THE THORNE CHRONICLES started out on a hot strip of the 405 in traffic, where heat-induced frustration made me blurt out, “I want to write a feminist Sleeping Beauty story with a mohawked punk 13th fairy! In a spiked leather jacket! And what if she gives the princess a bullshit detector?” It’s fair to observe that I was already planning to break a few genre conventions. There are punk fairies in a pre-industrial, pseudo-European medieval setting. Also, there is…okay, no, there is a lot of bullshit in that setting, and in fairytales in general, but that made me think about Princess Leia’s no-bullshit attitude in, well, all the films. Which pretty much settled me on the setting. Fiction set in space (space opera, SF, however one decides to parse out the definitions) deals with tech that looks like magic to most people anyway (FTL, wormholes, jump-gates, laser-beams, sentient machines, cybernetics). Also, aliens! Which at their heart, is what fairies are. As my fairies became xenos, and once upon a time started on a distant planet, I soon realized the difficulty would be to preserve the feel of the fairy tale. I needed magic (even if no one says oh, this…

1–What’s the name of your latest release?    CRIES FROM THE LOST ISLAND  2–What is it about?   It’s about a brokenhearted teenage boy who has just lost the love of his life, a young woman who believed she was the reincarnation of Cleopatra. The story is set against the magnificent ruins of ancient Egypt and brings to life the greatest love story of all time.   The leading character is Hal Stevens. He’s sixteen and a budding historical scholar from a small town in Colorado. Hal has only two friends, Roberto the Biker Witch and Cleopatra Mallawi. Cleo believes she’s being stalked by an ancient Egyptian demon, Ammut, the Devourer of the Dead. When Hal gets a desperate call from Cleo saying the demon has found her, he and Roberto rush to her house, but find her dying. Cleo’s last request sends Hal and Roberto on the journey of a lifetime with famed archaeologist Dr. James Moriarity. To save Cleo’s soul, they must find the lost grave of Cleopatra. . . and then discover a way to open the path to the legendary Island of the Two Flames.   But they are not alone in their search. They are being watched by others–and…