The Killing Moon

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Like most fantasy writers, I have found it challenging to write material influenced by real (if bygone) cultures. In some ways I think it would have been easier to write pure historical fiction, because then I could have used all the artistic and factual information provided by scholarship and science. Since this is a fantasy novel, not a history text, I found myself in the odd position of having to de-historify these tales as much as possible—in effect stripping away the substance of reality while leaving behind only the thinnest broth for flavoring. My goal was to give homage; my goal was not to ape reality. Armchair Egyptologists, you have been forewarned.

In particular I struggled with character names, since many of these cultures’ names were meaningful compounds of words in their languages—but this isn’t Earth, so I couldn’t use those languages. Instead I tried to capture a suitable structure and feel while avoiding compounds that would have meaning in those languages. Since I am by no means an expert, this makes it entirely possible that one or more of my characters has a name that means “beloved of cheese” or something similar. My apologies if so.

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