Under a Green Sky

A new thriller by the Gears is in process.

When a luxury cruise ship is found floating in the Atlantic with 4,000 people dead, three Muslim fundamentalist groups immediately claim responsibility. Even worse, the vessel was carrying a world famous Christian preacher and 2,000 loyal supporters on their way to the Holy Land for a controversial "Crusade" to recover the Holy Land for Christians.

As tensions mount, it is up to Dr. Maureen Cole and Special Investigator Christopher Keef to uncover the truth.

But as Christian suicide bombers begin picking targets, Maureen and Chris begin to understand that another, greater threat may be at play.

To Cast a Pearl has a new title, The Betrayal: The Stolen Life of Jesus. As noted, it is already in print in German, Italian and Russian.

Kathy's Children of Dawnland is complete. It takes place as a comet exploded over eastern Canada, 12,900 years ago. There are over a million elliptical depressions we call the Carolina Bays scattered from New Jersey to Florida. There is a "black mat" layer in the Earth at about this age, laden with iridium, glass sphericles, carbon spheriules, fullerenes and other material associated with large impacts on the Earth. This is about the time that Clovis activity stopped, and Kathy notes that Clovis sites occur below or in the "black mat" layer, but not above it.

The event lead to what we call the Younger Dryas Cool Episode, in which the slow deglaciation of North America was interrupted by a cooling period, and many large mammals such as the mammoth went extinct.
There will be a Teachers Guide. The book will be used in classes such as science and history for children aged 8 to 12.

Two scripts are in progress, for Children of Dawnland and The Betrayal.

Tor Books interviewed Kathleen and Michael at Red Canyon Ranch on People of the Nightland. (21MB file, Microsoft ASF format)

Mike and Kathy are working on contracts for two new prehistory books. People of the Painted Canyon, and People of Dawnland, which takes the characters of Children of Dawnland up to adulthood.