The V iew from Middle Spunk Creek
STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND 7th ed.
A little slow, this week, in getting out the seventh edition of The View From Middle Spunk Creek. Sometimes life hands you lemons and it takes a while to spit out the seeds.
But enough of that.
Last week I promised to tell you a little of the backstory about how Cloud Warriors came to be written.
I have been blessed to travel throughout the world, quite often accompanying my wife, Kathy, in her 17 years of working for an international relief and development agency. Several of our trips together were to Cusco, Peru, the ancient capital city of the Incas, where I became intrigued by Incan history and culture. In the thousand years of Incan imperialism, at one time controlling most of southern Central America and the northern two-thirds of South America, the Incas developed agriculture, architectural, astronomical and social systems that are still considered advanced by today’s standards.
As you know, all of my novels start with some historical event. I discovered the event that triggered Cloud Warriors on my first trip to Peru.
While doing historical research on the Incan empire I came across the term, Chachapoya, a name the Incans gave to one of the tribes that they conquered. Loosely translated, it means Cloud People or Cloud Warriors. One of the last tribes conquered by the Incas, about a century before Pizarro and his 300 conquistadores defeated the Incas thanks to small pox and western deceit, the Chachapoya lived high in the Andes mountains in an area that now straddles the border of Peru and Ecuador.
Further research disclosed that:
- The Chachapoya had no written language and so we don’t know what they called themselves.
- The Chachapoya were not a single tribe, but a group of smaller tribes loosely bound together in a federation.
- There were two entries in journals kept by clerical scribes that accompanied Pizarro’s multiple expeditions that described at least some segment of the Chachapoya as light-skinned and fair-haired.
That was the anomaly that caught my attention. A sliver of Light-skinned, fair-haired people living among the dark-skinned, black-haired people of South America. And then I saw this:
A photo of a sculpture from the 16th century. Doesn’t look like anyone I’ve ever seen in Peru. In fact, it looks European. Northern European. Like a Viking!
A story was born.
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Cloud Warriors will be available to the public in both softcover and eBook on February 22, 2019. You can pre-order on Amazon or at John Hunt Publishing or through this website.
For a recent reviews click on the Cloud Warriors tab in the tool bar, scroll down and click on “read reviews”. If you’d like a pre-release copy for review purposes, please go to the CONTACT tab of this web site.
Check back weekly for Rob’s musings from Middle Spunk Creek.
