Illustrator's Bio

John was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and moved to Kentwood when he was a boy. He always enjoyed art as a hobby. He remembers creating elaborate sock puppets as a kid, using buttons, yarn, fabric and anything else he found around the house. Then as he grew older, he took art classes in elementary school which he continued to do throughout high school. He'd get completely consumed in his art projects, tuning everything else out. He was lucky to have the same art teacher, Donna Lyle, during his school years, and she continues to be a huge influence. He credits her for the fact that he's an artist. After high school, he spent some time working jobs that he hated and doing a lot of soul searching. He decided that he was going to pursue what he loved--art--and enrolled in Kendall College of Art and Design. There he received his BFA in illustration with a minor in graphic design. He is currently the art director at Chaser Apparel while freelancing in his spare time. He is married to Kelly, and they live in Kentwood with their two children, Caleb and Kendall-Aubrey.

Author's Bio

I was born in Detroit but grew up in the Eastown area of Grand Rapids, Michigan back when there was still a large clock, an Old Kent Bank on the corner of Lake Drive and Wealthy and a fire station two doors down from Wolfgang's. I attended St. Thomas for grades 1-8 and then went on to graduate from Ottawa Hills High School. I have always loved books, my childhood favorites being Miss Bianca, The Rescuers, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase among many others. I have been writing stories for as long as I can remember. My parents told me that my first story was called "The Witch Who Blew Out the Moon." It was my high school creative writing teacher, Sharon Babcock (Grand Rapids Ed Park), who really sparked my interest in writing. I went on to major in English at Aquinas College and after a five-year hiatus I went onto Michigan State to pursue a master's in creative writing. I'm married to Bob and we have two grown sons, Nate and Duncan.

Who did the cool illustrations?

John R. Fritsch did the illustrations plus a whole bunch of preliminary sketches for the chapter thumbnails. At the time we started working together, the book was still a website project, and he was a student at Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I'd give him a chapter that I had recently finished, he'd read it, and then he would show me a series of five or six sketches taken from different scenes. I got to choose my favorite one, and then John would finalize it before it got posted to the website. One of the coolest things that John illustrated for that forum couldn't be used with the book: that of a little boy carrying a lighted candle, walking down a stone staircase. In the website illustration, the candle flickered. One of my favorite thumbnails of the book is the one for chapter fourteen--a snake having its venom captured.

Where did you get your idea for the book?

I was teaching a composition class at Grand Valley and using a textbook that included a collection of essays by different writers. One of them was Alan Moorehead who had been a celebrated war correspondent during the Second World War. His essay was taken from his book called The Blue Nile. In it he described life in Cairo, Egypt at the time of Napoleon’s invasion in 1798. Like a lot of Americans, I was very ignorant on matters Egyptian. I knew about the pharaohs, and my husband and I had even spent the first night of our honeymoon sleeping on the steps of the Field Museum in Chicago in order to get in the next morning to the see the King Tut exhibit. But I was clueless about the Mamelukes and Napoleon and the Battle of the Pyramids and found Mr. Moorehead’s essay absolutely fascinating. So part of my story came from that.

I know what you must be thinking. What does a sci-fi novel have to do with the Mamelukes and Napoleon?

Well, I like to call my book a sci-fi, historical novel and will stop there so I don’t give anything more away.

What’s a navigon?

Several students have asked me this during readings. On the planet, Iperia, there are navigons and then there are navigons. Ordinary navigons are both the “brains” and the “muscle” of complex flying vehicles such as space stations, space ships, and sky taxis. Today on an aircraft, for instance, we have engines that interface with computer hardware and software in order to fly. On Iperia, the navigons are all these things combined, only they’re much smaller and faster and smarter.

The second navigon is an Iperian government “test” prototype, made specifically for a project to research the origins of the planet. The first navigon is the “design” prototype.

Jules, one of Mr. Waldermulder’s three indents, needs a navigon to finish restoring Mr. Waldermulder’s hobby ship.