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The art of the possible.

Article Excerpt
"The best thing for being sad is to learn something."

--T. H. White, The Once and Future King

When people ask what kind of books I write, my honest answer is "sort of historical fantasy"--a categorization that is both evocative and apt, but doesn't actually exist as a library shelf. In any given library, my books turn up on one shelf or the other, but not both. The Sunbird, the first book in which half-British, half-Ethiopian Telemakos Meder plays a starring role, was lauded by one institution as "Outstanding Historical Fiction," while another named it among the year's "Best Fantasy." So why this need in me to merge history with fantasy, to strike a balance between research and imagination, to marry the real with the possible, to consider the improbable but not impossible--not what was, but what might have been?

I can blame it partially on my training as a folklorist. In North America, folklore as an academic discipline has its roots in both anthropology and English literature, or, more simply put, in history and fiction. But any historian worth her salt would choose the country closest to her heart to write about, not one outside her experience; and a true fantasist would make it up entirely. I am compelled to wander beyond the boundaries of both choices, exploring foreign countries, splicing my own inventions into the canon of established fact.

That my books feel like fantasy is indisputable. But they are purposefully set in a historical place and time, in this world and in this world's past. My chosen time is the sixth century AD. My first book, The Winter Prince, is set in ancient Britain; in A Coalition of Lions and The Sunbird the action...

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