood before starting?
Deep Fate is hard on purpose. Stick with it. Deep Return is on the other side.
24. What's next for you?
Something quieter, probably. Ask me again in a year.
The Deep Trilogy — Deep Fate, Deep Exodus, and Deep Return — is available now:
- Get the ebooks from SHP Creative's online shop (powered by Payhip).
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