FAQ - Alex O'Donnel and the Forty CyberThieves

Bigfan1:  Are  there going to be 40  thieves, or is that just a metaphor?
Regina:  Forty CyberThieves - oh,  there are definitely  forty thieves in the story!

Dreamer: Is Alex the leader of the forty cyberthieves? Sorry, I'm kinda confused. I'm assuming he isn't, but like I said before...
Regina: If you read the tale, (and I recommend you do, it's great!) then you'll know that Alex couldn't possibly be the leader of the Forty Cyberthieves.


Dreamer: Regina, will it take place after Waking Rose? And if so, will Fish and Rose be married??? Just wondering... Regina: Yes. And I think I can say... yes.  You might actually see them in the book. :)  

Delaney: Will these 40  thieves be real villains? I mean, villain villains? Or do they just er... hack?
Regina: Oh yeah, got to have real villains.    Otherwise, no story! 

 Shieldmaiden: Do you know what's going to be like the major "issue" in this novel?? (You know, like Waking Rose was about comatose patients and sexual brokeness) Is it going to be just "hacking" in general, or is there going to be other things, too?

Regina:  I seldom start a book with a general issue in mind.  And this book turned out to be a fairly light book: no really dark heavy stuff.  It's a more lighthearted, campier, comic story.  I hope it will be a fun read.  But there's a few things I touch on that I hope will make readers think.  

Shieldmaiden: I'm so excited about Kateri's role! She is such a good character. I love how Rose compares her family to Robin Hood and the Merry Men. Will that play into the story at all, Regina??
Regina: I wanted to have Kateri's family have their own book someday, and you don't really see that aspect of her character in this book.   Right now there is one brief glimpse of some of Kateri's family members, but it's just a glimpse, nothing more. 

Shieldmaiden: Does Alex's brother die in the book? 'Cuz that's what happens in the original story and they give him a secret burial.

Regina: Um, I guess the answer is -- no.

Shieldmaiden: I was wondering if Alex was based off of any person you had met, Regina?? I know you based some of your other characters off of real people and I was just curious.

Regina: Actually, yes, he's almost directly taken off of a good friend of mine. He's got long dark hair in a pony tail (like a samaurai), an earring, and has a vast weapons collection. He serves as one of my 'violence experts' and is a pretty good writer himself (he and his wife are both working with me on John Paul 2 High).

His wife isn't much like Kateri at all though, but I think she might have been born in Japan - she spent a lot of time there growing up (military family). Kateri was  part of the story of Waking Rose  long before the Alex character  was, which is the explanation of why his wife doesn't have a counterpart in the book.

Leroy also has a nearly direct counterpart among my friends, although some of his more famous stunts (such as the one with the pizza box) were committed by someone else. (The real-life Leroy's wife told me the pizza box story, which she witnessed at Christendom College, but her husband was not involved ).

And Paul Fester also has a real-life counterpart - actually, two. Friends of ours who know the Fairy Tale Novels refer to Paul Fester as the Ben/Nick Character. My friend Ben Hatke (www.benhatke.com) was part of the inspiration for Paul Fester. Ben juggles, does acrobatics, and does martial arts, and is definitely a fun person to be around. But Ben's not as tall as Paul, and he's not medical, but a much, much better artist.

I should also say that Paul, as you see him in The Midnight Dancers, owes a lot to my brothers. One of my brothers is a doctor, and I can see more than one of my brothers getting himself involved in the situation in that book just the way Paul does.

Gypsysnowwhite: What character is Alex in the story? I guess he would be Ali Baba, right? but in some versions he's already married and has a son who marries the servant girl...

Regina: I will say that Alex is *not* Ali Baba.

 Elenatintil: Is his father the "Ali Baba" character? Because I'm guessing that Kateri is the serving girl...

Regina: Bingo!

qiscrazy: this might sound weird but... i don't remember what the cyberthieves are supposed to be doing exactly... i know its cheesy but perhaps do they have anything to do with terrorism???

Regina:  Cybercrime can involve terrorism, but not in this book, which is on a much smaller scale.   So, no, Alex won't be fighting off terrorists. 

Qiscrazy: What disguises will the bad guy[s] use to try and kill ali baba??? cause i hghly doubt that Regina will use oil jars in her retelling...

Regina: A: I can't answer that! It would defeat the purpose of using disguises, wouldn't it?

Qiscrazy: oooh!!!!!! don't the servant and ali baba's son get married at the end of the story???? will we get to see their wedding????

Regina:  They do!  But there's no wedding in this story.  (Though perhaps you might see a wedding proposal...) 

Gypsysnowwhite How long did you have this story in mind, Regina?
Regina: Gosh, I had this productive year, 2003, I think, where I wrote several novels in one sweep. I was just getting to be friends with Ben Hatke and Andy O'Neill and their band of crazy Christendom students who inspired the Sacra Cor guys. Once I finished Waking Rose, I had all these great characters milling around just asking for a plot. That's when I started working on this book. It was actually originally a movie script (just for fun) and I was having trouble figuring out how to make the cool movie opening into an actual book.   But I have an idea of how it can be done now.

Q: Another Question, will Kateri be working for the O'Donnell family?

Regina: Good call! But you'll have to wait to  see how.

Qiscrazy: Yeah i was wondering about that too... did someone already ask if the brother will die since ali baba's bro gets cut into tiny pieces...?

Regina: I can't answer that! But no one will get cut into tiny pieces, I promise. (yuck!)

Elenatintil: In Waking Rose, Fish does talk to Mr. O'Donnell briefly about computer hacking, but it doesn't really turn into anything. Was that put in the story as a "teaser" for this book?

Regina: You all are WAY too observant...
 

Elenatintil: Would Fish and Rose come into "Alex" at all? (Or Bear and Blanche?)

Regina:  Due to unbearably high amounts of fan pressure, yes.  >:)  Okay, you'll get to see Fish and Rose (MARRIED) one more time.  You can thank the fans for this one.

Naiadgirl: Does Alex have any internal issues to overcome like the characters in the other books or is his conflict just with the cyberthieves?

Regina:  As my husband points out, he has to overcome Kateri, in a manner of speaking.   Actually I was remarking to Andrew this morning that in this book, Alex changes very little -- about as much as Rose changes in Waking Rose. Waking Rose is really about Fish's relationship to Rose. So I guess you could say this new book is about Kateri's relationship to Alex. If an expanded version of the title of Waking Rose would be "How I woke up Rose Brier, by Fish" then an expanded version of the title of the new book would be "How I dealt with Alex O'Donnell and the Forty Cyberthieves , by Kateri Kovach."

At least that's how it's shaping up right now. I might change it, if I feel that Alex needs to learn a thing or two. 

Naiadgirl wrote: Does Alex get to use his martial arts in the book?  I hope so.

Regina: Oh, definitely! What else would you expect from a book about Alex?

Naiadgirl wrote: I wonder if Alex's Irish heritage will come into it since after all, O'Donnel is the name for an irish royal family (if i'm not mistaken)

Regina: Cool idea, but it doesn't come into the story much.

(In response to many questions about the name change)

Regina: When I started doing computer research, I found quite a few techies a) took great offense at my having called the villains 'hackers' since many of them consider it a complimentary term, and none of them would ever consider doing anything illegal b) or else they were confused, because, as one of them said, "There's no money in hacking." Bad Hackers steal information but don't necessarily make money.

In both cases the tecchies used the term 'cyberthieves' to refer to the kind of villains that I had painted the former forty hackers as.

I don't like how many syllables it has either, but what can you do?  To me, a longer title usually indicates  a more humorous book, which this is.

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Storylover: There's one question I've had for a long time is this: Do all 40 cyberthieves make a physical appearance, or do most of them just lurk behind the scenes while one or two actually show up as characters? Are there any female cyberthieves?

Regina: *trying to figure out if I should answer this.*

Yes? And yes.

Lady Rose: Okay, I just have to ask... back when we figured out that most of Regina's villains have blond hair, someone commented that the 40 cyberthieves should all have blond hair... will they, or could they? I think that would be soooo hilarious, like some sort of requirement for joining or something. :)

Regina: I'll consider that... (winks).  Seriously, there are no blond villains in this book (that I know of), and some nice blonds instead.  Just for variety.
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I've been rereading WR and recently came across a conversation in which Rose was telling Fish about the Kovachs: "But most of them didn't finish school. They ran out of money, or they got married, or spent too much time in jail. Kateri will probably end up that way too. She just has too much energy and fire to stay at school." (p. 70 in the 2007 version)

I'm wondering if this is something that will have to be kept in mind for the Alex book.

Regina: It ended up not coming into the book at all. Kateri does graduate, after all. (But Alex doesn't....)