Readers ask me a version of this question a lot: "Is Brett Poole based on your dad?" The short answer is no. Brett Poole is not my father. He's an Egyptologist who used to be a paleontologist, for reasons no one — including his own daughter — can get him to explain. He disappeared when Jamie was six months old. He keeps secrets the way other people keep houseplants: quietly, persistently, and with a great deal of guilt he refuses to discuss. None of that is my dad's story.

There is a moment in the Jamie Poole Diaries (Destiny of the Departed) when a character named Nassor the Jackal, clan chief of Larupus, stands in his hall and makes an accusation against his own daughter. He blames her for the death of her mother. He blames her for the weather.

Every family carries its share of generational trauma. Some inherit the pain; others inherit the strength to endure it. Resilience doesn’t erase scars—it simply refuses to make them the center of the story.

A Jamie Poole Diaries character blog — on Za'id, diversity, and what it means to be two people in one body

I've spoken of how family relationships have influenced my creativity in the book series and in the tarot deck. This is my paternal grandmother. Most of the tea cups I used in The Time Travlers Tarot are hers. To say they've traveled is to put it mildly.

There is a circle of stone on a hilltop in the Brazilian Amazon, and on the morning of the solstice, one of its stones stops casting a shadow.

Cold Iron and Warm Light: What Makes Lumen Extraordinary. The mysterious white metal made Lumen a key.

Jamie's grandpa travels with Jamie after he's died. He died when Jamie was little, so she has few memories of him, but I'd imagine what she has are fond. What if Grandpa John--or any grandparent for that matter--could write a letter from beyond the grave?

Kikthawenund is first mentioned in the second book in the series: Resurrection of the Druidess, where Jamie explains to Eliyana how a city was named after her mother’s family. Anderson, Indiana, just south of where Jamie grew up.

When I set out to design a tarot deck, I never expected to become “the first” in two different categories. Yet here we are. The Time Travelers Tarot is the first tarot deck built around the theme of time travel, and it is also the first tarot deck fully designed by the author of the book series it comes from. That combination makes this deck both highly collectible and fully functional for readings.