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Ghost Blade follows a former model who enters a dangerous new world when she is given a second chance after she is left disfigured following a violent acid attack. Where did the idea for this novel come from?
The idea for the Ghost Blade was heavily inspired by the cyberpunk novels by William Gibson, and the Japanese anime series Bubblegum Crisis, which featured the city of Tokyo in the year 2032. In the series, advanced robots called Boomers, became an integral part of human society. Their intelligence and superhuman abilities caused glitches, as they tried to evolve past their original programs and went rogue. In Bubblegum Crisis, the task of dealing with the rogue cyborgs was given to a team of four young women with different backgrounds but united in the common cause to stem the tide of the Boomer crime. In my novel, the main character, Karen Gale, is a young model, whose life is violently altered, and who was given a second chance in life by becoming a warrior who fights for justice.
What interested you most about the psychological side of Karen’s transformation into Ghost Blade?
Karen Gale is a character many people could relate to. She works hard to advance her modeling career, but she is also honest and would never stab anyone in the back. Being a good person, she was deeply hurt by the violent attack that disfigured part of her face and destroyed her human eye. Deeply hurt but unbroken, she searches for answers to her condition, believing that there is a solution to every problem. When offered the opportunity to turn her life around and reexamine her potential, Karen discovers that she has the heart and soul of a warrior, with the help of a mysterious billionaire, who wishes to keep the balance between light and darkness in a high-tech city under corporate control. I wanted my character to succeed and make a difference in the world of the future where nothing is guaranteed.
Norman Gray is both benefactor and mystery. What fascinated you about that kind of morally ambiguous mentor figure?
In some ways, the character of Norman Gray is a combination of several influential personalities, powerful men and women who live today. Living in a future society, where intelligent machines became a part of everyday life, Norman Gray is a part of the social elite, an inventor and an entrepreneur. He is a very rich man, but he also has a strong moral compass when it comes to dealing with problems facing not only his kind but the common men as well. He is an honorable person, who remembered his debt to Karen’s grandfather, who had saved his life twice when they both served in the military as young and idealistic men. His willingness to help Karen Gale comes from his altruistic nature and pragmatism. He is a part of the corporate system but he is a positive force that can come to the rescue.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
Good question and which I would be happy to answer with confidence. I am currently working on a new vampire novel, featuring a young female protagonist who comes from a country and the society where I was born 55 years ago. It will be a story about a young woman, whose life changes forever at the age of 18, as she manages to survive the horrors of the Second World War, and emerge as a new being with powers beyond human comprehension. I plan to publish this novel this summer, and currently it is proceeding smoothly just as I intended. Please stay tuned when it is ready!
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
Karen Gale was a successful fashion model and a rising star, until a brutal attack disfigures her beautiful face and blinds her in one eye. Deeply hurt, devastated and contemplating suicide, Karen is approached by a mysterious man of great wealth, power and influence, who promises to change her life by restoring her good looks and turns her into a highly trained warrior. Unable to return to her former life, Karen accepts the offer to become a Cyber Hunter, a licensed urban soldier who hunts down rogue Reflectors and their criminal human masters. Partnered with an experienced Cyber Hunter Alex Rem, Karen enters a new life of high technology, corporate secrets, human greed, cold Reflector violence and discovers within herself a hidden power that lay dormant until awakening. Welcome to the America of the future. Machines and Artificial Intelligence are an integral part of our society. They are just tools, or are they something more?
Ghost Blade
David Crane’s Ghost Blade follows Karen Gale, a former model whose life is violently derailed after an acid attack in Paris, leaving her disfigured, injured, and stranded between grief and rage. When the wealthy and enigmatic Norman Gray offers to restore her face, replace her lost eye, and train her as a Cyber Hunter, Karen enters a dangerous new world of rogue Reflectors, corporate secrets, anti-machine extremism, and moral compromise. What begins as one woman’s reconstruction becomes a wider story about technology, power, vengeance, and the thin line between protection and control.
I was drawn most strongly to Karen’s transformation, not because it is neat or glamorous, but because it feels deliberately forged. The novel gives her pain room to breathe before turning her into Ghost Blade, and that makes her competence feel earned rather than ornamental. Her cybernetic eye, weapons training, and armored missions are exciting, but the more interesting machinery is internal: the slow recalibration of a young woman who has lost beauty, safety, and trust, yet refuses to become only a victim. I appreciated that she doesn’t hate the machines themselves; she understands that the true danger often sits behind the controls, wearing a human face.
The worldbuilding is dense, sometimes almost encyclopedic, but it gives Newland City a hard, metallic texture. The class-divided sectors, corporate governance, Social Sanitation, Reflector technology, and the Outer Sector all create a future that feels polished on the surface and septic underneath. I found the action sequences most effective when they were tied to ethical unease, especially when Karen and Alex confront not just malfunctioning machines but the human systems that create disposable people and convenient monsters. The prose can be blunt, but that bluntness often suits Karen’s voice; she narrates like someone who has stopped trusting decorative lies.
This book will appeal most to readers who enjoy cyberpunk science fiction, dystopian action, techno-thriller adventure, and stories about augmented heroes fighting corporate corruption. Fans of William Gibson’s cyberpunk atmosphere or the action-driven moral machinery of Altered Carbon may find something familiar here, though Ghost Blade is more direct, combative, and revenge-tempered in its storytelling. It’s best for readers who want futuristic weaponry, rogue AI-adjacent machines, social collapse, and a heroine rebuilt by trauma without being softened by it. Ghost Blade is a riveting revenge-and-redemption story that asks whether humanity can control its machines when it has barely learned to control itself.
Pages: 216 | ASIN : B0GXT4L56C
