Thank you to Samantha for this question. Talos was the original inspiration. He’s the giant automaton that appears in the early chapters. This story was actually meant to feature him a lot more, but when I started plotting out that story, I realized I needed to tell this one first. I needed to show Squad 54 bonding over extraordinary events. It is crucial to the future books that they trust each other—that they are family. 

Why Talos? I’ve always been fascinated by Ancient Greek myths, and the giant automaton that guarded the walls of Crete is a particular favorite of mine. A book called Gods and Robots made the subject even more fascinating for me. Did you know they had a type of computer in Ancient Greece? And batteries. I find it all fascinating. But I didn’t want to write a story about ancient times, because I wanted it to have a modern feel. Soooo…I came up with the idea of a society that sort of devolved after an apocalypse, and New Torwood was born. 

I have a file that I call Story Sparks that holds idea for characters, settings and plots from years and years of writing. This is a book that I’ve been wanting to write for a long time. I put it off to finish Valkyrie Bestiary and I’m so exciting to be bringing it out now. 

Like Dragons Don’t Eat Meat, I had several incarnations to this story before finding the publishable version. I had the characters and the setting, but the plot took me longer to wrestle with. 
 

I think that was actually Rowan, and that surprise was mostly due to our dear friend Elaine Jackson who was my beta reader. She read my first hot-mess draft and told me that she didn’t really get a feel for Rowan. That pushed me to really confront what I wanted Rowan to be. I didn’t want her to be a fainting wall-flower. I wanted her to be strong from the get-go, but a little lost. And I found myself really getting to like her in the second draft (that’s when she learned to boop bad wolf pups).
 

This question comes from Silas. 

When she first asked this question, I was stuck on the couch with a busted up ankle, and I wanted to say healing. But knacks aren't always black and white like that, and as we saw with Noah, they can exact a steep price. I think the more powerful the knack is, the steeper the price too. Being a healer would be amazing, but I think it would also take a great toll on a person. If you had that power, how would you stop yourself from constantly healing. There will always be more sick and injured people. I can imagine burnout would be a real problem.

So, my second choice would be to talk to animals. I think that would be exciting and pretty useful. Though I'm not sure I would want to understand my cats' thoughts. They would probably be something like, "Why is she picking me up again?" or, "I love you with my teeth." 
 

This is a tricky question. When I was world building for The Knack Series, I wanted a post-apocalyptic setting, where civilizations still existed, but they had devolved to a steampunk era. I wanted the history of this world to be recognizable to modern readers. Then I thought, why not use the same apocalypse as in the Valkyrie Bestiary Series, but set the timeline 600 years in the future? So that’s what I did. Both worlds experienced a magic apocalypse that profoundly reshaped civilization. Kyra calls it the Flood Wars. Rowan calls it the Resurgence. 

That being said, there is no crossover between Kyra’s story and Rowan’s story. 

Very careful readers might also find a small link between Kyra’s world and Bobbie’s world from the Hidden Coven Series, but I’ll let you try to discover that little Easter Egg on your own.