Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp? Cassiopeia feels like a loser surrounded by fabulous shiny people. She flunked out of her residency, has no impressive superpowers, missed out on the immortality gene, and is hopelessly in love with her bodyguard. Thinking she has nothing to lose, she gives all she has. That’s where she finds fulfillment: in being selfless. Is the book, characters, or any scenes based on a true life experience, someone you know, or events in your own life? The idea for The Valkyrie’s Guardian came to me while I was waterskiing at Lake Powell, my family’s perennial vacation spot in Arizona. The only thing I do impressively on a ski is wipe out, but I got a kick out of watching the pros. I saw some crazy stunts and it made me think “What if?” I’d already been researching Celtic and Norse mythology, so it occurred to me a berserker would have a ball with water sports. The Barney Fife-inspired park ranger required little embellishment. What books/authors have influenced your life? I love a book that not only transports me to another world, but also changes the way I think. A truly prolific book stays with you, haunting and inspiring you long after you’ve finished. A few books in my zombie apocalypse survival kit:
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card Outlander by Diana Gabaldon Blue-Eyed Devil by Lisa Kleypas Villette by Charlotte Brontë Symphony of Ages Trilogy by Elizabeth Haydon
Can you share a little of your current work with us? You bet! I’m having a blast with my “geekfest,” which is what happens when the hero and heroine meet on a university campus. Kyros Vassalos, the “boss” à la Professor Xavier of X-Men, is a three-centuries-old Greek warrior/physicist with the power to alter electromagnetism. He meets his match in Lyssa Logan, a sassy crime-fighting violinist who doesn’t even know she’s a rare “extra-sentient” with extraordinary power. Here’s the opening scene, where Kyros unexpectedly finds what he’s been searching three hundred years for: Kyros Vassalos almost ignored the sound, but the reverb made him pause. It couldn’t be. Yes - one mind in the crowd, echoing an unfiltered pastiche of every mental voice in its twenty-foot radius. Nearby, definitely on campus. A signature so staggering, he paused mid-sentence and dropped the marker. It made an unsightly line through the formula scribbled beneath his hand. “Class dismissed,” he mumbled, leaving a roomful of bewildered physics students as he dashed out the door. He couldn’t walk; he tried not to bowl people over as he ran through hallways and across the lawn, vaulted over a wall and cut through a maintenance yard. Kyros honed in on the signal, searching for the source: someone like himself, not quite human. Extra-sentient. He felt her energy as he drew closer. It had an electric edge which reacted with the proximity of his, giving him a bizarre giddy feeling. Kyros bustled through the exit and bounded down the stairwell, eager for the sight of her, his hope warring with expectation. Practically impossible in the first place, this was probably some sad mistake— Then he saw her. The panicked feeling evaporated. It seemed time and space expanded, a perception his brain manufactured as a defense mechanism against shock. Amidst droves of silly girls dressed to exploit their bodies and painted like Parisian whores: a lady. Mia kyría, a donna. Refreshingly innocent, old-world lovely, the embodiment of grace— Then she tossed her head back and laughed, giving a view straight down her gullet, as American women are prone to do. Chesty, boisterous - not a dainty sound. But sincere and contagious, he conceded, allowing himself a smile.