I think I wanted to get across how lucky and grateful I was to have a boyfriend like him in school. It’s not a typical Jock meets geek story. Andrew genuinely loves Will, and Will is many things but a really bad geek.

The relationship in this book is Idyllic, Andrew forms the white knight to Carter’s lost approach. Hell he is often painfully clueless at times. And I like that Andrew is an intelligent, rich character with an easy going approach. It made writing him so much easier in subsequent books.

Wow, the supporting cast, Lisa, Jared. I look back and think of how great the real people were to me when I went through this rough patch with coming out that we all go through.

This book was very auto-biographical and it hits home when I read it how open I was about my life.

Yep Michelin was that abrupt and forward with me, I swear to god I was scared to death of that woman, still am. I don’t have much contact with my uncle and Aunt, but hope they know how much I love what they did for me.

My Grandmother passed away in March 1999, you have no idea how much I owe that woman. If you get a chance, by all means donate money to your local cancer society, help me repay her.

It was also a way for me to redeem the Major. Who really wasn’t the villain he may have came off as in my earlier work. He was a warrior, and as a soldier he sometimes lacked the capacity to deal with human situations. I love my Dad, for all his… eccentricities.

And I know he is proud of me, despite the fact that I don’t wear a uniform.

I also wanted to explore my own teaching career, as many know it was my first choice of profession, Cambodia being a prim example. Will’s approach is interesting as it mirrored my own. Don’t molly coddle kids, give them something tough, they want it, they need it.

This book revolves around West Harding, by far the best character I have ever written. He is insightful, if awkward. Loyal and determined. I created the kind of person my father wanted me to be, and I looked at him wondering right tell a story.

He did. This character repeatedly surprised me, the author, with his complexities, and his simple approach to people.

Blake sums him up well, West is Batman. He doesn’t need superpowers, he’s just him and that is enough.

Blake, yeah, we all know a Blake, that mischievous guy in a gay bar with a pretty smile and a roving eye. His relationship with Matt was, for me, an unexpected turn. I loved the scene where West is fighting and Blake and Matt are having sex, it shows the two extremes of human emotion at the same time.

I eventually used this book as a way to explore the deterioration of the Will-Andrew relationship. Which, if you have ever read Duty, you will know needed an explanation.

I recommend this book as being my best to date. Though many feel Sigil and Falcon Banner are right up there.

Why take such a drastic move? I wrote Duty first. It was my first book.

I wrote it about the end of a relationship, between a much older Will and Andrew.

I got on my plane and left, Matthew didn’t follow me. This is where the similarities between my life and Will’s ended. I pick up my life after this point in Return of the Sun, and will get around to writing more at some other point, for now I like that I have characters and stories I can just flow with.

So I have often asked people to give this book a chance, and to understand that it is closer to me than so many people realize.

I wrote this about Darien Taine. (I recycle character names) And it was a corporate thriller, introducing Marc a broken love interest with such a dark history only looking to be loved.

For me this was my first attempt at a Plot driven novel, and it worked. I found that I wanted to change it to Will, because the more I wrote it the more I realized this is what Will would be when he grew up. A strong, independent, clever man out to do the right thing.

This set the pattern for the books that followed.

I got such hate mail for introducing Marc, but Marc was typical of the kind of guy that I date. A little messed up, at times cripplingly so. Marc was an amalgam of three people I knew, Ross Highmore, Marc-Andre, and Mike. The love story between him and Will is actually one I enjoyed, they were of two very different worlds, two different lives.

Will was smothered beneath his work and Marc offered him a way to escape who he was. For Marc, Will was stability and someone who wouldn’t abandon him or use him.

Mike took me out to Church Street in Toronto, he made me change my clothes, much like Marc does for Will, and I think it was his example that taught me how to be in my twenties instead of in my forties like I was acting.

I had no plans to have Will elected to Parliament in this book, I always saw him as a number two man. A Michael J. Fox from Spin City. But as the book unfolded, and I got to the cottage with the hunting, I knew Avery was going to die. It fundamentally shifted the book, and Will suddenly had to step up into the spot light.

I often considered a career in Politics, and though I support the NDP, I wrote Will as a Liberal. Again this separates us from one another and he took a further step towards being a character.

The whole boondoggle in the book is actually based on the Millennium Dome Project in London, and gave me a way to do something I always wanted to do. Pit Will against Andrew.

It was also a way for me to show Will had moved on from Andrew as well. Unfortunately that part didn’t go over well with my fan base.

After Fortress I was left wondering what Andrew would have been doing. Former NHL draft pick, Legally trained. And then it hit me, about the time I started to work for the Government myself, that CSIS would love to get their hands on him.

This gave me a choice, do I do the typical Spy thriller, or do I give them an unusual villain? I decided to pit Andrew against a CIA operative with a penchant for extreme measures.

Naturally this drew Will in, the reason he was targeted was because he was a swing voter, and the CIA felt they could push him to vote for the war because of his father’s death. They underestimated West.

For me it was a chance to tie off plot lines, and bring Carter’s Shadow into the series. West adds a dimension to the book one that I appreciated. But again its Andrew’s book, he’s the hero here even though Will’s the one that walks forth to vote. It’s his hard work that gives the pieces needed to stop the plot.

Now of course I have received criticism about the Will-Andrew reunion. But you know what, read the end of the book. Are they together or not? You decide it. For me I am focusing on Rebellion.

It’s a long hard struggle for William Carter, MP of Toronto Centre as he must decide how to support and protect the rights of the people that voted him into power, and how best to survive in a government that just became ugly.

Hard liners dislike moderates like Carter, and even in his own party, Will must fight for his place. His support of Prime Minister Thorpe and the summary execution of Thorpe’s political career force Carter to make some tough choices. Does he stay with his Party, or does he cross the floor? How far do loyalties stretch when those you were loyal to are no longer there?

A rumbling in the West, and a simmering in the east, the question of sovereignty or unity forces Andrew Highmore to investigate rumors of a hard line Quebec separatist group that has dealings with a grass roots West lobby group. Can he put the pieces together, and can he count on Will’s floundering Political influence to keep Canada together?