Where did I get the idea for my main character Silas Lopez, a former-ranch-hand-turned-police-chief who ends up on the outermost tip of Cape Cod? Well, this man of few words was born of my experiences and daydreams during thousands of miles spent exploring and camping around the American Southwest and many thousands of hours hiking in the dunes and forests near my home in the Cape Cod National Seashore.
I believe the world needs more genuine heroes. No superpowers here; just a man and his dog fighting crime. When life feels overwhelming, we look for relatable characters who remind us that decency and grit still matter. Silas Lopez was born from that need.
The modern world is loud. We’re swimming in news alerts, outrage cycles, and doomscrolling. In the middle of all that noise, most of us are quietly starving for a place to rest and rejuvenate—even briefly. For me, that refuge has always been great books. Stories about admirable, if flawed, people trying to do right in an imperfect world.
Five or so years ago, I reached a point where I needed less bad news and more good narratives. I wanted to get back to my love of great fiction—stories that explored themes of resilience, integrity, loyalty, and second chances. Creating Silas Lopez started there. He wasn’t a brand or a gimmick; he was the manifestation of my dream of putting an entertaining, fallible, but fundamentally decent character into the real world where he would try to do the right thing, even if it cost him.
But why a plainspoken former ranch hand investigating murders in upscale Cape Cod? Because this juxtaposition gave me a unique canvas to explore places, themes, and ideas that are important to me.
Location
I wanted to celebrate a location that’s remarkable, staggeringly beautiful, and deeply personal to me—the windswept outermost reaches of Cape Cod National Seashore, with its massive dunes, endless beaches, and little seaside village holding fast against fierce weather and 400 years of recorded history.
Seeing this landscape I know so well through the eyes of someone from a very different world allowed me to describe every detail from a fresh perspective. Silas notices everything because nothing is familiar. Yet, he’s a man attuned to nature, more comfortable outside than in. Letting a cowboy from the western high desert loose at land’s end on a little peninsula in the North Atlantic became the perfect way to envision my beloved Provincetown, Massachusetts again for the first time.
Basic Decency
I’ve always believed right and wrong don’t have to be complicated. Sometimes the simplest things—common sense, decency, loyalty, honesty—are enough to navigate to one’s true north. I wanted a hero who wasn’t perfect, who made mistakes, who struggled, but who also had a moral backbone you could set your watch to. A man who strives to do right even when it hurts and nobody’s watching—that’s Silas Lopez.
Folk Idiom
I think in metaphors and similes and am irresistibly drawn to folk idioms and Mark Twain-style exaggeration. One of my favorite sayings attributed to Twain is, “I bit into a peach so juicy it squirted across the street and drowned a dog.” That kind of sentence delights me and reminds me of something Silas might say.
If you get a kick out of richly metaphorical, humorously earthy dialogue, you’ll like spending time with Silas. He’ll never say someone “had it coming” when he could say, “He painted that bullseye himself.” He won’t sigh that he’s tired and beat down when he can say, “Rode through a bit more weather than expected.” And he definitely won’t thank an assistant when he can tell her she’s “worth her weight in pie.” Once Silas’s voice clicked into place, the rest of the story took shape around it.
Humor
People who know me know I like to laugh. I think humor is an underappreciated style of communication that leads to genuine human connection. And I particularly love the space between deliberate humor and people who can be funny by accident. Silas lives in that territory. He doesn’t really set out to make jokes. He just says things the way he says them, and somehow it’s both sincere and hilarious.
Temperament
Another longtime fascination of mine is temperament—especially the extroversion/introversion spectrum and the wildly different ways people move through the world. As a writer, this raised a challenge I couldn’t resist. Could I create a mystery series in close third person through the voice of a man who doesn’t talk much? “Never lacked for stamina,” Silas tells readers, “but now you say it, do find lotta jawbonin’ a grind.” And yet, somehow, he’s your narrator, revealing his relationship with the world as often through his actions as his words. In the end, isn’t this the true measure of a human? And that friction gives him texture, vulnerability, and depth.
Mentorship
Many times in my life I’ve seen the power of the right mentor at the right time. I think behind every great person is at least one great mentor. So it was a natural inclination for me to make Silas a mentor and put him in charge of a young and talented but grossly under-developed group of cops, just to see what he could do to whip them into shape.
Status vs. Goodness
I also wanted to explore the difference between status and goodness. Wealth, privilege, and polish are too often mistaken for virtue. But goodness—the kind lived not advertised—has nothing to do with social rank. Silas became a way to explore this contrast on the page. He’s a man with no pedigree or polish standing toe-to-toe with a society that often prizes status over decency.
The Dog-Human Bond
I’ve always been moved by the special, incredibly deep relationships that can form between dogs and the people who pay attention to their inherent wonderfulness. Service and working dogs, especially, have always felt close to magic. So, it was inevitable that Silas should have a dog who would not only win over everyone’s heart but would grow to be an indispensable part of his team.
True Love
As the hero of this seaside mystery thriller series, of course, Silas has a love interest. I wanted to build a once-in-a-lifetime pairing that’s strange and special and sometimes difficult, because that’s what makes relationships real and meaningful. Wren’s a willowy former debutante turned social worker from one of the oldest and wealthiest families in New England. Silas is a six and a half foot tall mountain of a man who’s spent his life on horseback and more than once come dangerously close to killing someone with his calloused bare hands. And yet they somehow work. They’re each other’s exception. It’s never simple or easy, but Silas and Wren are opposites who somehow fit.
And so it came to be. Silas Lopez—a West-meets-East canvas for unforgettable stories about a good man trying to do right in a complicated, unfamiliar world.
If you are interested in ordering The Washashore you can find it at—or order it from— these local bookstores:
Wellesley Books (Wellesley, MA), The Bookshop of Needham (Needham, MA), Provincetown Bookshop (Provincetown, MA) and Elm Street Books (New Canaan, CT)
Or if you want the convenience and speed of online, but still want to support local bookstores, grab The Washashore through Bookshop.org!
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