Many of my novels have ensemble casts of characters. I group the twenty-some novels of the Instruments of Death series together because Carl Erickson, Tom Wesley, Troy Nolan, Andy Sinnott, Sally Brightson Nolan, Marsha Wade, Danny Wesley, Rat, George, Connie Kelly, Linda Davis, and a host of others are recurring characters. Both author and reader know and love those characters. We care about what happens to them. Our lives are intertwined.

            As I edited page proofs for Darkness and Winds, I fell in love with some of my favorite characters all over again. The Ranger is my ideal of a perfect action hero, plagued by guilt and seeking redemption for his own actions that resulted in myriad deaths over millennia. Biegolmai Daavvi and Lokesvara Sailendravarman are my ideals of supernatural forces for good. Udug Hull is the perfect mysterious stranger, part fallen-angel and part demon, who is bound by unbreakable laws established by the elder gods. He has little sympathy for the foibles of humanity for he has never been human.

            I first introduced Lokesvara and the Ranger in Abandoned, and Lokesvara also makes important appearances in Winds, Darkness, Light, Time, and Mysterious Ways. He is a driving force for good who usually acts behind the scenes. Yet Lokesvara Sailendravarman, too, is a fierce warrior. He is one of the Eight Great Bodhisattvas.

            Biegolmai is a shaman, part of an ancient tradition that heralds back to the beginning of time. What ties many of my characters together is that they are all wounded warriors who have made horrible mistakes in the past and often suffered and died because of their actions. It is said by shamans that before the physician can heal others, he must first heal himself. Karmic burden can be a real bitch. In Darnkness, the bitch’s lapdogs are the Erinyes, the daughters of Nyx. Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone are also recurring characters in my Winds series which marries shamanic tradition with traditional mythologies from the north, east, west, and south.

            This is the kind of epic fantasy I love to read and write. I hope you like Winds and Darkness as much as I do.