“No fly lists, and certain kinds of restrictions and registries. A lot of what the current administration is using to target people of the Muslim faith. It dovetailed too closely. I kept reinventing this world so that it didn't mirror ours. But no matter what I did, the real world kept catching up with me. This is a bit of a spoiler, but there’s a big plot thread in The Darkest Legacy about children who are in a kind of foster system who just disappear. They fall between the cracks. No one’s looking out for them. The book had just gone to the printer when the news about the missing immigrant kids broke. That’s what feels the most frightening to me. I’ve spent months moving my fictional world past the real world and making things worse, or coming at things from a more evil angle — and somehow the real world beats me."