Originally published by Love Bytes LGBTQ Book Reviews.
What was your first published work? Tell me a little about it.
Oh, wow, it was a short poem titled “Modern Love” about how scary sex could be as a young gay man during the HIV/AIDS crisis. There’s a line I wrote that is so “baby gay poet” it makes me smile. Something like “love is hiding in a condom.” It was the early days of the world wide web, and NYU was publishing poetry and essays about the health crisis online. It’s a marvel that they’re all still there. http://cvisions.cat.nyu.edu/dwa/gallery.html
What was the inspiration for Broken Mirror?
A few ingredients combined to create the framework for this saga. I remember being on a train, travelling to and from Paris to a small town in Switzerland for a work meeting. The trip was around five hours each way. As I looked out the window, I was reflecting on how different my life was from most people’s. Half a world away from home, I was fretting over corporate purchasing policies and sustainability metrics, while the Alps rushed past, and then I was looking at really wild and colorful graffiti as the train approached Basel.
How had this become my life?
I got to thinking about a character that evolves beyond their upbringing and innate biology and wondering how far I could push the idea. Could a character accumulate so many bizarre and transformative experiences and modify their biology and mind to become something more than human? How would they relate to their friends and family and where they had come from?
That was the core of Victor Eastmore—isolated but trying to connect. The mental illness and family dynamics accumulated from there.
He actually started out as a pretty middle-class kind of guy. Then I shared a very rough draft with a dear friend who was living in London and working on a book about anti-terrorism tactics in Saudi Arabia. He’s always been a deeply spiritual thinker. We had long conversations about the manuscript and my intentions that steered Victor toward being from an elite family that symbolized the successes and failings of the political and economic systems. And those systems are threatened by his quest for the truth.
So, on the one hand, you have Victor coming from an elite family with all the resources and privileges that go along with that, but he’s also stigmatized, harassed, and victimized for having a mental illness that government policy and social norms say makes him the lowest of the low in the social hierarchy. For that part, I drew on some unfortunate and painful family history with mental illness and institutionalization. We really fail the most vulnerable among us and criminalize people who need medical and psychiatric help. I’m writing against that model while investigating the complicated and contentious issues around mental healthcare.
What were your goals and intentions in this book, and how well do you feel you achieved them?
I knew I had three big challenges ahead of me as I was writing this book. First, it takes place in an alternate history world so I needed to bring the history into the story in smooth and natural way. Second, the story is a murder mystery so I had to lace in clues and twists. Third, and perhaps most challenging, I had to write from the perspective of a character with a mental illness that should feel familiar and realistic, but also vivid and uncanny, and create a strong bond and empathy between the character and readers.
There were also additional aspects that got polished in the revised second edition. I wanted to bring out the queer elements and make them shine a bit more so. The new version has more trans and nonbinary characters, polyamory, same-sex attraction, and makes things that were subtext more explicit. I worked on pacing a lot in the revision and made the leap toward non-linear storytelling.
Maybe the next book I write should be less ambitious. [laughing] No, I like a big challenge.
Tell us something we don’t know about your heroes. What makes them tick?
Victor knows in his core that he’s being treated unfairly by the medical establishment and the government of Semiautonomous California. But while his grandfather is alive and seeking a cure for mirror resonance syndrome, Victor has both hope and complacency. When his grandfather dies, it’s a shock to system. Who is going to help him now? Victor is lacking agency at the beginning of the story, and he’s got to learn how to advocate for himself, how to take risks, and stand on his own two feet while managing the symptoms of his condition. He keeps going, which is a source of pride and self-actualization. There is an alt. history version of this book where Victor doesn’t look into his grandfather’s death, accepts his diagnosis, and he’s much more at the mercy of all the shenanigans around him. If you think Broken Mirror is bleak, that alternative version is much, much darker.
Are there underrepresented groups or ideas featured if your book? If so, discuss them.
Yes, the story takes place in an alternate history world where, after the United States Civil War, Reconstruction is successful, meaning that formerly enslaved people and women gain full citizenship and civil rights. A movement called the Permanent Enlightenment wipes away the vestiges of racism, mixed-race couples become the norm, and Jim Crow laws never happen.
I was careful about not presenting this alt history as ethnic erasure or whitewashing. Diverse cultures are maintained, but American Imperialism begins to wane and reverse its wrongs. It’s a portrait of a possible utopian future for the Americas where reparations lead to lasting change and the fulfillment of justice.
What are you working on now, and when can we expect it?
Tortured Echoes is the sequel to Broken Mirror, and it’s currently available. The third book in the series, Altered Bodies, is in the editing process now and is scheduled for release in summer 2025.