The Keeper’s Code follows a determined journalist investigating her mother’s suspicious death who hires a PI with mystical connections to help her get answers. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

This is book 2 in my series. I wanted Ash Hunter, an important secondary character from book one, The Witch Whisperer, to have his own story. He’s a Keeper of Magic, so who better to pair him with than a determined journalist who wants to out his secret witch society. Falling in love with her, a Reg, makes his life doubly more difficult.  

Skye is a woman with strength and determination. What do you think makes her a valuable and worthy heroine?

Skye doesn’t take any guff, and with her trust issues, she’s going to keep Ash on his toes. There’s not much she hasn’t seen or done, so she’s resilient and resourceful and adventurous.

In fantasy novels, it’s easy to get carried away with the magical powers characters have. How did you balance the use of supernatural powers?

When I was initially creating my world, I didn’t want the witches to embrace all the usual conventions, like spells and wiccan and black cauldrons, waving wands around. They come from another dimension of Earth called Tae-wen, driven out hundreds of years ago by a warring race called the Malgren who hate the mage. They traveled to our world through portals. They are pacifists extolling reverence for life and worshipping the One Mother. They set their own realm within Tae-wen in a deep sleep before they left. I gave them spectrums of powers from lower magic to high magic, calling them Quaints, Specials, and Elites. I didn’t want any one of them to be all-powerful like Superman. I did keep the convention of having consequences for using magic. The big issue with their magic is it has become unstable. More and more incidences of broken magic have been reported, which is a HUGE problem for their secrecy.

Where does the story go in the next book, and where do you see it going in the future?

I’m excited about book 3, the final book in the series. The story takes place 3 years after The Keeper’s Code and 5 years after book 1. I took two secondary characters from book 2, Gryph (a Malgren with witch-tainted blood) and Myst (a Keeper of Magic) to become the protags and love interests in book 3. The witch society has found that time spent in their ancient homeland by security forces seems to enhance their powers. They send a small group to their old sleeping city with 2 problematic witches, hoping the magic that still infuses the land will heal them. Myst, a Keeper of Magic who worked with Ash in book 2, is there for security because some warring Malgren are still hating on mage. She persuades her good friend and witch sympathizer Gryph to go with her after the Malgren who are hunting all the mage creatures. There be unicorns and tiny dragonites and other cool magical creatures. Of course, both Gryph and Myst have their own deep issues to deal with—I love to keep things interesting, maybe impossible?

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