Click here to read the first four chapters of this book
Cry for the Moon is the first installment of The Last Werewolf Hunter series, and I have to say that in many ways it was the most interesting and unusual thing I've ever worked on.
When I first started working on it, I had no idea how things would turn out.The story ended up being much different than I thought it would be at first, with several twists and turns I never saw coming. Part of the reason for that might be that it took so long to finish. I wrote the original version of this story when I was only 18 years old, and it wasn't finished till I was 34. Sixteen years is a long time for things to change and develop.
Werewolf stories are a hoary old tradition, and there have been countless numbers of them written.But no topic is ever entirely played out, and there are always opportunities to tell a story from a fresh perspective.I hope this one does.
The title has a double meaning.The first is its connotation of wishing for things that are seemingly impossible, as Zach does, and the second is because the full moon (and the monster curse it represents) is the source of so much sorrow to him.Therefore, Zach cries for the moon in two very different ways.
I learned to like Zach very much, after getting to know him so well.His name means “remembered by God”, and that was chosen intentionally. It seemed very appropriate for him, under the circumstances.
The setting was also chosen after giving it a lot of thought. I could easily have made up a location and given it whatever characteristics I wanted to, but that didn't seem right for this story. I wanted it to have as much realism as possible, since it was a story about fantastic creatures (werewolves). So it had to be set in the real world. There is a long strand of tradition in Southern literature of writing about bizarre and fantastic things, and partly for that reason I decided to place the story in the South. It fit well with the background. There was also the fact that I was familiar with the area in which the story takes place, and it was easier for me to make it more realistic, that way.
It was for much the same reason that I decided to write the story in first-person, letting Zach tell the reader directly about his own adventures. I'd never tried to write anything that way before, but again, the story itself demanded it. Nothing else would have worked even half so well. It brought Zach to life in an amazing way, even to me. It allowed him to be silly and whimsical at times, to cry, to love, and to think about serious things while still seeming true to life, like a real person. I loved writing this whole series, because it was almost like reading the story for the first time myself.
The theme of keeping courage under adversity, of not giving in to fear, and of being true to what we believe in comes through very clearly, I think. We could all take a lesson from him.
At bottom, Cry for the Moon is a tale of God’s grace to one lost in the dark, even though Zach doesn’t quite realize that fact until the end. It’s also a tale about the cost of virtue, and how no good thing is ever purchased without a dear price.
The story continues in Behind Blue Eyes, then More Golden Than Day and finally Truesilver.
When I first started working on it, I had no idea how things would turn out.The story ended up being much different than I thought it would be at first, with several twists and turns I never saw coming. Part of the reason for that might be that it took so long to finish. I wrote the original version of this story when I was only 18 years old, and it wasn't finished till I was 34. Sixteen years is a long time for things to change and develop.
Werewolf stories are a hoary old tradition, and there have been countless numbers of them written.But no topic is ever entirely played out, and there are always opportunities to tell a story from a fresh perspective.I hope this one does.
The title has a double meaning.The first is its connotation of wishing for things that are seemingly impossible, as Zach does, and the second is because the full moon (and the monster curse it represents) is the source of so much sorrow to him.Therefore, Zach cries for the moon in two very different ways.
I learned to like Zach very much, after getting to know him so well.His name means “remembered by God”, and that was chosen intentionally. It seemed very appropriate for him, under the circumstances.
The setting was also chosen after giving it a lot of thought. I could easily have made up a location and given it whatever characteristics I wanted to, but that didn't seem right for this story. I wanted it to have as much realism as possible, since it was a story about fantastic creatures (werewolves). So it had to be set in the real world. There is a long strand of tradition in Southern literature of writing about bizarre and fantastic things, and partly for that reason I decided to place the story in the South. It fit well with the background. There was also the fact that I was familiar with the area in which the story takes place, and it was easier for me to make it more realistic, that way.
It was for much the same reason that I decided to write the story in first-person, letting Zach tell the reader directly about his own adventures. I'd never tried to write anything that way before, but again, the story itself demanded it. Nothing else would have worked even half so well. It brought Zach to life in an amazing way, even to me. It allowed him to be silly and whimsical at times, to cry, to love, and to think about serious things while still seeming true to life, like a real person. I loved writing this whole series, because it was almost like reading the story for the first time myself.
The theme of keeping courage under adversity, of not giving in to fear, and of being true to what we believe in comes through very clearly, I think. We could all take a lesson from him.
At bottom, Cry for the Moon is a tale of God’s grace to one lost in the dark, even though Zach doesn’t quite realize that fact until the end. It’s also a tale about the cost of virtue, and how no good thing is ever purchased without a dear price.
The story continues in Behind Blue Eyes, then More Golden Than Day and finally Truesilver.
HTML Comment Box is loading comments...