Utcan’s Talisman follows a woman helping her friend escape a manipulative ruler trying to exploit his healing abilities who winds up in a small fishing village where they rekindle past connections and make new allies. What was your inspiration for the wild journey you take readers on in this novel?

I’m glad that you see Bybiis the scholar as the protagonist. She’s the narrator of two sections of the book (with five sections). Bybiis had no tutor or role model for how to develop her paranormal gifts. Trial and error can be painful and doesn’t expand her potential, plus she’s resentful that others are indifferent to her need to serve her growing powers.

This theme resonates with isolated gifted persons — like artists or athletes — who are not in step with siblings or school friends, and who must leave the family situation to explore a higher calling. The struggle is extra difficult for a woman with no family and discounted by the powers that be.

One inspiration was from Gene Wolfe’s Executioner series where the protagonist was an executioner! The reader saw him as a whole person with flaws and hopes and setbacks and betraying his friends even.

The twist I added is that Bybiis is female and not able to trade on her looks. Male readers often read past the story action for the women, waiting for a hero to make his entrance. Only Bybiis can save Bybiis.

What are some things that you find interesting about the human condition that you think makes for great fiction?

Wow, the human condition. A broad question. I can give a broad answer, I suppose. Science fiction stories are often about a hero who solves a problem that sets a specific situation right and protects the innocent. He wins the day!

My worldview was more about a community of people who need the skills of the group to succeed. People of the same tradition may not like each other, but over the decades, they discover the rewards of working together into progress for the nation or city-state, or duchy. Leaders are often just men or women who are thrust into positions that demand character and integrity – like Zelensky in Ukraine. Those who lack the needed moral fiber find other routes to political rewards.

What advice would you give to a writer working on their first book?

Count the cost. It’s about the story, not about being famous. I teach young writers in online courses. I’m always amazed when they talk about a publishing career and what celebrity will play the book’s hero in the movie.

Writing has many stages, and the first few can seem overwhelming for how time-consuming and reiterative is the process. Can you devote the hours to developing a distinctive writer’s style and a plot that’s fresh and compelling?

I’ve seen many writers with talent drop out. Even though they may have control of language and a strong narrative voice, they may not have found a life-long theme to pursue. What do you want the world to know? Not about you the writer, but about the human condition, that’s so compelling that you devote your life to exploring the dynamics of the struggle?

For me, it was presenting multi-dimensional female characters. What is your essential need to write?

I hope the series continues in other books. If so, where will the story take readers?

You ask good questions. Book 6 is titled THE MATRIX OPAL and may come out in 2025. The writer’s style takes a turn in that narrators are multiple and not restricted to one section. I figure that if the reader has made it to Book 6, then she knows the characters. So we can mix it up for character voices and POV.

Bybiis is joined by more young gifted characters. A powerful enemy emerges with child kidnappings and assassinations. The demands to grow paranormal powers are more than how to live well. The gifted group must put their skills into service for strengthening group defenses.

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Bybiis el Putuki and her friend Opin the healer must navigate the demands of the khalif in Utica who would turn Opin’s gift to serve him. Jesse Hartley and Hershel Henry find each other, but each is very changed from recent events. Can they reawaken the currents of feeling between them?

When Bybiis is able to force a release from the khalif’s control, she and Opin land at a small fishing village from where Mrs. Shaw is exploring the ruins of a lost city. Jesse Hartley joins them, but the conflicts that grew in Utica get more intense. Jesse is distracted when Hershel Henry invites her to rejoin her father the Consortium General at the rainbow bridge construction site.