Behind the Scenes

Why I wrote The Ashen Kingdoms, and what it's really about under the plot: every world worth living in is built, in the end, on someone.

A cut chapter from Sins of the Father: Joseph Kramer at Polonus Bakery at 3:47 AM, eating a cinnamon roll that no longer tastes like cinnamon.

A Graveyard of Empires deleted scene: Abdullah and Mikael share bad tea the night before Pass of Command — one last promise.

A non-canon deleted scene from The Vatican Children — the night Bishop Glasser stopped being a parish priest and started becoming the trilogy's villain.

A scene that survived three drafts of Raven's Rise before I cut it — the corridor Arthur, Abigail, Frieda, and Haatim walked, and the word she finally says.

A deleted scene from The Eternal Vigil: Aethis's last day above the lattice, ten thousand years ago, cut for pacing but still canon.

Marcus Kane, the most-asked-about character in The Covenant Files: a defrocked priest whose whole life is an argument with his father.

Traq Lane's dossier: the farm kid from Geid who becomes the load-bearing protagonist of Graveyard of Empires. Spoilers for all five books.

A deep file on Arthur Vangeest — the manor that broke him, the vow that holds him together, and the daughter who pulls him forward.