Category Archives: Interviews
Mariposa Mysteries
Watch What You Wish For follows a group of friends who accidentally unleash the evil powers within an ancient Wishing Tree. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?
Many people are dissatisfied with some aspects of their lives, and never more so when they are teenagers. I was originally going to have the characters make their wishes at a wishing well, but then I decided that a wishing tree could be a lot more dramatic!
Sophie is an interesting and well defined character. What were some driving ideals behind your character’s development?
Sophie’s a bit of a follower, tending to be easily influenced by those around her. Had she ended up hanging out with the wrong crowd after her move to Mariposa, she could have ended up in trouble again. But through pure good luck, she ended up befriending a couple of really good kids who showed her the meaning of kindness and true friendship.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
The theme of friendship was the most important one. I’m always amazed by the extent to which friends can affect a person’s life choices.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
‘Watch What You Wish For’ is now the first book in the trilogy entitled ‘Mariposa Mysteries.’ I’m currently working on a YA novel that will probably be available in late March.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website
Book One of the new Mariposa Mystery Series.
“Every life decision, matters more than we think.”
Ardent Grandeur follows an aspiring music artist through triumph and tragedy on his way to the top. What was the inspiration for the setup to your riveting story?
The inspiration for the book, Ardent Grandeur came from my first self-help book, “Cheaters Never Win: How to Stop Cheating in Any Relationship or Never Start,” which emphasizes the importance of figuring out your “why?” in effort to change behavior. With the fiction novel, Ardent Grandeur, I wanted to “paint the picture” of how our decisions impact those around us, and how we can cope and overcome life challenges in a better way. I want people to see how their decisions can impact others. Sometimes, the offender doesn’t always get to see how their behaviors and decisions impact others, so I give a voice to those characters in the book that allows them to tell their stories by having deep, thought-provokng conversations with their offenders. Just like the book states, “Every life decision, matters more than we think.”
Bryce is an intriguing and well developed character. What were some driving ideals behind your character’s development?
The driving ideals behind Bryce’s character development was to show different stages of his life and show people that despite your upbringing or what you have done in your past, people can change, if he/she wants to change and works toward making the necessary changes in their life. Even trash is recyclable. No matter how many times people travel down the wrong path in life, they can still change their direction (route recalculate like a GPS) to put themselves on the right path in life.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Some of the important themes that were important for me to explore in the book are: unconditional love, self-worth, self-efficacy, effective communication, self-love, critical thinking, behaviors, and decision making. Our behaviors can be a result from our life experiences (good or bad) and the decisions that we make in life are so important because they can impact us, as well as those around us, in a negative or positive way. Yet, even when we make poor decisions, we don’t have to be held captive to those decisions. We can get to the root cause of our behaviors, acknowledge them, and put in the work to do and be better.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
I am currently working on the sequel to Ardent Grandeur to continue the story and will hopefully release it by the end of 2021.
Author Website: loveexquisite.com
Ardent Grandeur is a fiction, novel about an aspiring music artist who is passionate about living a life of “Grandeur” and will stop at no end to reach the top, despite who he hurts along the way. Through triumph and tragedy, the decisions we make can lead to negative or positive outcomes. In the end, everyone in the book learns the valuable lesson that life decisions matter more than you think. The book causes us to think critically about our own life decisions and how they can impact those around us.
Our Decisions Define Us
Trigger Point follows Luc as he must stop a terrorist plot while navigating a political and religious web of corruption as a deadly team is hunting him. What were some sources that informed this novel’s development?
I was intrigued by “The Islamist: Why I joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left” by Ed Hussain, “Radical Islam: Past, Present, and Future: What Moderate Muslims Will Not Tell you” by Anita & Vann Boseman, “God’s Wolf: The Life of the Most Notorious of All Crusaders: Reynald de Chatillon” by Jeffrey Lee, “A Common Word Between Us and You” by Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal, Kingdom of Jordan. There was also “The Entity: Five Centuries of Secret Vatican Espionage” by Eric Frattini. At the time of writing, the book was prohibitively priced to the extent I asked myself, ‘Who does not want us to read this?’. All-in-all, I wanted to challenge the stereotype of a terrorist and show that everybody has a propensity for violence if not checked.
Luc Fortesque is a consistently entertaining character. What were some character motivations that you felt were important to developing him throughout the novel?
In the first book of the series, The Apocalypse Trigger, Luc is the bad guy. Readers will hate him. By the time I wrote The Immortality Trigger, he seemed like the guy I wanted to return. So I set him on this path of redemption. He’d done some pretty nasty stuff and has always attributed his life-choices to external stimuli. But at the end of the day, our decisions define us, and who we become. That became the theme and we see it resolve in Trigger Point. The bad guy finds his soul, his righteousness. Also melds with my belief that everybody is doing what they can to survive in this world.
Was there anything taken from real life and put into the story?
Plenty. All the locations, vehicles are factual. Raynald de Chattilon and Nur ad Din were sworn enemies during the crusades. The syncretism of Catholic and Maya beliefs is real as is the ritual and the construct of the typical Maya village. Zombie Deer Disease is real, as is the (questionable) research that I caught onto and used to great effect. The Swiss vaults described in the book exist and nobody knows the true extent of the wealth or secrets stored there. The Japanese Unit 731 existed and its research was co-opted by the US after WWII. The Chinese AI entity is based on fact – Western companies are indirectly providing the expertise much to the concern of their home nations. I’ve done my best to be non-offensive yet informative in my exposition of Catholism, Islam and religious trends.
This is the third book in your Luc Fortesque Adventure series. What can readers expect in book four?
Visitors to my website will observe I’m happy doing trilogies before moving on to something fresh. For now, there won’t be another Luc Fortesque book. I’ve got another hero coming up and yet another that I’m concluding in another series. Then I’m contemplating a wild prehistoric adventure. Who doesn’t ?
Author Links: Website | Newsletter | Facebook | GoodReads | Instagram
Little Dragon Came To Be
Little Dragon and the Rainbow Poo uses a unique idea to teach children about colors in a fun way. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?
When my son was born, he was quite loud and his poo was always different colours. One exhausted night Little Dragon came to be.
The art in the book is very cute. What was the art collaboration process like with illustrator Ms. Amelia Gleeson?
It was quite fun, I’m not too artistic, so Amelia had quite a lot of freedom with the style. Once she’d come up with a character style we both like, we then started coming up with the scenes for each activity.
My favorite scene from the book was the one where the dragon was scared while watching a movie. Do you have a favorite scene from the book?
I like when little dragon is listening to jazz, but the final scene always gets a great reaction from my kids which puts a smile on my face.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
I’m currently working on Missy M and the quest for oo. Not sure when this will be available, hopefully it doesn’t take too long for me to finish it (got writer’s block)
Author Links: Website | Amazon
The Reader Can Feel Her Pain
1989: What Happens When A Killer Returns For Revenge is a haunting crime thriller that follows a woman who is determined to find the man that murdered her husband. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?
I wanted to create this vision of accomplishment and happiness, while also providing some background for Nicole, to get the reader to feel the joy and happiness that she felt at the beginning of the book, so when she finds her husband dead, the reader can feel her pain and understand why she went on this journey.
I also, wanted show how his death not only affected her, but how it impacted his partner as well. I wanted to show that not only was Sgt Allen close to Marcus, but how he was equally, if not even closer to Nicole. The goal was to show the internal struggle as he dealt with not only the death of his friend, but also the re-emergence of the Penny Murderer, and a new partner who doesn’t trust him.
Nicole is an intriguing and well developed character. What were some driving ideals behind her character’s development?
She is a combination of both fictional characters and people I know. I wanted her to be both strong and vulnerable. I wanted to showcase her strength and determination, while also showing that she is a “real” person, hopefully creating someone that readers could relate to. I wanted her to be a “normal” person, someone readers would leave saying, I know someone like her or could see how she could be real. This was the same model I applied to all my characters.
I enjoyed the mystery at the heart of this story. Was the mystery planned or did it develop organically while writing?
It was a combination of the two. I started with a general outline, it was pretty basic, because I didn’t want to write myself in a corner. I wanted to give myself the ability to adapt the story as I went along. The story ended up playing out in real life. Every event that occurred, did so from the characters perspective. I tried to immerse myself in them and take on their behaviors and tell their story not how I thought it should, but how I thought they would react and act.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
I am working on the follow-up to 1989: What Happens When A Killer Returns For Revenge. This was just the beginning, there is still so much more left of the story to be told. It will potentially be available towards the end of the year.
Author Links: Website | GoodReads | Facebook | Twitter
Old ghosts are awakened almost thirty years later when Allen’s original partner on the Johnson case, Marcus Jones, is found dead. Attorney Nicole Jones, Marcus’s wife, starts to be suspected of his murder, so she goes on a dark journey to find out who really killed her husband and why. She experiences a roller coaster of emotions upon learning that both he and former partner Mike Allen had kept many disturbing secrets from her.
Meanwhile, Allen’s own investigation takes him in a different direction as he tries to solve who murdered Marcus, all while dealing with a new partner who not only questions his every move, but also the actions taken during the original investigation. Is this a new killer? Or did they get it wrong all those years ago and send an innocent man to jail…?
In this page-turning novel, complex characters and unexpected plot twists will keep you on the edge of your seat as you try to figure out what will happen next.
Information That Will Actually Help
Beat Your Weight Beat Your Fat provides guidance and actionable advice readers can use to lose weight, live healthy, and keep the weight off. Why was this an important book for you to write?
The health, fitness and dieting world is a mess. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry that’s dominated by false promises and quackery wrapped around slick marketing, prose, and/or desirable figures and looks in order to tempt the desperate to part with their money.
Sadly, it works really well at lining people’s coffers, but I’ve grown so tired and annoyed at it all and I just felt utterly compelled to give people information that will actually help and that will last.
I appreciated all the great realistic advice you provided in the book. What are the first steps someone can take on their weight loss journey?
Stop looking for magic.
Realise that there is no quick fix that lasts long term, so commit to change and the long haul.
Nurture your tenacity.
What is a common misconception you feel people have about weight loss?
I think the biggest misconception is that you can implement something temporarily in order to achieve your desired condition indefinitely. You can’t. You must change. And you must change in a way that’s agreeable to you so it stays permanent.
This is book two in your Body & Soul Series. What can readers expect in book three?
Exercise is what’s planned for book three. Beat Your Weight briefly touches on some of the reasons as to why exercise is good for us, but it doesn’t cover how. Book three will fill that gap with both the theory and practice.
Author Website: LifeGroup.life
There are so many weight loss books, diets, and plans now that disguise this fact, inventing new ways to wrap this basic fact up in a disguise in order to sell us something that looks shiny and new. But very little is new. It’s simply food group restriction (which results in a calorie restriction), and this commonality between diets of restricting food groups works for losing fat, but there’s a problem. And that problem is that the restricted food group can often be something that we like. So, sometime later, either after we achieve our chosen weight or when we’ve got tired of the restriction, we start eating the food group again. This, inevitably, results in us relapsing on our goals, gaining back fat and becoming overweight and obese again because we never actually learned how to fix the problem in the first place. We then often enter the yo-yo dieting phase where we go from one diet to the next in the hope that this one be the golden chalice and have the keys to the kingdom. Sadly, many of us end up stuck, confused, even resigned, only just managing the will to jump on the next hype train that tells us that losing fat can be easy.
Losing fat is never going to be easy though, nor is it going to be permanent if we keep jumping from one diet to the next due to not fully getting on-board with it. We don’t want to be doing stuff like this. We want to find a method that aligns with us, because finding a method that we like and can therefore stick to for good is how our fat problems remain fixed for good.
Buried Beneath The Sorrow And The Mayhem
Health Reformation follows a relatively healthy man on a journey through a dystopian healthcare system that is supposed to be perfect but turns out to be a nightmare. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?
As 2020 opened with the pandemic, and life around the country deteriorated, I wondered about how emergent diseases might change our lives and institutions. Buried beneath the sorrow and the mayhem, a nascent idea started forming about how healthcare might evolve in the future, but in a provocative and entertaining way. This effort meandered and flowed through much of January and February. But I only decided to write this story once I determined the name of one of the main characters. That lightning strike propelled this curiosity from a possible future project into something that deserved my immediate attention, and the mere mention of that name to those in my inner circle reinforced that assessment. Energized by the feedback I received, I started writing in March of 2020 and released it in November of the same year.
But I also didn’t want it to be “about the pandemic.” The various fictitious viruses in the story provide a background against which the characters venture into a revamped healthcare system. The inspiration was thus multifaceted: the 2020 health crisis, the repeated calls for free universal healthcare, the ubiquitous push for ever more automation and the loss of jobs to overseas labor markets. Furthermore, people nowadays have to fill their own gas tanks and go through self-checkout lanes at supermarkets—and at some restaurants. Robots build more than people do. And trying to get customer service over the phone is a maddening descent into insanity. This story is not a commentary or analysis of any of those topics, though. Those were the ingredients and the viruses were the oven that helped bake this morsel into a darkened future that looms all too possible.
Jason is an interesting and well developed character. What were some driving ideals behind your character’s development?
He’s a young man with a new bride and big plans for his future. The pandemics are just background noise for him. Looking back at 2020, I think a lot of people had big objectives that got dashed by the advent of covid-19. But imagine when we collectively get past the lockdowns, quarantines and business closures, and things open up again. Dreams will flourish anew. People will want to travel again. Jason encapsulates all of that optimism. And he’s generous. He sees the best in people, and he didn’t care that his wife was convicted of murder and has a trail of dead husbands in her wake. But he also has some flaws that are exposed as the plot advances.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
The military has a saying: “no plan survives contact with the enemy.” Likewise, intentions get twisted by reality, whether it’s because of cost, greed, unexpected delays or something else. I wanted to expose a healthcare system that was born from the finest intentions, but fails to deliver actual value. It’s an extrapolation of what we see around us today. Among the hindrances that deform this imaginary healthcare system are the regulations that helped create it.
The second main theme revolves around the offshoring of jobs. As Jason emerges from the hospital, and the hidden costs of “free” becomes apparent, he has to face a new nightmare. In this situation, I chose an entire industry that employs thousands and eliminated it outright from the national scene. For Jason, that has dire implications—but it does give him that chance to finally travel abroad, albeit not to his ideal destination.
But there were also tertiary themes at play, too. Protests were a staple of 2020, and there’s a vociferous march demanding change in the book. I also wanted to showcase a reality where gangs peddle access to unemployed doctors instead of selling illicit substances, stores have disappeared from city streets, and hospitals have built-in furnaces.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
At the time I started writing Health Reformation: Murder, Medicine and Rehab in the Age of Pandemics, I was already in the finishing stages of what will now be my next book. Peace through Purpose is a Book Zero (or prequel) for my next series, a galactic epic that will provide [fictional] answers to the big questions that have always vexed us. Why are we here? What is humanity’s future? How will life on Earth end? What role will artificial intelligence play in the future?
Peace through Purpose is a collection of six tales that introduce an alien utopia before it is destroyed by an unforeseen enemy. Each enjoys a distinctive flair while also building upon a unifying foundation, with topics ranging from resettling refugees to raising a family to eradicating threats that imperil the ongoing harmony to managing planetary ecosystems. The main series will take place in the aftermath of the aforementioned apocalyptic event.
Like Health Reformation, this galaxy-spanning civilization is not perfect despite the ideals espoused by its governing authorities. Scratch beneath the agencies and the mantras, and universal peace is, as it is on Earth today, within reach but always beyond our grasp.
This prequel to the upcoming series should be available later in 2021.
Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Facebook | Website
Seems obvious, right?
Jason was a lucky fellow. He married a former doctor, albeit a notorious one with a wicked past. The dream home he fantasized about, a remote villa in the pristine Andean mountains of Peru, dangled within reach. And the pandemics sweeping the globe killing millions receded into a distant malady that afflicted other people, those with no apparent plan for their future. But when a pain develops in his groin, and his wife recommends visiting the nearby local hospital, everything changes.
Enter the facility, get diagnosed, select the best treatment from the options provided and be home in time for supper. Simple and painless.
Free universal health care made access even easier. Long wait times, surprise bills large enough to bankrupt millionaires, and aloof doctors that only pretended to heed their patient’s concerns had become bleak facets of a dire past few yearned to revive. Visionary reforms guaranteed everything was better now, cleaner and more efficient.
And he had contracted no lethal viruses.
So after a pep talk from his infamous wife and a dose of joy to lift his spirits, he sets off on his quest for wellness.
What’s the worst that could happen?
An Overwhelming Desire To Say Something
To the North follows the adventures of Emily, Lehksi and Marty, as they attempt to uncover the truth behind the darkness plaguing their land. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?
To the North is something that’s been swimming in my head for quite some time now, with the first inklings of it popping up in early/mid 2016. I would say my inspiration was based somewhat on world events around that time and since, as well as a desire to create a conflict of my own.
While I don’t think there is any specific spark that pushed me to write this story in particular, I can easily attribute its creation to an overwhelming desire to say something. I wished to draw others into a world of my own creation, a world both familiar and utterly different from our own.
Emily and Lehksi were intriguing and well developed characters. What were some driving ideals behind your character’s development?
Emily’s character was pretty solid from the start. She was designed to be someone that both drives the plot forward in her own unique way, and yet is consistently hamstrung by the events happening around her. I wanted a headstrong, motivated character that should, for all intents and purposes, not be involved with the dangerous happenings taking place around her. Yet there she is, front and center.
Lehksi on the other hand, was meant to be a more level-headed person. She served as a near polar-opposite of Emily as someone who both has the skills to act with confidence when necessary, as well as the temperament to know when she’s in over her head. However, it was necessary for her to be young and inexperienced. She knows she has a lot to learn, and in some cases that leads her to doubt herself and others.
I enjoyed the well thought out backstory and magic within your book. Were these planned or did they develop organically while writing?
Some of To the North’s backstory was planned, while some was not. I’m not in the habit of creating large lore documents, so many of the details of Odelia/Oul emerged as I wrote them. Of course I had a structural layout to guide my hand and I made sure to take notes on what had been established for consistency, but I wanted to “discover” this world for myself as I wrote it. So I gave it space to let it blossom on its own, and many times it surprised me with the results.
My magic system was created much the same way, though I did have to set some ground rules. Namely, from the start I wanted a system that can be expressed in different ways by different people. The Scriptors, for example, use magic by way of words. Others may use it in different ways, some of which have already been seen in Part 1. You should expect to see a considerable expansion on these concepts in Part 2.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
I’m working on two books at the moment, the first is the conclusion to The Awakener Duology and I’ve already begun my second draft. I expect it to be released sometime near the end of the year or early 2022 depending on oh-so-many differing factors.
My other novel is still in the outline stages, and as such will likely take a bit longer to release. It will also take place in the “World of Oul” since I’d like to develop my world/lore a bit more before moving on to another unrelated series. I hope for a 2023/2024 release but we’ll see how things go.
Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Facebook | Website
Lehksi Olent works as a private investigator, helping those uncover the truth that is often shrouded by a world of magic and mystery. Together with her brother, Marty, she now travels the Odelian countryside in pursuit of the growing unrest taking place within the heart of a country torn asunder by unseen forces.
When their paths converge, Emily and Lehksi’s lives will be forever changed. Two paths, one future. Be it for the good of all, or for a singular desire, the fate of Odelia lies within their choices. And should they prove lacking, the world of Oul might never be the same.
To the North is the first novel in The Awakener Duology, an urban fantasy that explores what it means to discover the dark truths of an unforgiving land. It takes place in an alternate reality set in a pre-digital world, one that is governed by magic and corporate influence. Two young women must navigate numerous challenges in order to protect what is important to them, but in doing so they will make discoveries that may drive a wedge between them.
