A low rumble shivered up through the floor before Craig registered the locks shifting: a quick throb under his heel, then metal rasping as something massive slid back into the wall. He jerked his head off his damp forearm and by the time the second bolt clacked home he was already rising, legs fighting the…

Craig found a position that hurt less and decided, for the moment, not to improve it. He lay on his right side with one knee drawn forward, the charcoal robe caught beneath his hip. Pulling the fabric free would have required lifting himself, and lifting himself would have disturbed a tolerable arrangement in pursuit of…

At 07:18, Craig was still thirty feet from the north library and moving with the careful economy of a man who had discovered overnight that almost every part of walking involved something he had rather not move. The salve had done what it was apparently designed to do. The broken places in the skin no…

Craig woke just before six. There was no clock in the room, but he knew the intervals by now: the first faint chime from the hallway, the answering call from the study, a laggard peal from somewhere up the stair. They had argued their way through the night, never perfectly aligned, and now the dawn…

At the first turn, Craig stopped trying to make himself comfortable. There wasn’t a comfortable position. He could move one knee or ease the pressure on his shoulder, but each improvement cost him somewhere else. The leather beneath his cheek warmed slowly. Cool air reached him through a narrow vent he could feel but couldn’t…

The silence in the room settled thick and heavy, punctuated only by the steady, mechanical tick of the cuckoo clock on the wall. The carpet was plush beneath Craig’s knees, but the floor underneath it felt cold and unyielding through the wool of his trousers. Rule number one when a job goes sideways, Craig reminded…

The air in Dr. Debra’s consultation room was thick with the scent of polished leather, jasmine, and the deeper trace of musk. Outside, rain washed over downtown, but inside, soundproofing panels muted the city to a low, steady pulse. Behind her desk hung her Columbia doctorate in clinical psychology, flanked by her state license and…

Sitting down and taking an hour to answer all 50 questions about myself and my past experiences has really helped mould Debra into a clone of who I was, how I acted, how I spoke, and more importantly ... to me anyways ... the raging internal monologue that I'd have to contend with every time…

The following interview was created while developing Debra, one of the central characters in my book. Debra exists in several overlapping forms: Dr. Debra, the professional psychologist; Female Led Relationship Debra, her intensely dominant persona; and simply Debra, the quieter woman underneath both. Because I wanted her to be grounded in reality rather than written…