This was supposed to be one book
I thought The Fatherhood Mandate would be a one-and-done project. One sharp story. One future to warn about. Then I’d move on to something else. I had other books planned. Other timelines. Other worlds.
But then readers asked to see things from Rylee’s point of view. They wanted to understand the choices she made, the things she couldn't tell Sam, and the silence she carried. And after that, it wasn’t enough to end the story there. They needed to know what kind of world Allison was going to grow up in. What came next. What happened as the law kept evolving.
So I created a timeline. I studied court cases, state laws, and campaign promises. I mapped out a slow progression of restrictions, power shifts, and definitions that quietly changed what a person could do with their own body. I made a few projections about social policy and surveillance. At the time, it felt like a fictional stretch.
But the stretch didn’t hold.
The changes started coming faster than expected. Some of what I had imagined arrived years ahead of schedule. Some things I thought were too extreme to include in the book showed up in legislative drafts. I found myself rewriting not because the stories changed, but because reality wouldn’t wait. What started as a self-contained book became a series. And now the series is expanding again.
This next set of stories wasn’t supposed to exist. Not yet. Not like this. They were meant to be smaller. Quiet background pieces. Now they feel urgent. Each one is built around something real. A headline. A ruling. A policy proposal. A threat.
Unfit takes place in a version of America where interracial marriage is no longer a federally protected right. It falls under individual state rights and a marriage from another state is no longer automatically recognized. A couple expecting their first child must pass a parental fitness evaluation in a state that may have already decided their relationship is invalid.
Exit Strategy follows a woman who plans her abortion with military precision. As she boards a plane to take her out of the country, the U.S. announces that all women of childbearing years will be screened for pregnancy before they are allowed to travel.
Birthright takes place in the near future where citizenship may be conferred based on the state you’re born in. A presidental executive order has demanded that states include parental citizenship on every newborn’s birth certificate. The right paperwork matters more than the right to exist.
The Auditor introduces a state education officer tasked with investigating an illegal tutoring ring. It’s not about academic fraud. It’s a quiet act of rebellion, students being taught to think in a world that no longer permits it.
Each of these stories lives in the The Unborn Child Protection Act universe. They take place at the edges. In new homes. With different families. But the law that governs them is the same. It’s the same foundation. The same surveillance. The same structure of control, just dressed in different language.
Some of the novellas will be short. Others may stretch longer than I expect. Some will feel brutal. Some will be quiet. But none of them are optional anymore. Not for me.
You see, Exit Strategy was supposed to end cleanly. But the main character made a different choice. She didn’t stop when the flight landed. She kept going. And that decision may open the door to something larger, a bridge into a whole other story I hadn’t planned to tell yet. Maybe even a new series.
I didn’t plan to build a world. I wrote one book. Then I wrote the aftermath. Now I’m writing in the fractures appearing in our communities. Not because I had a long-term publishing plan. Because the cracks are already here.
I thought we had more time.
