What's the story behind the story? What inspired you to write this book?
Endangered Species is the final book in my Cretaceous Chronicles sci-fi trilogy, following Book 1: Cretaceous Stones and Book 2: Dragons of the Great Divide. The novel wraps up three summers of dinosaurs wreaking havoc along the Continental Divide in modern-day Montana and Idaho.
The idea for the series began percolating in my mind after reading Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. For years I thought about Crichton’s inventive device for bringing dinos into our contemporary world—extracting ancient dinosaur blood from mosquitos frozen in amber, filling out the missing DNA sequence with frog DNA, and then inserting the reconstructed DNA into ostrich eggs to hatch out dinosaurs.
Far-fetched? Yes. Possible? Doubtful. Exciting dramatic science fiction? You bet.
With Endangered Species and this trilogy, I wanted to steer clear of the tired, worn-out dinosaur tropes that had gone before. I didn’t want to put the dinos on another planet—too easy and clichéd. I didn’t want to use traditional time travel schemes where humans go back in time to prehistory—too common. I wanted to come up with a fresh and innovative method of returning dinosaurs to modern-day Earth. Something completely outrageous. Something earth-shattering.
So I employed reverse time travel, bringing Late Cretaceous dinos from the distant past to Earth as eggs packed in large meteorites striking Montana and Idaho. The resulting hatch-out brings the dinosaurs full circle, returning them to the same geographic area from whence they vanished 66 million years ago.
I thought it would be a wonderful irony to have them return in meteorites, delivering them encased in the same physical objects that wiped them out. Yes, my idea is equally as far-fetched as Crichton’s. But we’re talking science fiction here, the key word being fiction—and speculative fiction at that.
Endangered Species, like the previous two books, follows ranchers Bryan and Loretta Gilliam and their three children, as well as helicopter pilot Peter Lacroix with his young family, and romantically involved paleontologists turned dinosaur trackers Hayden Fowler and Nora Lemoyne, all grappling with the invasive prehistoric species.
Endangered Species kicks off with a severed Tyrannosaurus Rex head being delivered to the Gilliam ranch. Recent photos of all five family members are spiked on the T-Rex’s deadly teeth. Who is behind the threat? What is their motive? Billings private investigator Mike Mathews is brought in to find the perpetrators.
With Endangered Species, I have incorporated all of my favorite fictional elements: action adventure thrills, hard science fiction, literary family saga, noirish forensic crime, romantic interrelationships, and classic rock music. There are also illegal exotic animal traffickers who are making exorbitant profits running dinosaurs to their wealthy clients, and dark fantasy with the Quetzal Whisperer, a falconer turned pterosaur trainer who commands his Aeroguild of Quetzalcoatlus (huge flying reptiles) to carry out some amazing but questionable deeds.
If you had to pick theme songs for the main characters of your book, what would they be?
Bryan Gilliam — “Loretta” by Townes Van Zandt, because Bryan's life revolves around his wife Loretta, the woman who has had his back and loved him unconditionally for more than twenty years.
Loretta Gilliam — “Dreamcatcher” by Lainey Wilson, because Loretta has long described herself as the catcher of her husband Bryan’s often outrageous dreams, such as building a dinosaur zoo on their ranch. She also perceives herself as the one who catches the dreams (and nightmares) of her three children.
Hayden Fowler — “Godzilla” by Blue Oyster Cult, because the bearded six-foot-four dinosaur tracker is fascinated by the tragic alien beauty of the prehistoric beasts he chases, and because he loves heavy classic rock music.
Nora Lemoyne — “I Am a Paleontologist” by There Might Be Giants, because Nora has known since she was a little girl that digging up fossils is her life’s calling.
Peter Lacroix — “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd, because Peter is an ace helicopter pilot and the big skies over Montana and Idaho is where he loves to roam, collecting meteorites and chasing after dinosaurs, much to the concern of his Kootenai wife, Brinshou.
What's your favorite genre to read? Is it the same as your favorite genre to write?
My reading tastes are all over the literary map. While I do not have one favorite genre, I tend to lean toward thrillers (both mainstream and sci-fi), horror, urban fantasy, and literary novels that examine the human experience. I especially like dysfunctional family stories, because let’s face it, all families are dysfunctional in a million different shades of gray. And no matter what genre I’m reading, I enjoy romantic relationship subplots, though I don’t read straight-ahead romance or romantasy.
