Beyond Sunlight follows a woman who’s normal life is shattered when a dark underworld is revealed to her and she’s turned into a vampire. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?

In my books I often like to place ordinary people into extraordinary circumstances, where they have little or no control and are forced to survive and adapt to the new situations before their destiny is revealed. I wanted the same to happen to my main protagonist, Melanie Brace, who is a normal human wanting what most of all humans need, health, love of her family and enjoyment of life. When she turns into a vampire, her life takes on a new meaning as she discovers another, dark and exotic parallel world with its unique set of rules and traditions. The inspirational setup for this story came from several sources, the movie Interview with the Vampire, the Lawson Chronicles, written by a writer Joseph F. Mertz and another writer named Michael Romkey. Creating my own vampire world was a very interesting experience indeed.

Melanie is a fascinating character that was well developed. What were some driving ideals behind her character’s development?

Since I was a kid, I liked to draw and throughout my teenage years and my four years of college, I studied Fine Art and Graphic design. Melanie is a character that I molded practically from what you might say a rough clay, but I gave her many characteristics from my own personality. The gender issue here is even more relevant, because in making Melanie, I got into a deeper touch with my feminine side. Like me, Melanie is an artist, albeit a much better one (grin) and she is strong, independent, honest and dependable, and above all loyal to her friends and remains a law abiding citizen even after she turns into a vampire. The main driving ideals behind her creation were my own principles of loyalty to my family and friends and never compromising my principles in the face of injustice.

What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?

When I sat down to write the story about Melanie, I studied other works of dark fantasy involving humans and vampires. Vampires are traditionally seen as creatures of darkness and mystery, the ultimate predators hiding among humans in plain sight. Since the world was introduced to Dracula, a legendary fictional vampire immortal based on a real Romanian nobleman and ruler Vlad the Impaler, vampires have been transformed from beings of terror into charismatic and intelligent men and women, who use their incredibly long life experience to do good or evil. In this book I wanted to explore such themes as a second chances in life, overcoming physical and spiritual demise and ultimately discover a vampire world not much through magic as through science, giving a logical and believable explanation about the origin of vampires. We cannot know of light without knowing the darkness.

What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?

I am currently working on the final book of the Age of Magnus Trilogy, which takes place one thousand years after the events in the second novel titled Age of Magnus The Iron Dawn. In this conclusion of the trilogy, the readers who are familiar with the previous two books will discover a unique world dominated by intelligent machines, where humanity is now divided into those who had found a true paradise in empire of Magnus and those who continue to fight more than nine centuries against their crushing defeat. In this third book, titled Age of Magnus Keepers of the Rain, the main protagonist, the most powerful A.I. in the world and ruler of planet earth has to make a decision whether to let humans devolve or offer them another shot at greatness as a species without the old sins that might follow them in a new era of love, war and space exploration. The book should be available in 2022.

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