
Lost and Found is the second book in the Blackridge Saga. It's always a job finding something that stands out in a novel to feature on the cover for that particular story, without giving too much away. For us, it's what ties it together and it's never easy sometimes.
The auroras are something that has always fascinated me, yet I have never seen them. I've never lived in the northern regions of the world where these near-mystical lights are usually seen. As of this writing, the sun has been on a solar maximum of its 11 year cycle and this year there has been some magnificent sightings of the Northern Lights. I imagine it's very much the same at the bottom of the world, too.
The auroras at the South Pole, called Aurora Australis, are known to be green, blue, pink, and purple, which is what fit the cover image perfectly when Kevin found it for our design. A fascinating part of the story takes place in Antarctica, which is an intriguing place, mostly devoted to scientific research and exploration. For a while, I was fascinated with this part of the planet, and so I set about researching it because I wanted to include it in Blackridge. I found that the continent of Antarctica is often referred to as a "continent for science" due to the uniqueness of the environment and the significant amount of research conducted there.

So many scientists from the world examine all the aspects of the region, which include astronomy, ecosystems, geology, and the frigid climate. Personally, I really liked Mt. Erebus, the volcano down there. That was pretty cool. There was a treaty signed by many countries called the Antarctic Treaty, which made it so that the continent could be used for peaceful scientific research and investigation. There are apparently research stations scattered across Antarctica and these installations have scientists and their support staff working there on a whole range of different projects that can't be done anywhere else in the world due to the unique region.
It's also, technically, a desert from what I've learned. I first became fascinated with it because growing up, I was a huge fan of John Carpenter's "The Thing" 1982. The thought of those guys secluded in their own little research base in the middle of nowhere while the Thing did its ... well, thing for the movie was both horrifying and thrilling. What a masterpiece of sci-fi horror. Yet that's not what influenced my fascination with Antarctica, it was an article I saw about a research station and its chapel. From there, I just really got attached to the place enough to incorporate into the larger story of Blackridge. It was good to go there for a while, to take my characters there and have them attempt to piece together the suspenseful story of what was apparently going on.
It's also the story of a very special character, who is lost and then found, which is where the title comes from. She also loves pink and thus that became the color of the title. It's a story about how low some people find themselves, and what others will do to save them. It further begins to form the foundation of the Saga, and gives Morgan Callahan more of the family that she creates for herself on the journey through life.
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