Author's note about the book

Millennium Rising is the result of my fascination with end-time prophecy.  In 1995 I purchased a book called 777: Millennial Book of Prophecy by John Hogue at Tower Records in Fresno, Ca.   Reading that book was one of those rare instances of complete absorption.  My poor husband, Bob -- every few minutes I felt compelled to look up from my reading to say "Listen to this!"  It invoked such emotion, I just had to share it with someone.

That book frightened me, badly -- the way fiction rarely does these days. Why? Because Hogue first gives prophecies that have come true over the past few centuries (or at least seem to have come true) -- such as Nostadamus' prophecies about Napolean and JFK.  Then, having convinced the poor reader that prophecies can be accurate, he layouts the prophecies of dozens of seers from different times and cultures -- from Hindu to Native American to people like Edgar Cayce and the book of Revelations.  These prophecies seem to be pointing directly at our own time and are eerily similar even though the prophets usually knew nothing of each other's work.  Needless to say the prophecies were not encouraging.

I knew as soon as I'd finished the book that prophecy would be my next subject matter. At the time I was working on the production of The Beast Within game with Sierra Online in Oakhurst, Ca. and wasn't able to start the book for a year.   There were already a few 'millennium novels' on the market but I decided to go ahead with the project anyway because I felt I had something I needed to say about it -- even if it was just to exorcise my own fears.

I began work on the novel in North Bend, Wa.   For nine months I worked on it while negotiating with Sierra to do another GK game.  It was a scary time because I had no publisher for the book and ROC, the publisher of the GK novels, wanted only the GK books.  It was an act of faith.

A year after I began the project, and some nine months after my agent began shopping the first 50 pages, I found a publisher, Del Rey, the sci-fi division of Random House.  They were absolutely marvelous and really loved the book.

For me, Millennium Rising was a milestone.  It was the first novel I'd written without having a game in mind.  As such, I found the process very different.  I didn't have to limit characters or settings or worry about special effects budgets -- I was free, free, free! 

Perhaps too free. Weighing in at 650 pages, and with a cast bigger than Caligula's, MR's first draft was overly complex, even for one of my stories!  Fortunately, my editor at Del Rey, Shelly Shapiro, helped me tighten the belt.

I'm proud of the results.  Millennium Rising is a thriller, so for those interested in being entertained I believe it's a good read.  But what I'm more pleased with is that it has helped me express my feelings, and fears, about religion.  The book is not always polite in its critique -- I told my editor that we should market it at the "anti-Christ" of millennium novels!  (For some reason, she didn't jump on the idea.)   But it is, in the end, hopeful and not without faith.  In that sense it is very much like its author.