Kat Richardson - Labyrinth

The asetem-ankh-astet and their Pharaohn are entirely my creation. So far as I could discover, there aren’t any legendary vampires in Egyptian mythology, but I’d already gotten started on the tale and pretty much had to leave it in. I ran across a few references online to the Church of Astet-Ka but was never able to get any substantive information about this group, what it is, or its origin in the time I had. I borrowed part of the name and then twisted and played with it to my own ends (and just in case there are any copyright issues), but the vampires and their details are all mine and not extracted or borrowed from another source.

The hardest thing about this book was pulling all the strands together from all the previous books. I did try to keep everything consistent and look things up when I didn’t have them already in the series bible, but I may have missed one or two details or gotten them wrong. My editor, copy editor, and beta readers did their best to keep me on track, but where things went wrong, that’s all my fault.

I really didn’t enjoy killing off characters. I’m kind of attached to most of these folks since they are my very first creations, and doing any of them in wasn’t fun. But not everyone can live forever and sometimes in fiction it’s necessary to cut someone out and do horrible things to perfectly nice people.

I also hope readers will forgive me for allowing time to slip a bit in these stories. Harper’s tale to date has only spanned a little more than two years, though it’s taken five years to tell it, and details have been matched to the time of writing rather than my attempting to keep Harper in strict chronology. If that had been the case, the current book would have been set in May of 2002, but it takes place in May of 2010 instead. I plan to continue with this habit as long as the series is still in production, since it not only makes it easier for me, but readers seem to relate better to a character who is active in their own time.

And in spite of having killed the poor woman off yet again, Harper’s not done yet. I hope you’ll stick with me and see what happens next.

—KR