My new fantasy novel hasn't even been released yet, and I am already getting questions from people who are reading the advanced reading copies (but not necessarily following my blog).

Here is one of the questions: 

Why did you make the Prince's uncle a hunchback, and is he a sadist or just pragmatic when it comes to extracting information from his prisoners in his dungeon?

Answer:  

I made him a hunchback because I wanted to pay tribute to some of my favorite authors who wrote great stories featuring hunchbacks;  The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo, Richard the Third by William Shakespeare. I also wanted to include a physically flawed character into my retelling of the Cinderella tale; one that adds a new dimension and whose own amorous adventures enrich my work.  As for him being a sadist or a pragmatist, I leave that for my gentle readers to decide. 

Keep the questions coming.  As the launch for my book approaches on Oct. 5, 2021, this blog will focus on Ardennia.

Kit Carson and the Indians by Thomas Dunlay

This is a fascinating and disturbing nonfiction book.  It is quite scholarly and describes how Kit Carson witnessed and participated in the decimation of the American West's wildlife and Indigenous peoples.  In his time he was lionized as a great mountain man, scout and Indian fighter.  In the 1970s he began to be vilified as books like Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown and movies like Little Big Man revealed the ugly truths about the conflict between Native Americans and the white people who coveted their lands.  To be fair, Kit Carson was only a man of his times; his contribution to trapping out beaver, extirpating species like bison, elk, deer, antelope, wolf, bear, coyote and cougar, and oppressing Native Americans - especially the Navajo Nation - was reprehensible but he was not as mean-spirited as the many settlers who were calling for the total eradication of any Indigenous people who stood their way.  Indeed, he often sympathized with the Indians he came to know so well, and - as an Indian agent in his waning years - did what he thought was best to preserve them from utter annihilation.  As far as the American West's wildlife and natural wonders went, it would take a new generation of men like John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot* to turn the tide of public opinion and begin the work of designating lands as National Parks and Forests.

*Served as the 1st head of the United States Forest Service