Africa keeps its secrets well,
and its ancient secrets best of all.
Untouched by the stock market crash of 1929 Kenya is the glamorous and exotic retreat for many seeking to escape the privations of the western world.
After a group of friends get drawn into a strange shamanic ritual that changes their perception of reality, and reveals an ages old secret. A secret which could re-write history, and change the destiny of mankind, they find themselves on a path they cannot help but follow.
But to follow this path to its source, the group must first recover a number of ancient artefacts that can show them the way, hidden at some of the world’s most ancient sites and written the oldest languages known to man.
However, there are those for whom keeping such secrets buried is not only a responsibility, but also a solemn duty. Powerful individuals who will apparently stop at nothing to protect the world as we know it from the secrets of the past.
A true vintage-style adventure story, which combines the glamour and style of the 1930s, with the mystery, mysticism and exoticism of pre-historic Africa, the epic legends of the near east and the ancient civilisations of the Mediterranean.
Author Questions and Answers
Question – What inspired the idea behind ‘The Flames of Time’ trilogy?
Answer – Well, it was a few things. I love classic stories in this Mystery/Adventure genre, from authors like H. Rider Haggard, Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs who wrote stories like King Solomon’s Mines, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and The Land that Time Forgot. As well as their more modern filmic counterparts like the Indiana Jones films or National Treasure, and there don’t seem to be many books being written in this genre or style at the moment, so at its simplest level if I couldn’t find a story like this to read, I thought i’d write one. But on another level, like a lot of people i’m fascinated by history and archaeology, and how, even today, significant discoveries are still being made on a regular basis which completely change our understanding of the past and the peoples that have come before us.
Question – And what about the bad-guys/gals, where did the idea for the Icarii come from?
Answer – The Daughters of Icarus as i call them in the books were actually inspired by another favorite author of mine Alexander Dumas, famous for his Three Musketeers stories. In those stories he invents a character called M’lady de Winter, a female assassin who works on behalf of the Cardinal Richelieu. Now i much admired how Dumas created not just the character of M’lady, but also interweaves her backstory into that of the musketeers as part of the plot. What a lot of people don’t realise though, is that Dumas wrote six musketeer books, and in the later books Dumas tells the story of how the Chevalier d’Herblay aka Aramis goes on to become a prominent leader of the then highly manipulative Jesuit Order. Well, when i was casting around to try come up with bad guys for my stories, i remembered these two points, so invented a secretive all female branch to the otherwise all male Jesuit Order. A branch so secretive even the modern and thoroughly reformed Jesuit Order would have no idea it even existed.