When I visited Castle Hanstein’s ruins in Thuringia in May, 2012, I never dreamed I’d create a trilogy based on its history. Four years later I’m proud to share the news of the release of ESCAPE FROM THE PAST: AT WITCHES’ END, the third and final book in the ESCAPE FROM THE PAST trilogy.
ATTENTION Â $0.99 Â EBOOK SALE Â *******************************
Book one, THE DUKE’S WRATH and book two, THE KID, now on sale for $0.99 each (regularly $6.99 each).
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It’s been a long journey. Finding and letting go of a literary agent, finding a publisher, going through edits and revisions, and stumbling my way into world of authorship. If I’ve learned one thing, it is to never give up and that there is always something positive waiting around the corner even if today may not be so great.
I’m often asked what inspired me to write Max’s adventure. Finding Castle Hanstein was a big part of that because the ruins are so amazing even today. Learning about Knight Werner von Hanstein’s feud with Duke Schwarzburg over a beautiful woman added to the fascination. Time-travel has always been one of my favorite storylines and we all know how realistic today’s computer games are. But, of course, they’re virtual. So I mused what it would be like to make the computer game real and actually send a gamer to play a ‘live’ game in the past. And voila, the ESCAPE FROM THE PAST plot was born.
At first, I didn’t realize that I wanted to write a trilogy. The story ended with one book. But at the end of that story, the game issue and the evil game developer, Dr. Stuler, remained unsolved. Then I thought of creating multiple novels similar to the Magic Tree House series for middle grade readers, sending Max to the French revolution or World War I. Somehow that didn’t make sense because I wanted to resolve the present day portion of the plot, Max realizing he’d been used as a test player, Dr. Stuler’s plans to sell the game to millions of teens and the resolution. Well, I won’t say more—find out about the story or purchase a copy—but the format of a trilogy made the most sense.
And now it’s time to wish AT WITCHES’ END a happy birthday.