“The King’s Huntsman” is now up at Giganotosaurus. I’ve been thinking a lot about why I wrote this story, and I’ll share my thoughts on it in a minute. First, I need to thank Boy One and Boy Two, my son and his friend, who diligently helped brainstorm the Quilth. Much of her appearance is due to their creativity, while her malice is mine alone.
I wrote this story when I needed to write something entirely different than what I had been working on. I think (I wrote this a while ago–my memory is foggy on some details) it was the only thing I wrote last year where the first line never changed.
Why castles and kings and hunts? I was fascinated by King Arthur when I was young. I read and reread all my books about Camelot. It was one of my favorite fantasy worlds to invent further adventures in.
The trouble with those stories was that when it came time to play, who could I be? What if I didn’t want to be beautiful, or devious, or tragic? What if I just wanted to be the one with the sword, or the bow, the one who rode off on a horse and came back wiser and stronger?
I had only two options. One, be a boy. Two, invent my own characters. “The King’s Huntsman” is for all the times I grudgingly pretended to be a boy in order to have the adventures that I craved.