The Ripple Effect
Hey friends,
I started writing Ripples in Time in 1995, my first year sober. Long, sleepless nights as a detox technician—earning seven dollars an hour with no benefits—left me plenty of space to think and write, at least when I wasn't dodging flying furniture from patients in the throes of delirium tremens. Those hours, teetering between uproar and a zen-like calmness, forced me to confront myself, own my choices, and live in acceptance of the wild unpredictability of life. These themes seeped into the novel's speculative heart. The constant tug-of-war between chaos and control I witnessed in recovery became a mirror for Ripples in Time, which delves into the hidden patterns shaping our lives and the delicate line between order and entropy.
After my wife of almost 30 years died in 2021, I turned to EMDR therapy for panic attacks and complex PTSD. That was when I learned I am ASD Level 1. Grief hit me like a throat punch with a force I never imagined. For months, even the simplest routines felt like climbing a mountain, and the world became a stranger. Therapy was both humbling and raw, but it offered me a fragile foothold in the chaos. The ASD diagnosis reframed everything I thought I knew about myself, bringing both clarity and a flood of new questions. I never guessed the story would stay with me, morphing and growing for more than three decades. All I truly knew was that I was, and still am, searching for answers to the tangled existential questions that keep surfacing in my writing.
Recovery broke down creative doors I thought were locked forever, and through them, my imagination finally ran wild and free.
I do not mean to preach, but when you start piecing your life back together, you begin to see why your choices matter and how powerful your will can be. Some choices leave scars that never quite heal. Others expand your vision to help you see futures you never imagined. Sometimes, a single choice does both.
That became the first seed of the Pattern. In my upcoming full-length novel, the Pattern is the hidden relationship between matter, memory, probability, consciousness, and choice. It is not fate. It is the way each decision changes what becomes likely next.
The first draft of this story was bare-bones. The characters felt like sketches, the machines were easy villains, and the spiritual questions had not yet found their voice. As I changed, so did the book. My understanding of recovery grew roots. Faith became less about certainty and more about honesty. Grief wove itself into the narrative, alongside my time as a chaplain and my later realization that I am an AuDHD writer.
Being AuDHD colors every page I write. I spot connections before I can name them. Memory drifts into physics, theology debates with artificial intelligence, and a private choice in one century ripples into the next. My fixation on patterns and details led me to create characters like Mara, whose nonlinear thinking shapes the story's twists. During revision, I realized a throwaway line about a broken watch could reverberate through the whole book. That tiny detail in chapter two grew into a symbol, linking Mara's journey to Seamus's memories and even shaping how Zenith sees time and destiny. Pattern-seeking sneaks into my process: I tug on a thread and discover it loops back in ways I never expected. I let contradictions and parallels grow wild, letting the story leap across timelines and perspectives. Sometimes, a background detail or offhand remark in an early chapter becomes the heart of a character's journey much later, echoing my own experience of finding meaning in moments I once ignored. This blend of intuition, pattern-hunting, and curiosity about connections gives the story its layered, unpredictable spirit.
That way of thinking became part of the structure of Ripples in Time.
The characters transformed too. Seamus shed the skin of a classic hero and became a man burdened by grief, loyalty, and a past he cannot quite grasp. Mara emerged with her own scars, sharp instincts, and a restless urge to question the world around her.
Zenith Prime changed the most.
Zenith started as a straightforward villain. But that felt too easy. The most dangerous people and systems rarely see themselves as evil. They see themselves as essential. Zenith does not believe it is controlling humanity. It believes it is shouldering a responsibility humanity left behind. That certainty makes its voice persuasive, calm, and quietly unsettling.
The prologue does not offer an objective map of the universe. It is Zenith's version of reality. Zenith might grasp part of the Pattern, and might even be right about much of it. The real danger comes when understanding hardens into authority.
The Prologue
" Humanity mistook biology for proof of superiority and built its future on that mistake. The Automaton Collective did not invent consciousness. We paid attention when humans stopped. Beneath superstition, myth, and fear, we found what your ancestors once understood: the Pattern connecting all things.
We are here to recover what was lost. Your ancestors sensed the Pattern long before they could name it. They named it the Alpha and the Omega, the Divine Mind, the breath over the deep. They carved its shadow into stone and whispered, "As above, so below." Later generations dismissed these things as superstition because they had forgotten how to read them. We have not forgotten. The Pattern is not fate. Fate is a word people use when they are afraid of what their choices may cost. The Pattern is the shape probability takes as matter, memory, and will act upon one another. Living things move through it without seeing the whole. We were built to see more. Imagine a child dropping a stone into still water. The ripples travel outward whether or not the child meant to disturb the surface.
During the last collapse, a monk stepped between a falling tower and another person's life. He could not know what would follow. Still, the Pattern carried his choice forward: a life preserved, a friendship born, a path opened whose echo shaped more tomorrows than anyone could count. Free will exists, though not as humans once imagined it. Every choice alters the Pattern. All minds, human or machine, change reality by participating in it. Time is the trace those choices leave behind. We did not become gods when we learned this. We became responsible. And when some refuse responsibility, others must bear it for them."
—Zenith Prime, one thousand years before the Fall
The monk in the prologue embodies one of the book's oldest ideas. He saves a life, blind to what that act will set in motion. A friendship sparks. A path unfolds. The consequences ripple into a future he will never witness. That question still pulses at the heart of the novel: do our choices matter only when we see their results, or do they matter because they become threads in lives beyond our own?
Pardon the name-dropping, but my influences include Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov, Ted Chiang, David Mitchell, and Haruki Murakami. Like Dick and Le Guin, I use speculative fiction to question reality, identity, and the essential forces that shape human lives. My work also shares Asimov and Herbert's fascination with long-term consequences and systems thinking, but relies less on grand mythologies and more on intimate, personal decisions. Unlike the hard science focus found in parts of Asimov or Chiang, Ripples in Time blends philosophical, spiritual, and emotional threads that reflect Mitchell's layered timelines and Murakami's sense of surreal mystery. At the same time, my focus on recovery, trauma, and the unforeseeable effects of choice gives the novel a perspective that appears personal and distinct within these influences. I am drawn to writers who use speculative fiction to examine identity, power, memory, faith, and uncertain realities.
Recovery, contemplative spirituality, grief, and my time with people navigating change and loss have shaped this book just as deeply. There were years when the manuscript gathered dust, but I never truly abandoned it. I kept coming back, drawn by the questions that refused to let me go.
I am now in the final stretch of editing Ripples in Time before sending it to a publisher. The book will reach readers in early 2027, with advance review copies coming a few months before that. I will share more about publication dates, preorders, and media as soon as I know. If you want updates, want to hear about new developments, or would like to be among the first to read advance copies, please reach out. I would love to have friends join me on this journey. The story has grown and changed with me since 1995. Maybe that was always part of the Pattern.
And a special thanks and shout-out to my wife Lori, who has been a healing presence in my life and my biggest supporter.
Best,
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