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| The Column's Back!  A Mystery from the Beginning of Time Sure, there are mysteries set in ancient Rome and earlier, but Tennessee author Kaye George decided to go even further back in time for her recent release, DEATH IN THE TIME OF ICE, A People of the Wind Mystery. It's not often you'll find a book with a Neanderthal as a main character (well, maybe not before this.) And given that this is so far back that no one really knows how a Neanderthal thought or acted, it takes some fiction writing chops to pull it off. But with several mysteries under her belt, George says she welcomed the challenge. As she'd been studying Neanderthals and read a quote from a writer who liked Egyptian or Roman mysteries, she says, "he said something like, 'the further you go back, the better.' Aha, I thought. I can go back way more than that." It's easy to imagine that no matter how far back you go in history, human (or Neanderthal) nature hasn't changed all that much. In DEATH IN THE TIME OF ICE, Enga Dancing Flower knows her Neanderthal tribe is in trouble. The dark seasons are becoming longer and the mammoth herds are fleeing south. When the tribal leader is found stabbed to death, the new leader thinks Enga did it. Expulsion and certain death looms. Enga must find the murderer to save her tribe -- and herself. (Sound familiar?) Making her tribe somewhat "human" made sense, George says. "I'm not sure why," she explains, "but I've always been fascinated by people who aren't quite us, and who lived on this planet for a very long time before modern humans appeared. The recent genome mapping and new discoveries that they aren't grunting savages—excuse me, weren't grunting savages—prompted me to delve more deeply." This is, of course, the kind of book that requires research, something, she, like most writers, enjoys. That left her with some decisions to make since much of the research is contradictory, she adds. But that also made her job somewhat easier: "I can pick and choose theories that fit my story, and even make things up," she says. George admits to having a bumpy start trying to figure how to make the characters telepathic and maybe think in pictures. "That false start didn't get too far," she says. "I could sustain that for a short story, but not for a novel." Having her Neanderthals speak seemed to be accurate as research is leaning that way, she says, but it led to another problem which readers often dislike—having too much dialect. "I researched how babies learn to speak, therapy for people with problems speaking, and the roots of the Indo-European lost language," she says. "From there, I used the sounds most easily formed and made up a language. That, too, was rough going for my readers." In the end, she relied on regular language to convey the telepathy with some language described as pictures. "I saved the rudimentary language for announcements on ceremonial occasions, decisions by the leader mostly," she says. The main thing she had to keep in mind while writing was to not, as one early reader said, make it a book with 'modern people dressed as Neanderthals.' She says, "I tried to imagine their mindset and put myself there. I found myself looking at the clouds and describing them as my Neanderthals would." The best part of writing such a book is that where the story goes is really up to her. One thing George decided was to make it a matriarchal society, with women leading the hunts and men doing the work since she thought most people in a smaller society would more likely know and associate with their mother and might not know the father. She also decided to send her tribes to the American continent. "Soon after I wrote my first draft, land bridge theories began to change and people even put forth theories that migration occurred much earlier than previously thought," she notes. "My thought is that just because we haven't found Neanderthal remains here doesn't mean they weren't here, although I doubt they were, really." Even better, she adds, is she got to write about her own prehistoric favorites. "The reason I wanted to set the story where I live is because of my love for the mega-fauna that lived here before the last Ice Age: mammoths, giant sloth, saber toothed tigers, dire wolves, flat-faced bears, giant beavers . . .I could go on and on." Readers will be glad to hear that with all the research she's already done, George says she has plenty of background for more Neanderthal adventures. Bio: Kaye George (http://kayegeorge.com) is a three-time Agatha Award nominee and finalist for the Silver Falchion award. She's written three other mystery series, including the upcoming FAT CAT cozy series and is the author of A PATCHWORK OF STORIES. Visit her blogs at http://travelswithkaye.blogspot.com/ and http://makeminemystery.blogspot.com/. New Releases and Notable News:      * See you next time! |
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