Every book starts somewhere.
Sometimes it starts with a setting. Sometimes it starts with a single scene that refuses to leave you alone. And sometimes a character walks into your imagination so completely formed that you have no choice but to follow her.
Beacon in the Darkness started with Kat.
I wasn’t planning to begin a brand-new series when Kat Dimitru first showed up in my head. She was brilliant, determined, grieving, and carrying far more than she was willing to let anyone see. She had the kind of mind that notices the details everyone else misses and one question she couldn’t stop asking.
What happened to her sister?
That question became the thread I kept pulling, and not long after, it led me straight through the doors of Beacon Security.
Where Beacon Really Began
Kat wasn’t looking for a new family when she came to Beacon. She wasn’t even really looking for a fresh start.
She was looking for answers.
As a forensic specialist, she knows how to examine evidence, follow patterns, and keep digging long after someone else might have accepted the obvious explanation. But her sister’s disappearance isn’t just another case. It’s personal. It’s the thing she has never been able to set down.
Once I knew that about her, I knew the world around her had to be built for people who understood what it meant to keep showing up when the usual systems failed. This became the heart of Beacon Security. I didn’t want to write a polished agency full of people who had everything figured out. I wanted a team made up of people with complicated pasts, hard-earned skills, sharp edges, and the kind of loyalty that is proven through action. People who could walk into the dark with someone and stay there until they found a way back out.
That idea shaped the entire series.
Then Came Mac
If Kat arrived carrying questions, Mac arrived carrying responsibility.
Mark “Mac” McKenzie is a non-active-duty Marine and one of the men behind Beacon Security. Protecting people makes sense to him. It’s something he understands. Something he can act on. Something with rules, even when Beacon occasionally has to bend a few of them.
Trust is harder.
Letting someone close enough to see the parts of him he keeps guarded is harder still. Then Kat walks into his world with all that intelligence, determination, and stubborn refusal to stop searching. She disrupts the life he understands almost immediately. One of the things I loved most while writing them was that neither of them arrives ready to be rescued by the other. They’re both capable. They’re both carrying their own history. They’re both used to handling things themselves.
What changes them isn’t one person saving the other….It’s realizing they don’t have to keep doing everything alone.
That became one of the emotional questions underneath the entire book: Can two people who are so used to surviving on their own learn to let someone stand beside them?
And, Of Course, There Was Duke
I cannot talk about the beginning of Beacon in the Darkness without talking about Duke.
Some characters politely stay in the role you give them. Duke did not get that memo.
He became so much more than Mac’s German shepherd. He brought warmth into scenes that needed it, grounded Mac in ways dialogue sometimes couldn’t, and somehow managed to make himself feel like a full member of the Beacon family. He made himself feel like a whole other character that I had to keep my eyes on because you never knew, scratch that, I never knew what he was going to do.
He’s loyal, watchful, and very good at stealing attention. Honestly, I should have known readers would fall for him.
The Story Under the Suspense
There is plenty of danger in Beacon in the Darkness. There are secrets, questions, an investigation that becomes much bigger than Kat expects, and moments when the people at Beacon have to decide how far they’re willing to go for someone they consider one of their own.
But when I look back at the book now, the part that still matters most to me isn’t the case.
It’s the people. The characters that still come and say hello to me even when the second book isn’t being written yet. It’s Kat walking into Beacon with one purpose and slowly finding something she wasn’t searching for. It’s Mac discovering that protecting someone and letting them matter to you are two very different kinds of risk. It’s a team that starts to feel less like coworkers and more like family.
And underneath all of it is a question that stayed with me through the entire writing process:
What happens when the systems that are supposed to help you don’t?
For Kat and Mac, part of the answer becomes Beacon. Not because Beacon can fix everything. Not because everyone inside those walls is perfectly healed or has all the answers. It’s because when one of them walks into the dark, the others don’t leave them there alone.
Coming Back to Beacon in Paperback
There is something strange and wonderful about returning to a story after it’s already been out in the world for a while.
Beacon in the Darkness was first released nearly a year ago, and since then I’ve spent more time with this team, thought about where the series is going next, and watched readers connect with characters who once existed only in my notes.
Now I’m getting to experience the book in a completely different way. On September 29, 2026, Beacon in the Darkness releases in paperback.
Seeing this story become something readers can put on a shelf feels especially meaningful because Beacon itself started as such a small idea: one woman searching for answers, one guarded protector, one very loyal dog, and a team that slowly became a family.
And somehow, that small beginning became an entire world I still have so much more to explore.
So yes…there is more Beacon coming.
I’m not giving everything away yet. 😉 But Mac, Kat, Duke, and the rest of Beacon Security are nowhere near finished with me.
Do you like seeing the messy beginning behind a finished book: the first character idea, early notes, abandoned scenes, and all the pieces that eventually became the story?
I’m sharing more behind-the-scenes pieces from Beacon in the Darkness throughout September as we count down to the paperback release, and I have a few things tucked away that have never made it onto the page before. 💜
And maybe that’s what I love most about looking back at where this story began. Beacon in the Darkness was never only about solving a case. It became a story about loyalty, found family, learning to trust again, and the people who choose to stay beside you when things get dark.
Nearly a year later, I still love stepping back into the world of Beacon Security.
And on September 29th, I get to invite you back through those doors with me. 💜
