Ask the Author: Bonnye Matthews
Answered Questions (9)
Bonnye Matthews
Well, I answered the question only to discover that the limit is 200 words. So, I answered the question on 8/1/2017 in >200 words at https://www.facebook.com/Bonnye-Matth...
Bonnye Matthews
Having been born in Virginia, what caused you to retire in Alaska?
Bonnye Matthews
Hi, Melanie. I'm so glad you're enjoying the series. After I finished the series, I made a coloring book to accompany Ki'ti's Story, 75,000 BC. I hope to do one for each book. My publisher asked me to write a novella. It's coming out in September 2016. The title is long, Freedom, 250,000 BC: Out From the Shadow of Popocatepetl. It still remains in the pre-Clovis window, but in this series of novellas each will be focused on an individual archaeological site. This one focuses on the Valsequillo area. I have put the dedication and intro to the novella on my blog at http://bonnyematthews.blogspot.com.
Bonnye Matthews
I'm working on the beginning of Tuksook's Story, 35,000 BC. Drought and migration of food animals has forced the People to move. They take the boat route to the region we know of today as Cook Inlet. It was a totally different geologic place before the Ice Age. What is now a wide, magical salt water inlet, reaching from the Pacific Ocean beyond Anchorage, was then a river drainage system for five mountain ranges. It's an active area geologically from the meeting of two tectonic plates where even today volcanoes are alive and earthquakes are common. Later the Ice Age sheets about a mile high would change the landscape significantly. At Tuksook's time the wonderful forests would become in present day time coal deposits under the water of Cook Inlet. So Tuksook's Story time travels back to show what the river system that the area used to be might have been.
At her time animals were different from those we see today. There were giant beavers, horses, lions, giant moose with strange antlers, giant bison, musk oxen, wolves roaming the area that is now Alaska. Some of them such as the musk oxen would have remained further north because they needed colder weather than would have been available in the Cook Inlet area. As with the fauna, it's necessary to extrapolate what flora would have been there. The glaciers that pressed the area grinding against the land eradicated evidence of life before the ice. So I've taken the liberty of using what was available in the state that is known. Conifers and hardwoods would no doubt have treed the area's moist lowlands, grasses would have filled open areas, berries would have provided delight to the People, but plants like dandelions would not have been present. They were imported at a later time to the Americas.
At her time animals were different from those we see today. There were giant beavers, horses, lions, giant moose with strange antlers, giant bison, musk oxen, wolves roaming the area that is now Alaska. Some of them such as the musk oxen would have remained further north because they needed colder weather than would have been available in the Cook Inlet area. As with the fauna, it's necessary to extrapolate what flora would have been there. The glaciers that pressed the area grinding against the land eradicated evidence of life before the ice. So I've taken the liberty of using what was available in the state that is known. Conifers and hardwoods would no doubt have treed the area's moist lowlands, grasses would have filled open areas, berries would have provided delight to the People, but plants like dandelions would not have been present. They were imported at a later time to the Americas.
Bonnye Matthews
I'm a workaholic. Work gives me joy, so I immerse myself. What better occupation for a workaholic? I plan, write, edit, market, sign books, do interviews and talks, create little movies, observe my environment and people all the time, love meeting with readers in a variety of ways . . .. For me there's no best thing---I've found what I love doing and will continue until my life ends.
Bonnye Matthews
I rarely experience this. When I do, there are so many other things that need attention. I turn to them. That may mean tending to home needs such as running the tractor over the grass, vacuuming; tending to book business needs such as accounting or pinning my map of places where my books are known; fun things such as book signings or being interviewed; creating movies for my youtube sharing; and so on. My muses are strict taskmasters. I rarely have enough hours in the day or stamina to keep up with my writing. To spend 18 hours a day writing is not unusual when I have time to write. Alaska winters are my prime writing time. The snow flies and I park myself at the computer. Only the dogs and cat and a need for sleep pull me away to meet those needs when I'm on a writing binge.
Bonnye Matthews
Observe intensely constantly; write; get others to read and comment openly on what you write; take criticism as others providing polishing freely for YOUR product; take what others say with equanimity, gratefulness, and not personally; develop a burning desire to share with others.
Bonnye Matthews
I moved to Alaska in 2005 having wanted to do that much sooner. To learn about my environment I researched to discover who the first Alaskans were, thinking they were the first Americans (North and South America). The research kept me busy for five years of intense study, and I'm convinced there is no answer to the question, except Alaska was IMHO not the first place in the Americas where people came. In Mexico a human skull fragment lay under volcanic debris. It dated to about 250,000 years ago, too early for Cro-magnon. There are over 400 sites that are thought to show evidence of human habitation before the Ice Age in the Americas. That was the first set of seeds of inspiration.
The second set of seeds of inspiration comes from Alaska itself. I'm sharing some of these inspiration seeds as tidbits on my youtube page where you can see a young bald eagle eat a creamer at the creek behind my home and a moose and calf outside my front door. More is to come. (Search Bonnye Matthews at youtube to see.) Some other seeds include, having crouched down in an ice cave on a glacier, gazing at the braiding Matanuska River, musk oxen, glacial erratics, Denali (a mountain some call Mt. McKinley), caribou, pink hillsides colored by blossoming fireweed, a humpback whale asleep in Prince William Sound, streams so filled with salmon that you'd step on them if you tried to cross, and many more. In case you're eager to know, humpback whales smell awful!
The second set of seeds of inspiration comes from Alaska itself. I'm sharing some of these inspiration seeds as tidbits on my youtube page where you can see a young bald eagle eat a creamer at the creek behind my home and a moose and calf outside my front door. More is to come. (Search Bonnye Matthews at youtube to see.) Some other seeds include, having crouched down in an ice cave on a glacier, gazing at the braiding Matanuska River, musk oxen, glacial erratics, Denali (a mountain some call Mt. McKinley), caribou, pink hillsides colored by blossoming fireweed, a humpback whale asleep in Prince William Sound, streams so filled with salmon that you'd step on them if you tried to cross, and many more. In case you're eager to know, humpback whales smell awful!
Bonnye Matthews
My most recent book in summer 2014, the one in process, is Tuksook's Story, 35,000 BC. The book is part of a series on the peopling of the Americas before the Ice Age. Some givens are: genetics tell us that there was a wave of migration to Alaska about 35,000 years ago; at that time the travel would have to have been by boat; what is now Cook Inlet, although very different from today, would have been equally inviting; the Ice Age sheet covered this area thousands of years later, leaving behind nothing that would show evidence of man's presence--consider a mile high ice sheet over the area grinding against the land. The area today is one of mystical beauty to me and would have been at the time of this story----though very different. My joy is participating in the picturing a place geologically different from today but equally as fascinating.
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