"Highly entertaining short stories... You'll drink these down fast and be thirsty for more."
-William G. Bernhardt, NY Times bestselling author of the "Ben Kinkaid" series
From Dara on the GrailChase Chronicles:
I got interested in King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (and hence the legends of the Holy Grail) in my teens. In 1985, Biagent, Leigh and Lincoln published *Holy Blood Holy Grail,* which proposed the heretical theory that Jesus did not die on the cross, but rather married and had a family with Mary Magdalene. I also read the *Dune* books by Frank Herbert around this time, which sparked many strange ideas. *Holy Blood Holy Grail* and other "Grail Conspiracy" theorists claimed that Jesus was the result of a eugenics program gone rogue, just like Paul Muad'ib in *Dune.*
That's when I began to wonder about what would the descendents of Jesus and his followers be like in the modern era? I have always been interested in ethical dilemmas and began to wonder what would happen if a real sleezebag were to discover he was a descendent and had to choose between his own selfish desires and saving humanity?
I began writing the story over 20 years ago, during the breakup of my first marriage, as an outlet for my intense emotions and weird interests in history, conspiracy theories and metaphysics. At the time, I knew nothing of writing, but I read voraciously. I learned as I went, reading books on writing, filling out index cards, diagramming plot twists, editing & polishing... polishing & editing.
I worked on the manuscript off and on for decades, but never released it. Then, in 2010, the week before he died, my father, knowing of and sharing my literary aspirations, extracted a promise from me to revise and publish this grand dream of mine. He said the one thing he really regretted in his 86 years of life was that he had never seriously pursued his dream to be a science fiction author. He strongly urged me not to make the same mistake in my life, especially now that the internet was revolutionizing the publishing business.
This anthology is the start of the fulfillment of my last and greatest promise to my father. It is a prequel that introduces the main characters that propel the GrailChase Chronicles. Book One of the GrailChase Chronicles, An Impossible Lover, will come out fall 2013, with Book Two coming out after the first of 2014. In all, the GrailChase Chronicles contains 6 full length books (over 100,000 words), which will be released roughly every four months.
The GrailChase Chronicles encompasses my many interests in history, conspiracy theory, metaphysics and the evolution of consciousness... and of course, Steampunk.
A lot of the theory behind this series is conjecture and highly controversial, but makes for some interesting situations, as beautifully explored by Dan Brown in his wildly popular *The DaVinci Code* (which is based on these same theories). A wide knowledge of history, history of religion, sociology, culture and philosophy was required to for me to fully grasp the historical and social implications of my story. In my pursuit of research, I ended up with a Ph.D. in Philosophy, and now teach ethics and humanities at the college level. You have to know history in order to effectively re-write it.
