About the Author: “Sean Gregory always loved fiction. At an early age he began reading the Hardy Boys and quickly graduated to Agatha Christie. His father introduced him to Tolkien which launched his love affair with fantasy novels and Dungeons & Dragons. His time in the Marine Corps introduced him to Ludlum and W.E.B. Griffin, which sparked an interest in political/military thrillers. He loves all types of fiction, but as a Space Systems Engineer with a BSME from The Ohio State University, his affinity lies with Fantasy and Science Fiction. He currently heads the Sales and Marketing team at a small space flight company but has always uses his spare time to either read or write, dreaming of the day he would be a published author.
The Growing Darkness, released Oct 31, 2024, is his debut publication. He currently works on the sequel due out in August of 2025. He is also currently working on a Hardboiled Fantasy Detective series with the first installment ready for content editing and a release date of July 2025.
A transplant to Pittsburgh, Sean fell in love with the Steel City and made it his forever home in 2017 with his wife Jill and their puggle, Sweaty Betty the Spaghetti Yet.”
Author Website From the Publisher: “Shen spends his days alone, hiding from the world, wracked with shame and guilt. His identity as the Harbinger is a closely guarded secret. Some call him a hero. Some call him a villain. Few know who he really is. All he knows is he’s tired and wishes someone was strong enough to end his misery. By any means necessary.
But Shen can’t die. He’s tried.
Haunted by his past and endowed with powers he doesn’t understand, Shen-Zarl battles suicidal thoughts while he hunts evil with an insatiable zeal.
That all changes when he stumbles upon bandits assaulting a pair of twins from another realm. Never one to leave someone helpless, he once again postpones his suicide plans.
Princess Jesma and Prince Jesmir flee to the dangerous RhineWoods after witnessing their father’s murder. The decision nearly costs them their lives–until a mysterious vigilante known as The Harbinger rescues them.
Tamrin-Salzar, a famous tracker, and Shen’s best friend, is hired by a mysterious merchant to hunt down fugitives who murdered his son, discovers the man he works for is not who he seems.
Thrust together by chance, a group of four strangers run from forces they do not understand on a desperate mission to find the truth. But the forces set against them seem to always be one step ahead.
Evading spies, fighting off wild creatures, and pursued every step of the way by a murderous sociopath, the foursome find themselves entangled in global currents threatening the status of peace in the world, all while confronting a past Shen long thought he’d left behind.”
More info Physical books are available on sean-gregory.com and ebooks are available where ebooks are sold!
Content warning: this interview covers the topic of losing someone to suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling, there is help: you are not alone.
What’s The Growing Darkness about?
It’s about a troubled anti-hero that struggles with mental health issues. He was abandoned by his father at a young age and neglected by his mother. At least that is his perspective. Let’s face it, perspective skews interpretation. Anyway, he lost his brother when they were young due to a plague. His mother, rather than caring for him, sold him to an assassin’s guild when he was twelve because he has special traits. We enter Shen’s life (that’s the anti-hero) when he is in his fifties.
He lives in this shadow of abandonment and low self-worth. His mother beat a motto into him as a child. “Be an asset, not a burden.” And of course she got rid of him the first chance she had, so he feels like he must be a burden without knowing why.
Shen doesn’t want to be a hero and he never wanted to be an assassin. He’s just uniquely skilled for the job. He has very few close friends and goes through life contemplating ending it all. He lives a reclusive life in the wild where he doesn’t feel like a burden to anyone. He is an atheist in a world full of gods and their believers and would love to see it all toppled down but doesn’t care enough to do anything about it. He’s also a secret vigilante, running through the world doing good deeds and then running away before anyone figures out it was him.
The few friends he makes are extremely loyal to him and he to them, but he never sticks around, always leaving before he can become that burden he dreads being.
But then he meets someone who gives him a reason to stick around. And that chance meeting sets his life on a new course that uncovers a conspiracy that has ramifications for the entire world. Meanwhile, through it all, he still struggles with those feelings of inadequacy, abandonment, worthlessness, etc. and through it all he must persevere even when he wants to give up. He must uncover the conspiracy and finds some good in the world in the process. It changes him, makes him see the happiness that is in the world amongst the ugliness that weighs him down.
What made you decide to write and publish your first book now, at the age of 53?
Honestly? It’s a combination of factors. Ever since I read my first Hardy Boys Mystery when I was seven I’ve been fascinated by stories. Since that first book I have been in love with the worlds and characters that people create in fiction, movies, and television. I always wanted to be creative in that way. In the mid-nineties I attended the Acting Conservatory (not the Actor’s Conservatory) in South Florida for two years and tried to break into movies and TV. But that world wasn’t for me. Over the years I continued to write many books and short stories, but I was always embarrassed to share them with more than a few people close to me. I actually wrote two screenplays, and a stage play, but they were so bad I threw them away. That’s not true. I found them when we moved to Pittsburgh. Man, are they awful. I should throw them away.
The thing is, though, they were awful because I was trying to write a version of me that wasn’t true. It wasn’t honest. I wrote romanticized versions of the truth. Because of that, I never really felt I had something worth sharing. Deep down, I knew an author needs to make that authentic connection with themselves and the reader. I didn’t have the courage for that.
Until now, that is.
What triggered that change for you? Better yet why now? Why this story?
I lost two very dear people to suicide. My Aunt Bobi, who was my biggest supporter in life, and fourteen years later, my best friend and ‘adopted son’, Nate. Nate died just before the pandemic hit. It’s hard to imagine a worse day in my life.
I spent the next three years in a fog, devastated and lost. When the pandemic locked us down, I was isolated and dealing with the resurgence of the pain of my aunt, as well as the new pain of losing Nate. This all happened in the vacuum, or echo chamber, the pandemic created. My wife had to live with a zombie. Of course, I had to admit that I was a zombie pretending to be “fine.” She knows me better than I know me. Imagine being stuck in a house for nearly two years with that guy.
I found myself dwelling on Aunt Bobi and Nate every night as I tried to sleep throughout all of 2023. It was dragging me down. Then one day I said, “I think I need to write a novel about them. I need to get this off my chest. But I think I want to do it through Fantasy. I think I want to have this serious undertone within a less serious story.” That’s the crux of me. I’m not glib. But I tend to use humor and snark to deal with trauma.
Anyway, she said, “I think you should do it.”
So, I did, and what came out was nothing that I expected . . . but it absolutely helped. Unfortunately, the first draft was garbage. Not burn it and walk away garbage. More like, let me pour all of it out at once. One giant emotional dump truck onto the reader. Thankfully my beta readers have been great. They poked holes in the plot, told me that I had made Shen unlikable and unrelatable, even said it was boring in so many places or that it was too depressing. It evolved into something other than what it started out as, but it became something worth putting out there. So, I found my voice and my courage.
I’m proud of what I poured into those pages. One of my beta readers, a huge Brandon Sanderson fan, actually called me and said, “I love it. In fact, Chapter 17 is my favorite chapter of any book I ever read.” I cried.
Is it still about your Aunt Bobi and Nate?
Yes and no. In this book I want to introduce this troubled character that people may not like at first but will eventually fall in love with. That was Nate for me and what my Aunt Bobbie was for so many people. Nate was six when he entered my life, and he was a real handful. He felt like his father ignored him, and his mother had her own troubles and struggles. Don’t get me wrong, she loves and misses her son. She raised three kids on her own, but Nate needed more. He craved more. He felt inadequate.
But this young boy who had become a friend to my children had, through the years, become one of my favorite people in the world. By the time he was twelve he had spent more time in my house than he had in most other places. I gave him a safe place to stay when he needed it, paid for his college when he needed money, and just loved having him around. By the time he was twenty he was my closest friend, a trusted member of my family, and the first person I called when I needed a hand. He never said no, and he always came with a smile. He was twenty-five when he died. The main character, Shen, is mostly based on him.
My wife and I would talk about Nate, and we struggled to see what he would be at fifty. So, I created Nate at fifty in the form of Shen. Nate was an amazingly complex, troubled, loving, helpful, deviously mischievous person. I loved him immensely.
I want everyone to hear him through Shen, in his own voice. Shen’s inner monologue is based on conversations I had with Nate over the years. Many long nights keeping him on the phone, keeping him alive.
You wrote this novel in first-person?
I did. It’s entirely from Shen’s point of view. I felt that was important. It’s not easy writing from that perspective. The other characters have to take on a life that the reader can see outside of Shen’s perspective while still viewing them from his P-O-V. I think I did it. I hope I did, anyway.
There’s a real purpose to this story…
I wanted to use fiction to introduce these people I loved and lost. To keep some part of Nate and Aunt Bobbie alive forever. It’s important to understand that I want to be respectful of people struggling. I watched my Aunt and Nate struggle their entire lives. And since they passed, I have struggled in a different way. For the last three years I’ve spent my time wondering what I should have done? What did I miss? Why didn’t I take that last phone call? And I know it’s unreasonable. It’s all hindsight. It’s all guilt. And none of it was my choice. But what I finally figured out in writing this book is that they didn’t owe me an explanation, no matter how much I felt they did.
So now I just want to make them live forever. That’s who Shen is. Mostly Nate with a big piece of Aunt Bobbie weaved in. And, according to my son, Patrick, a sprinkling of me.
What do you want people to take away from this book?
The most important aspect of this book is that I always knew I would not be able to save Nate or Aunt Bobbie. It was there, in my mind, every day. So, I held on, every second I could, constantly aware and available, at a moment’s notice. But I always thought I had more time. I woke up each day, hopeful, until hope was lost. And the readers need to understand that. As they fall in love with Shen, in the back of their minds, they will worry if he’s going to make it. But I want them to understand what goes on inside that person’s mind. Nate and Aunt Bobbie, both, were very open with me. Honest. And I was with them. We shared it all. They knew I worried, and I knew they struggled. And it’s important that people understand, from both sides of the story, what that feels like. My hope is that, through my sharing, people will read and understand that you must take every moment you have and that you must listen.
My hope is that for those struggling they see that they have people who will carry any burden for one more minute with them. My hope is that for those left behind they see that you really must listen because sometimes things aren’t what they seem.
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