Craig Lutke, whose favorite quote is "Growing old is inevitable, growing up is optional" lives in Irving Texas, home of the infamous Dallas Cowboys. Is he a Cowboys fan? Well, we won't get into that now. Other than writing this is what he does in his spare time: he's a martial arts instructor, pirate singer, stuntman, fight choreographer, festival coordinator, and soon to be husband. Oh yeah, and for the real money he's a programmer/analyst. Must be a very cool company, seeing as how he used to do most of his writing on company time. Ooops! Was I not supposed to mention that?

Here's some tidbits about Craig that I bet you were just dying to know. Other than himself his favorite author is the man who wrote The Wheel of Time series, Robert Jordan. This particular story, The End of Destiny, Book one - Hero's Return, has a very interesting and unique history behind it. Here, I'll let Craig tell it: "Well, to those of you who were there, it all started on the Ibidis Mortem bulletin board that the folks from iMusic were so kind as to set up for me. The great people who posted on the existing boards like myself encouraged me to get a bulletin board of my own to put up the lame-brained stories that I kept writing. Those stories slowly mutated to include the people that came over to post on my board regularly. As the stories got longer, they became more involved, so I fleshed out some of my writing skills (ha!) with twisted tales of mayhem and carnage. The crazy woman who created my first web page for the book, Sandi, came up with the idea of putting these goofus stories on the net in a collection. The rest is history." He's not too wordy is he? lol!

So I asked him some more questions and here's one that he answered: "Why a fantasy story?" And he said: "The previous short stories that I had been throwing out on the board had been of many different genres. I had written a few stories about the AICEFF* and decided to change things up a bit. After taking a few suggestions from the people on the board and deciding against writing a romantic comedy (which would have caused some controversy, lemme tell ya!), I thought of the idea of a fantasy story involving similar characters. Most of the reading I do is of fantasy novels, so I have a good deal of knowledge of that genre. That led me to decide on making this particular story a set of books instead of a simple short story, which could not possibly contain all I wanted to do. I decided to loosely base the lead group of characters on the crazy personalities that populated the Ib Mo board. The characters all have lives of their own and don't really act a whole lot like those guys, but enough to give me a basis."

*AICEFF = Alice in Chains Elite Fighting Force.

And one more: "How did I write this story?" And the answer is: "Simple." (easy for him to say! ha!) "I had a group of personalities to start with, and I simply created a world around them. It is loosely based on the normal conceptions of the fantasy genre of creatures, time frame, etc.., but I decided to put my own twist on things. You'll have to read the story to find out what I mean." (this man gives nothing away!) "I have a loose framework from book one and some big events scheduled for the next two(?) books. I know how the whole thing is going to end, but the path to get there is never concrete, even after it is written down. Don't be surprised to see the posted story change a bit every now and then as I get a new idea.... or twenty."

There you have it! Probably not everything you ever wanted to know, but you'll have to make do!

If you'd like to get in touch with Craig he can be reached by e-mail at the following addy: craig@endofdestiny.com