101 Dalmatians!

I know, right? Favorite book, ever when I was a kid. Written in 1956 (**coughs – I wasn’t actually alive then, just saying.)

I’m only pointing it out because Dodie Smith, the author, who wrote what I think is a classic children’s book – wrote a sequel that few people ever even heard of because that wasn’t ever made into a film.

The Starlight Barking – written in 1967 – gave me the idea for Sirius Wolves. I’ve never told anyone this before because, well basically, no one ever asked.

But just to backtrack a little… The Starlight Barking. Pongo (you remember him – daddy dog to all those puppies, all 101 of them?) wakes up along with all the other dogs on the planet to find out that the humans are still asleep, and they stay asleep – and the dogs can’t wake them up.

Apparently, Sirius (yep – Sirius Wolves) who in this book is the Lord of the Dog Star and had decided that all the dogs on Earth are going to come and live with her on her planet to avoid nuclear war. (Think about the year this anti-war book was written in and you realize that this wasn’t just a children’s book.)

I never forgot either of these books, and now I need to give you a little background of Egyptian mythology.

According to the ancient Egyptians, Sirius and Orion formed the human race. The three great pyramids at Giza were built in unique alignment to Orion’s Belt and The Great Pyramid has air shafts that point directly to Orion. What is even more astonishing is that an ancient site, similar to Stonehenge in England, was built before the rise of the Egyptians and is similarly aligned by builders that were unaware of the level of physics and mathematics at that time that would be needed to make that happen.

It was my fascination for the “dog-star” that made me research all this and gave me the idea that Sirius didn’t just create humans, and dogs, but that she created another creature to be the best of both – werewolves.

Domestic dogs aren’t thought to be descendants of wolves. It is believed that both domestic dogs and wolves are both descendants of a now extinct common ancestor. (You can hear the plot bunnies jumping all over the place, can’t you?)

I made the Alphas – Blaze, Darric, and Conner – a triad because they symbolized the Three Great Pyramids. I made them need a fourth – Aden – because my idea was he would symbolize the human race. (And yeah, I’m shallow – I thought sex between four guys would be off the charts hot.)

The idea of the next Alpha – Marcus – that he would be totally human was, to me, the next obvious step. Sirius’ whole intention was the saving of the human race, and the hybrids naturally followed.

I want to say two last things.

One – a huge thank you. To my readers, especially those that have stuck with the whole series, to the reviewers (especially Caroline) who have read the whole series, and to Dodie Smith – who gave me years of happy reading as a child, and the inspiration as an adult.

Two – Full Circle (out October 18th) is the last book. You will have to read it to understand why, but as this series isn’t stand-alone it’s getting too complicated to reiterate the back story of nearly six books without ruining them.

There are an awful lot of kids (cubs) though…I guess they will have a lot of stories when they grow up, but I think they need a year, or two.