With blurbs provided by authors like James Patterson, Nelson DeMille, Lee Child, Douglas Preston, and James Rollins, Kuzneski was able to get the attention of agent Scott Miller at Trident Media. He started working on his next novel, SIGN OF THE CROSS, and then was hit a second time by the Lucky Stick, this time by a writer named Dan Brown and his novel, THE DA VINCI CODE. Kuzneski says, "Thanks to him, publishers around the world were desperate for the next big religious thriller, and my book fit their needs. In less than a year I went from being self-published to being translated into over twenty languages."

THE LOST THRONE is Kuzneski's fourth book and he delights in researching his novels' exotic locales, visiting Greece and Russia and other countries. "I visited Greece for about a week and saw most of the major sites. After spending a few days in Athens I toured the countryside, stopping at Delphi, Mycenae, Sparta, Olympia, and many towns in between. I order to make my setting realistic, I had to do a lot of research. One of the coolest parts of the book--at least from what I've been told--is an extended chase scene through the streets of Saint Petersburg." He took photographs of the buildings and landmarks and attached them to a street map of the city. "When my characters ran down a street I knew exactly what they would be looking at."

In a publishing situation that is starting to sound common, Kuzneski's books are published in the U.K. prior to the U.S. He notes that normally writers make it big in their own country and then branch out into other markets, but in his case, his books have done very well in the U.K. "All of them have reached the Top 10 and have outsold the American version by a substantial margin. In fact, Penguin U.K. published THE LOST THRONE seven months ago and it debuted in the British Top 5 and stayed there for several weeks. That means my book was an international bestseller long before it was released in America."

Kuzneski lives in Florida and is working on his next Payne & Jones thriller called THE PROPHECY, which will be released in the U.K. in November 2009 and in the U.S. in the summer of 2010. Barring hurricane season getting in the way, his promotional efforts will focus on Florida, although Kuzneski notes, "It's tough to sign books when you're hunkering down in a closet."

Contributing editor Mark Terry is the author of the Derek Stillwater thriller series. His newest thriller, THE SERPENT'S KISS, is available in stores and online.