I completed this book in the year 2001 after the success of my debut Talanov thriller, Department Thirteen (published originally in Australia as The Second Thirteen). I had been signed by one of the big talent agencies and there was film interest by one of the major studios (for both of these stories). Then 9/11 happened, and because the book has Muslim characters and settings that included Cairo to Jerusalem, I was told I needed to remove my Muslim characters and reset the book to Europe, that no publisher wanted anything to do with the Arab world. I refused, and almost overnight I was off everyone’s Christmas card list. The agency dropped me and so did the studio. I learned some good lessons from that experience. We can’t always control the “curve balls” life throws (like the cancer that almost took my life). We can control our response. Victim or victor? I chose the latter.

And now, twenty years later, here we are. It’s taken a lot of hard work and perseverance, but what a journey it’s been!

In researching the biblical, geographic, and historical “bookends” of the novel, I spent many wonderful hours in the maps room of the State Library of South Australia, where I discovered Gebel Shama’un — the “Mountain of God who hears” — on an old British surveyor’s map of the Sinai Peninsula.