History serves as a model not only of who and what we are to be, we learn what to champion and what to avoid.

If what you know and what you love are the same thing, that's great. But if not, write what you love. I love history, secrets, conspiracies, action, adventure, international settings.

I love all of my children equally, all of my printed books, and each one bears a special piece of me. But the one I'm most proud of is the one no one will ever see - the very first manuscript I ever wrote, back in 1990. It took me a year to do it.

When I wrote 'The Alexandria Link,' I discovered that we are only aware of about 10 percent of the knowledge of the ancient world. In the ancient world, most of the knowledge was destroyed. Every emperor of China who came in wiped out everything that came before them, to the point that the country completely forgot its past.