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Welcome, Friend!
Come on in. Kick your shoes off, grab a tall glass of your favorite beverage and let’s get to know each other. There are doors to different worlds on this site and you can choose whichever one you want to enter by clicking on its button and scrolling down. So take some time and look around.
I’m happy you’re here. Hope you plan to stay a while.
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fun and mayhem
in the good old days
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fun and fantasy.
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Meet the Author
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Questions for the Author
How did you start writing? When I worked in the fields as a child I entertained myself by making up very involved fairy tales in my head but I was always too busy to write them down. It wasn’t until my children were almost grown that I began writing in earnest.
Do you remember the fairy tales you made up back then? Not specifically. I have a vague memory of them involving magic and the like but what I see in my mind is what I was doing at the time, driving an autobuck in the fields back home. It was hot and dusty but I loved the work because I was off by myself with only the blue sky, sunshine, lovely mountains and an occasional soaring eagle as my companions. Along with my imagination, of course.
So when you began writing you started with fantasy? No. My first novel was I, Nephi…, a biographical novel about Nephi Moulton, the man who homesteaded the ranch I grew up on. He was actually my guardian and I thought he sat on the right hand of God. He taught me to read. He taught me to garden. He was the father figure in my life and I adored him.
Since you already knew Nephi Moulton, how much research did you have to do for your book about his life? I actually had to do a tremendous amount of research. I went to the town where he grew up and took extensive photos of his childhood home, his grandparents’ home and the surrounding valley. I camped up in the back country of the Gros Ventre River where he pastured his cattle at one time and took extensive notes. I traveled through the Black Rock cattle range, the area where much of the poaching was done in the early years of the Jackson Hole valley. I read letters his father and uncle had written as well as the biographical sketches of his parents that are on file with the Historical Society in the Wasatch Valley. I also read the memoirs of his father’s sister wives. I wanted to be as accurate as possible and also as fair.
Many people have asked for a sequel to ‘I, Nephi…’. Is there one in the works? No. I am currently researching the life of a California gold-miner-turned-businessman -and-farmer. He’s a fascinating man, a real character. His story will be really fun to write. I don’t want to start, however, until I’ve experienced one good foggy day on the northern California coast where he homesteaded.
Why a foggy day? Because thick fog was something he dealt with all of his adult life. I suspect it had something to do with the deaths of six of his infant children. But I’ve never really been in a thick fog. I want to be able to describe it as accurately as possible.
You would go to California just to be able to describe a fog? Of course there is a lot more research to be done when I get to the coast but, yes, if that was the only piece of information I lacked, I would go there to get it.
Is not having that piece of information the real reason why you turned from writing biographical novels to fantasy? Pretty much. I’m not free to travel, yet, and the people I wanted to write about lived so far away from Idaho that I’ve decided to write about something else for the moment.
Fantasy is a far stretch from biography, don’t you think? Oh, I think everyone fantasizes from time to time so fantasy isn’t all that difficult to write. For me, it was the only choice. The romance genre is out; I’m not a fan. I occasionally read mysteries but I don’t think I’d be very good at plotting one. Science fiction is okay if you know anything about science, which I don’t. I refuse to read horror, let alone write it and I’m not smart enough to think up a mainstream novel. So what’s left? Biographical novels and fantasy.
Where did you find the plot of ‘Find Excalibur’s Sheath!’? That one was funny. I decided to write a fantasy novel so what’s more pure fantasy than fairies? I actually studied and outlined over a half-dozen books about fairies and in one of them I ran across this little Swedish folk tale about three brothers who inherited their father’s farm. The two older ones took the land and the house and gave the youngest brother nothing but a rope. I don’t remember the details but he managed to find a fairy and tie her up. If she wanted her freedom, she had to fill his hat with gold pieces. What she didn’t know was that he’d dug a hole and placed his hat over it – after he'd cut a hole in the crown of the hat. He ended up a very wealthy man.
When I read that little story, I knew I’d found the basic plot of my fantasy novel.
But ‘Find Excalibur’s Sheath!’ is about King Arthur’s sword, not Swedish folk tales. Yes, it is. But I also read about treasures that were supposedly hidden by Merlin, King Arthur’s advisor. When you’re putting together a plot for a novel, you take an idea from here and a snatch of conversation from there and a memory from some place else and put them together to make something new and fresh.
You say ‘Find Exclibur’s Sheath!’ is the first in a series. Yes. Alex, my protagonist, has a list of ancient artifacts to find before he’s finished – and I’m finished with him.
What will he search for after the sword and sheath? (Smile) I guess you’ll have to wait and see.
Do you know? Of course. The next book in the series is nearly half-written.