Usually, when I'm starting on a book, I sit down and do a lot of research all at once on whatever subject I'm interested in using. WOLFKIN was the exception to this, for the most part, because I had always been interested in medieval Europe, no doubt because this is the setting for most fantasy novels. So in WOLFKIN I drew on things I had absorbed over a lifetime of reading.
One of the things I did look into closely before sitting down to write was wolf behavior. Not just things like pack structure, but the body language they use to communicate. I wanted to convey a nonhuman way of signaling, of relating to each other, as well as I could without losing the reader. Basing it on the real thing turned out to be the best way of doing that.
What did you base the Aclytes on? The treatment they received from society, reminded
me a bit of the Jews. You clearly had a religious and cultural background for them.
What sort of research did you do? Where did the idea come from?
I wanted to have another nonhuman race (other than the Wolfkin) in the story, but I
didn't want to bring in all the baggage that long-time fantasy readers have associated
with the "traditional" races like elves. You say "elf" and there is a mental picture that
comes immediately to mind. So I decided to start from scratch and get away from all
that. Hence, the Aclytes.
Although there are exceptions, for the most part fantasy has always portrayed human-nonhuman relations in a good light. There may be some distrust, but at worst there is a "live and let live" attitude. But history is littered with examples of humans killing or subjugating other humans over the slightest perceived differences--how, then, would we really react to another species living next door? So instead of being these remote creatures living off in forests somewhere, the Aclytes are relegated to the lowest rungs of society--servants, manual laborers, prostitutes--ghettoized, forbidden by law to hold property, and in essence have almost no rights at all. They can console themselves with old tales of how they used to be kings and lords, but the brutal truth is that right now they're poor, illiterate, and have very little chances of upward mobility...at least as Jenelese society stands at the present. ;-)
Naturally in depicting this, I drew on our history of mistreating one another. Certainly there is no shortage of examples! Part of that was examining the history of how Jews
