Foreword
Many of your have written to us with questions about Kate's world. We tried to answer most of them in the following FAQ.
Kate's World
Is Atlanta the only place battered by the magic waves?
No, the whole world is affected
What caused the magic to start flooding the world?
I'll let Kate explain, since I 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 further and further to one side until it came crashing down and started swinging back and forth, bringing with it tech waves.
And then in its turn, the technology oversaturated the world, helped once again by pesky Man, and the pendulum swung again, into 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."
What's a flare?
Flare is a magic tsunami, a wave of terrible magnitude. It starts as a series of shallow magic fluctuations. During those short waves, the magic never completely falls, coming back stronger and stronger until it finally drowns the world in an enormous surge. Weird things happen during the flare. The magic lasts for three days straight and some really nasty critters come out of the woodwork. The upside to this whole mess is that after the flare, the magic takes a while to return. Weeks if not months.
Why don't the shapeshifters lose the ability to transform when the magic is down?
Two things:
1) a little bit of magic is still present in the world during tech, just like a little bit of tech is always present during a magic wave. The resonance - the shifting of magic and technology - affects the extremes of both. It's impossible to have absolute magic or absolute technology.
2) people produce their own magic fields. This is supported by the fact that if blood or hair is separated from a body of a magic user and it is scanned by an m-scanner, the m-scanner will still register magic. The shapeshifters have a particular brand of magic: their bodies pull it from the environment and store it like a battery to later release some of those reserves in a flash. Transformation during tech requires a lot of effort and control. During the flare, for example, pack members change shape easily and numerous times withi a twenty-four hour period, while during tech or a shallow magic wave, they need a nap after having changed forms once or twice in a row.
Can you break the m-scanner thing down?
Divine: a deity or possibly a demigod
Human Divine: someone who derives his power from faith.
Human: elemental mages, psychics, telekinetics, empaths, etc.
Were-animals: shapeshifters, who derive their ability to change forms from Lyc-V, such as werewolves, werejaguars, bouda, etc.
Animal-weres: animals, who derive their ability to change forms from Lyc-V. Occasionally shamans and druids will also register this color.
Animals. The m-scanner registers their magic as very faint and often it does not show up at all.
The color of undeath. It's rare to find pure red without 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.
Human undead: vampires, reanimated corpses, ghasts, etc. The older is the undead, the weaker is the human influence and the darker and redder is its signature.
Books
How many books are planned in Kate Daniels' series?
We're under contract for four books: Magic Bites (released March 2007), Magic Burns (released April 2008), Magic Strikes (scheduled for release April 2009) and a yet-unnamed fourth book.
Will Curran and Kate ever get together?
Possibly. You'll just have to read the books.
Will the identity of Kate's father ever be revealed?
Yes.
Why do I have to wait so long for the books to come out, can't you write faster?
It takes about a year from manuscript being turned in to publication. It goes somewhat like this:
- I turn in the manuscript.
- Editor reads, revises, sends back with suggestions.
- I rewrite it, send it back.
- Editor reads again, makes small changes, sends it to copyedit.
- Copyeditor pulls her hair out, makes small corrections, sends it to the editor, who sends it back to me.
- I read over it, implement the corrections, send it back.
- Editor looks over the corrections, sends it into production.
- Production makes galleys, sends it back to the editor.
- Editor sends the galleys to me, I proofread them, send corrections to the editor.
- The book goes into print. Everybody gets an advance copy. We look through it, find a typo on page 7, and collectively faint.
While all of this is going one, cover artist is creating a cover, cover designer is designed the layout, text designer is making the book readable and attractive, and so on.
If there was something you wanted to ask, send me an email and I'll do my best to answer.