Character Interview w/ Zaith

As Jutaya’s best friend, what can you tell us about her that only a best friend would know?

Ah, ha! That’s a good one but I’ll have to watch what I say, she has a way of finding out what she doesn’t need to know. Oh, here’s a gross factoid; after flossing her teeth she leaves the string draped on the side of the sink to ‘dry’ until morning. Why dry? Apparently the acid in our saliva starts to break down the compound keeping the floss together and if left in the garbage can (even one with a lid) it festers and the smell gets into her clothes and the sheets and drapes and she can’t stand the smell of herself. Thank Zola I laser floss!

What’s it like to be a lead reporter for ‘National News Now’?

It’s my dream job but it’s no walk in the park… although I did tend to do that a lot – lol! The employee-boss relationships are strained at best since the supervising producer, Toufin, just happens to be a womanizer and has had a crush on me since I started working there. The man has potential but won’t grow up. Anyway, getting to stick my nose into other people’s business is what I do best and what could be better than getting paid to do what you love?

Character Interview w/ Dezmind Lisle

You specifically asked for Jutaya Fyce to be the contractor on your mission, ‘A Guide into the Deserts’. Why?

The incident at the Rally told me two things: one, this woman cares about people and two, this woman has to be a Contractor. So I looked her up on the database and checked out her job history – she was daring and cocky and not afraid to work in the Expanse near the Deserts. That said a lot. I don’t know. For moment as I stood there when everyone was cowering in fear between us and I got a feeling about her – it turned out to be a good one.

There were many personality clashes between you and Jutaya. How did the two of you manage to work together?

Necessity breeds familiarity. For the most part I’d say that knowing she was literally the only Xannian who could even attempt to take us out into the Deserts and home again made it easier to overlook the high-attitude and bitchiness – if I let myself rationalize it out I had to admit that if our positions were reversed I’d be just as sour and just as stressed. I knew she wasn’t there for the cause… it was something about risking innocent lives that kept her glued to us. In that way we started to understand one another, or so I’d like to think.

Character Interview w/ Jutaya Fyce

What were your feelings, when the mission first began, toward the people you traveled with through the deserts?

What a pack of idiots. I mean, we’re taught our whole lives to stay away from the Deserts – what in Zola’s name could have possibly been going though their heads to agree to such a fool-hardy mission – nothing, that’s what! To this day I firmly believe that they lost a grip on all their faculties. I honestly don’t know what Dezmind said to get them to set aside such culturally resonant fear, but he did it.

Why did you want your best friend, Zaith, to come along on the mission?

It’s not so much that I wanted her to come (okay maybe that was part of it) but more that I expected her to come. She was so caught up in this Spoken Truth crap that even she fell for Dezmind’s spell – then again, she never could let a lead go cold and this was one heck of a story. Besides, other than Merik the others in the Kahn-lea were blinded by Dezmind’s beliefs and even Merik was willing to set aside commonsense just to be able to write something ‘new’ poetically. He was his own kind of crazy… I just wanted familiar crazy – Zaith would have kept me sane.

Interview w/ M.J. Moores

You started writing at a very young age. What types of stories did you lean more towards in your early stages of writing?

I loved adventures. Indiana Jones, The Goonies, you name it… those movies inspired me because of their excitement, daring, and slime! I wrote a 10 chapter novella for my grade 4 teacher (she’d only asked for a 3 page short story) called The Enchanted Jungle Figure that very closely resembles the overriding concept of Lord of the Flies but the difference lies in the fact that my friends and I find an enchanted castle run by giant tigers who capture one friend who went off on his own. In the castle there are all kinds of booby-traps to overcome. I loved writing it! Then I went on to write Death Cave and various other edge-of-your-seat suspense and adventure stories all involving my close friends and me!

Time's Tempest Book Review

SUMMARY

Embarking as a guide into the death zones that are the Deserts, Taya leads a group of civilians who blindly follow a prophet obsessed with preventing the planet Xannia from environmental self-destruction. Here, Fate and Destiny wage war propelling an epic search for truth amidst 2000 year old lies, in opposition to a government bent on burying ancient secrets and anyone who goes looking for them.

As Taya desperately attempts to keep the prophet and his followers alive, this journey forces her to grapple with the circumstances of her past which have aligned to hurdle her into her darkest memories; making choices she never wanted to consider; learning truths she was never meant to know.

Time's Tempest Book Interview

Can you tell us a bit about your newest release, Time’s Tempest, and how The Chronicles of Xannia are different, and similar, to the Lost Chapter series?

First off, The Lost Chapters are a part of The Chronicles of Xannia. Effectively the Lost Chapters are a collection of short stories that take place before the action of the book Time’s Tempest. These lost chapters are stories that have been mentioned in passing that deal with a time in either Taya or Dezmind’s past that influence who they have become when we meet them in the main book. It’s not necessary to have read the Lost Chapters in order to understand Time’s Tempest, they are simply meant as added enjoyment to the tale.