I remember vividly the eruption of Mount St Helens in 1980. I was fifteen years old and couldn't believe something so Biblical could really happen. So it was inevitable I'd try to write the event into a book sooner or later. Even better, using the event allowed me to introduce my Victorian explorer Jonah Lightfoot to a character from the late twentieth century - a culture clash I couldn't resist.

Jonah meddles with time in quite a big way in Stone & Sea but only in this book do the full implications of his actions become clear. I love the labyrinthine possibilities of time-travel and I wasn't about to wrap up this trilogy without having some serious fun with it!

Stone & Sun begins with the following 'quotation':

Come with me now
Hold on tight
Trust me
I won't let go

Actually it isn't a quotation at all, but my message to the reader. When I was editing the manuscript, I realised I'd put in some fairly dizzying shifts of viewpoint and twists of plot. I went back, smoothed things out where necessary and told myself it really did hang together (which it still does, fortunately). All the same, I felt my readers needed a little reassurance up front.

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