1) Wyrd Gods is dedicated to My Lord. This has puzzled readers over the years, and even prompted a few DNSs... The Lord is my husband. (also telepathy is a big thing in Timelessness )

2) In Timelessness, horse is a general term for a mount or a beast of burden. Unicorns, centaurs, and pterippus are real - but not horses. The reasons for this became irrelevant to the main plot during revisions. But the worldbuilding quirk remained.

3) The Dharkan are not part of any mythology. I needed a race that would clash with the gods, the mortals, and the androids. They were inspired by coffee (the name) and the Wraith in Stargate Atlantis.

4) In Aegea, most characters are naked or wear nothing under their cloaks. Only the Narrum frown upon nudity. Clothes are mostly used as an accessory (amongst the Anann, dresses are designed to emphasize body lines and they are worn by both men and women) or a temporary necessity (the Dharkan need protection from the sun). This is both an homage to Heroic Nudity and a personal preference of the author who is a naturist.

5) Timelessness Fun Fact Friday: Every ending in Timelessness can be read as a beginning because stories only end when there's no one left to tell them. And even then, who knows?

6) Yewlow stands for 'hollow yew', a pet name I give to ancient yew trees with hollowed trunks. In the original manuscript, the 'chrono -traveller' had to step inside the tree. I changed that after several people in my writing group compared it to the phone booth in the Bill and Ted movies... Today I regret making that change, but I was young then, and still had much to learn about taking advice from aspiring writers. 

7) Only two characters have a surname: Dveer. DVEER is an anagram of VERDE, meaning "green" in Portuguese. It's also an anagram of DEVER, a word with a double meaning: duty and owe. This is but one example of the many layers of symbolism and different meanings within the narrative. You can read it at a surface level and you'll get a fairly unusual, entertaining story. Or you can reread it carefully, and something else entirely will reveal itself. Have fun!

8) Celtic mythology was part of the original manuscript, but then I realised I had enough mythologies woven into one book already. Still, artefacts of that subplot remain, and maybe one day I'll write a novella about it. Anann is short for Tuatha Dé Danann. Aossi refers to the Aos Sí, and Arianh is inspired by the goddess Arianrhod. (Arianh is also an anagram for Rainha in Portuguese.)

9) Predation is a key theme in the narrative, both metaphorically and literally. 

10) The Gharb, as in the arid peninsula where the Aossi (and later the last of the Anann) lived, comes from Al-Gharb, the name given by the Moors to the southern region of modern-day Portugal – Algarve. Where I grew up. Extra fun fact: Gharb means "West", but in Aegea West is in the East. As Psyche once said: 'It’s as if the Universe turned upside down and I’m hanging on the wrong side of it.'

11) Ulla's character is named after my best friend's mother, who died of cancer when we were young. But my friend doesn't know this, because she has never read the books.

12) Bicameral mentality is a key aspect of characterization and why many characters act 'weird'. Lack of self awareness and introspection leads to lack of accountability and empathy. 

13) There are three Trickster gods in Timelessness: Loki, Prometheus and Hermes. (Although I'd argue that Zeus, Odin and Anubis can be pretty tricksy as well)

14) In the Ileana/Psyche dynamic, I wanted to explore possession from a different angle. Most stories involving possession by alien entities or demons focus on the damage those "evil" entities do to the minds of their hosts. In Wyrd Gods, I wanted to play with the idea of what a damaged brain can do to a sane mind/soul. Extra fun fact (spoilers) Ileana's mind/personality is mostly my satirical response to the female-centric, girly-girl feminist protagonist that was becoming popular in fantasy back then, especially in mythological retellings, with Psyche being the grumpy, exasperated "voice of reason" trying to stay sane. At the time I thought maybe I went too far. Knowing what I do now, I realise I didn't go far enough... 

15) The weird geological features in Aegea, like the Boiling Lake and the necropolis (caves) were inspired by real places on two of my favourite islands: Dominica and Sicily (east side). The inspiration for the Stump came from Devil's Tower. 

16) The events of the entire series take place in just a few days. Well... for most characters, anyway... Time can be quite arbitrary. ;)

17) I often hide little snippets of lyrics in the text (or titles when it's an instrumental piece). This started happening quite unconsciously. But then I figured, why not make it a feature? After all, I take a lot of inspiration from music, and pretty much every scene and character is linked to one or more songs. I challenge readers to find those musical Easter eggs.