The Authors

Our Story

As the co-authors of The Babylon Code—Alia Sina and Paul Donsbach—we never imagined that our characters would begin solving an ancient mystery. Being fans of adventure novels, we had wanted our characters to struggle with an unsolvable mystery, as a symbol of the discontents of modern life. At a time when it seems that all the great discoveries have already been achieved, we felt that an impossible mystery would give our adventure story a modern sense of realism, or even pessimism, about what is possible in our troubled world today.

But as it turns out, our world is not hopeless after all. Our characters showed us that impossible dreams can still come true. While our protagonists (Danielle Dawson in the 1930s and her grandson Sam Romero in our time) began solving the clues one by one, we realized that our modern sense of diminished possibilities is merely an illusion. It just took a 1930s-era British spy and her dashing grandson to set us straight.

Thus humbled, we invite you to join our characters’ surprising journey with us. Based on the true story behind one of the world’s greatest adventure movies, our fictional characters uncover a startling truth that had been lost for centuries. While some of our readers may be disappointed by the optimistic tone of the first novel in our series, we remain hopeful that we can explore darker themes in our next novel. Assuming our characters don’t surprise us first, of course.