KATE DANIELS SERIES FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

The world has suffered a magic apocalypse. We pushed the technological progress too far, and now magic has returned with a vengeance. It comes in waves, without warning, and vanishes as suddenly as it appears. When magic is up, planes drop out of the sky, cars stall, electricity dies. When magic is down, guns work and spells fail.

It’s a volatile, screwed-up world. Magic feeds on technology, gnawing on skyscrapers until most of them topple and fall, leaving only skeletal husks behind. Monsters prowl the ruined streets; werebears and werehyenas stalk their prey; and the Masters of the Dead, necromancers driven by their thirst for knowledge and wealth, pilot blood-crazed vampires with their minds.

In this world lives Kate Daniels. Kate likes her sword a little too much and has a hard time controlling her mouth. The magic in her blood makes her a target, and she has spent most of her life hiding in plain sight. But sometimes even trained killers make friends and fall in love, and when the universe tries to kick them in the face, they kick back.

FAQ

Is the entire world like this or is Atlanta the only place that’s messed up?

The entire world has been affected by magic.

What caused the magic to start flooding the world?

I’ll let Kate explain since we already wrote it once, and I’m lazy:

Theory said that magic and tech used to coexist in a balance. Like the pendulum of a grandfather clock that barely moved, if at all. But then came the Age of Man, and men are made of progress. They overdeveloped magic, pushing the pendulum farther and farther to one side until it came crashing down and started swinging back and forth, bringing with it tech waves. And then in turn, technology oversaturated the world, helped once again by pesky Man, and the pendulum swung again, to the side of magic this time. The previous Shift from magic to tech took place somewhere around the start of the Iron Age. The current Shift officially dawned almost thirty years ago. It began with a flare, and with each subsequent flare, more of our world succumbed to magic.

Are Kate and Curran going to be a couple?

You have to read more books to find out. :-)

What is Saiman?

See the answer to the previous question.

What is Kate?

See the answer to the previous question.

What is Curran’s beast?

That we can answer. Curran transforms into Panthera leo atrox, a species of prehistoric American lion. One of the largest predatory cats that ever existed, the American lion roamed the Americas, hunting prehistoric bison, deer, North American camels, and mammoths. It ruled the food chain until roughly eleven thousand years ago, when climate changes forced it into extinction. The American lion was a muscular animal, with long legs and a lightly striped pelt, with some specimens weighing close to nine hundred and fifty pounds. It had a very large brain, and scientists theorize that it was capable of complex social relationships. The American lion lived in mated pairs rather than prides. We took some liberties in the portrayal of Curran’s beast in the name of artistic license. For example, the American lion had no mane, but Curran has one because it’s a little difficult to imagine a male lion without a mane.

What kind of badger is Dr. Doolittle?

Dr. Doolittle is a honey badger.

Can you explain the m-scanner colors?

Pure white or silver—the color of Divine: a deity or possibly a demigod. Appearance of a true god is extremely rare.

Pale blue, blue-gray, or silver-blue—the color of Human Divine: someone who derives his power from faith. Monks, priests, diviners, prophets.

Blue—the color of Human Magic: someone using purely human magic. Elemental mages, psychics, telekinetics, empaths, etc.

Green—the color of Wereanimals: shapeshifters who derive their ability to change forms from Lyc-V. Werewolves, werejaguars, bouda, etc.

Olive green—the color of Animal-weres: animals who derive their ability to change forms from Lyc-V. Occasionally shamans and druids will also register this color.

Pale peach or very pale yellow—the color of Animals. The m-scanner registers their magic as very faint, and often it does not show up at all.

Red—the color of Undeath. It’s rare to find pure red without the addition of some other color into it. Usually only undead animals register as pure red and only because animal magic is too weak to significantly impact the color.

Purple—the color of Human Undead. Vampires, reanimated corpses, ghasts, etc. The older the undead, the weaker the human influence and the darker and redder its color or appearance is on the m-scan.

What’s it like to write together?

You know, people ask this all the time and some of them hope for a really dramatic answer. They usually want to know if we get in fights over characters and if one of us has to sleep on the couch because we disagreed over a particular character. Writing together is a lot like being married: we compromise and try to compensate for each other’s weaknesses. It’s very rarely confrontational. We don’t throw dishes or punch walls. We might squabble occasionally, but nothing makes it into the finished manuscript unless we agree on it.

How did you come up with the idea for this world?

It came together from a variety of influences. We both really liked eighties cartoons, like Thundarr the Barbarian or He-Man, which featured a mix of magic and technology. When Gordon was younger, he read a book (sorry, don’t recall the name now) where there was a god Tech. He was a very small god, who started out when the first bow was made. Other gods made fun of him. But the more humans developed, the stronger he grew until he finally became incredibly powerful. It seemed like a really neat idea.

There are so many stories where the magic is going out of the world. Tolkien’s work, for example, explores that theme. And it always makes you so sad to read about magic dying. We yearn for magic. Look at the film industry—we use cutting-edge technology to create magic on-screen. It’s an integral part of being human: to want a touch of something mystical and unexplained. It seemed natural to bring about a “reverse” apocalypse: magic is back with a vengeance. We hope you’ll like it.