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.