One minute Sara's bored on vacation in Istanbul. The next, she's unearthed a flying carpet that cleverly drags her to the mysterious Island of the Djinn—or genies. By her side is Amesh, a cute guy she has a crush on but doesn't yet trust. When Amesh learns the secret of invoking djinn, he loses control. He swears he'll call upon only one djinn and make one wish. The plan sounds safe enough. But neither Sara nor Amesh are any match for the monster that that swells before them. It hypnotizes Amesh, compelling him to steal Sara’s flying carpet and leave her stranded on the island.Discovering the carpet has sparked a new path for Sara, one that will lead her to battle creatures even deadlier than djinn. In this fight, Sara can save mankind, herself, or the boy she cares for. Who will she be forced to sacrifice? Amazon Exclusive: A Q&A with Author Christopher Pike Q: How do you spend your time when you’re not writing? Pike: I love to read. I would read all day if I didn’t have to write for a living. I read almost as much nonfiction as novels, which seems to surprise people. I enjoy science and history books. I like biographies. Still, my favorite is a great novel; the genre does not matter so much. The last novels I read were The Help by Kathryn Stockett and The Passage by Justin Cronin. It’s hard to imagine two books more different, but I loved them both. Q: What advice do you have for budding authors? Pike: Write every day, even if it’s only for half an hour. Don’t outline too much, don’t think too much. Just start writing and keep writing. Eventually, if you have talent, your own voice will emerge. Writing involves hard work more than genius. Writing is rewriting. Of course, it’s true: we all read these articles about a person who sits and writes their first book and it sells ten million copies. But in the real world that doesn’t happen too often. And usually those authors who succeed too soon never learn to write. My books were rejected for seven years before I got published, and I consider myself lucky. Q: Do you have any writing rituals or special practices? Where do you write? When do you write? Pike: I usually meditate before I write. I’m not dogmatic when it comes to the subject. I can’t prescribe a specific system. But I can say it helps to sit quietly for half an hour with my eyes closed before I work. For me, my best inspiration seems to emerge in silence. I seldom write before ten at night. I’m an extraordinary procrastinator. I spend the bulk of each day avoiding my computer. Every day I invent a new excuse why I cannot start writing early in the day. The strange thing is, when I finally do sit to write, I’m fine. But it’s difficult for me to get in the chair. I usually write until dawn. Then I sleep till noon. What a life. Q: You have a long and illustrious backlist. What makes The Secret of Ka special? Pike: I had more fun writing The Secret of Ka than any novel I’ve ever worked on. It was the one novel that swept away my procrastination phobia. Each afternoon that I woke up, I would dive right in. Ka ’s one of the few stories I’ve written where I didn’t have a clue what was going to happen next. Usually I know the ending before I write a word. With Ka, I didn’t know what was going to happen on the next page. The main male character in the book, Amesh, he’s missing his right hand. My girlfriend kept asking, “What’s the deal with his hand? Your female fans won’t fall in love with him if he can’t hug Sara.” I kept telling her, "I don’t know, I have to see. I only know Amesh lost his hand somewhere along the road." I felt like Sara did when she discovered the flying carpet. How cool it would be to jump on it and fly away to a magical island. It probably seems obvious to my readers that my characters would encounter djinn on the island, but I didn’t know that when Sara first got there. Up until then the story had been kind of lighthearted. I had no idea it would get so intense. I loved the first time Sara went head to head against the evil djinn, how it tricked her into almost killing herself. The Secret of Ka was one of those rare books that felt like it was dictated to me. I can’t really take credit for it. For example, when it came to the Three Laws of the Djinn, I didn’t have a clue what they were. I felt like the carpet spelled out the answer to Sara’s question and I simply wrote it down. My favorite books that I’ve written have been like that. The Last Vampire and Remember Me just came to me. I felt like little more than a typist when I wrote those novels. As I said earlier, thinking is overrated when it comes to writing. Q: What was your favorite book as a kid? Pike: Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke. I remember I was in seventh grade and I ordered it at school from one of those book club forms they handed out every few months. But before the book could come, I found it in the school library. Only I didn’t want to read it because I had just