So, let's say, your supernatural senses are fading and the gangster's lair has the perfect defenses... how do you break in with a box of birdseed and a rock? What does a hero really do next?

"Before I realized it, I had read the book through in one evening." --Charlene Mabie-Gamble, Literary R&R, on Ken Hughes's SHADOWED

I first started wondering things like that with all the stories my dad read to us, so every corner seemed like the place for a different spy or hobbit to lurk. Since the town was Ann Arbor, Michigan, I also got my degrees there before heading out to Los Angeles. What followed was a little work on movie scripts and more in technical writing -- after working on a Mars mission proposal and a medical device, I seem to be an honorary rocket scientist and brain surgeon.

But it's a different head that my tales try to pull a reader into, with reluctant heroes in contemporary fantasy and paranormal settings. You'll find characters trying to balance real world ties or ducking away from them, as they try to understand the secrets and the powers coiling around their lives. And I think you'll find that when I want to ratchet up a scene's action, I don't hold back and I never, never play fair.

On the mean streets of magic, try not to read too fast.