BookView Review

Welcome to BookView Interview, a conversation series where BookView talks to authors.

Recently, we interviewed E. T. Darkmore about his writing and soon-to-be released book, Project H.E.A.L.: Welcome, a suspenseful, darkly imaginative adventure that fuses humor, mystery, and sci-fi horror into a gripping middle-grade thriller (Read the review here.).

Tell us some more about your book.
Project H.E.A.L. “Welcome” is about two kids who realize the place they’ve been brought to isn’t behaving the way it should.

First, it’s small things—shadows that don’t match, doors that don’t feel right, moments that don’t quite make sense. But the deeper they go, the more it becomes clear that the hospital isn’t just hiding something… it’s part of something.

The deeper they go, the more it feels like the hospital isn’t just hiding something, it’s operating on rules they don’t understand yet.

The story builds from curiosity into tension, and then into something much harder to ignore.

What inspired the premise of your book?
It came from taking something familiar and asking what would make it feel wrong.

Hospitals are supposed to be controlled, predictable, and safe. If you start removing that certainty—even slightly—it becomes unsettling very quickly.

That contrast is where the story really lives.

Tell us a little about how this story first came to be.
It started with a feeling more than a plot.

That sense that something is off, but you can’t prove it. Like noticing a detail that shouldn’t be there, and no one else reacts to it.

That feeling tends to linger longer than anything you can clearly explain—and that’s what I wanted to build around.

What makes this book important right now?
I think readers, especially younger ones, are drawn to stories that trust them.

This story doesn’t over-explain. It lets readers notice things, question things, and piece things together on their own.

It gives them space to decide what feels right—and what doesn’t.

Which scene or chapter is your favorite? Why?
There’s a moment early on where something as simple as a shadow doesn’t behave the way it should.

It’s subtle, but it changes everything. It tells the reader that the rules here are different, even if no one says it out loud.

From that point on, you start questioning everything.

What was the most difficult part of writing this book?
The balance between humor and tension.

Maverick brings a lot of energy and personality, but the environment needs to stay unsettling. If either side takes over, the story loses its impact.

The goal was to let the humor feel real without letting it remove the weight of what’s happening underneath.

What do you hope readers take away from this story?
I want readers to feel like they are part of something, not just reading it.

But underneath that, the story is about how people react when something doesn’t feel right. Some ignore it, some joke about it, and some start asking questions.

That moment—when you decide whether to look closer or look away—is where everything starts to change.

How do you begin a book?
I usually start with a question.

In this case, it was: what if a place designed to help people was built on something that wasn’t meant to be found?

Once that question exists, everything else begins to take shape around it.

What’s more important: characters or plot?
They work together.

The plot creates pressure, but the characters determine how that pressure feels. In this story, Maverick and Maddi experience the same events very differently—and that contrast shapes how the reader understands what’s happening.

What’s next for you?
This is just the beginning of a much larger story.

As the series continues, the mystery expands, the stakes increase, and more of what’s really going on starts to surface.

What’s introduced here is only a small part of it—and not everything is what it appears to be.

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