Click here to read the first half of Truesilver.
Or, click here to visit the Photo Gallery.
You may also need the Discussion Questions.
Truesilver wasn’t originally planned. But I received so many requests to hear more about Zach Trewick and his adventures, I wanted to give the fans what they asked for. So in a way this book is every bit as much the creation of my readers as it is mine.
There was always the possibility of dealing with the woken-up wolves, of course, and that’s the path I chose to take in this book. I did my usual thing and ran down whatever rabbit holes appealed to me at the time, since I’ve always thought writing should be at least as much fun as reading.
Certain readers with a sharp eye for details will probably have noticed that the mountains north of Langley are the Ouachitas, and therefore not technically part of the Ozarks. But since in the wider world they usually do get lumped together under the same name, I didn’t see any harm in following that general rule. One need not be pedantic about such things.
That said, most of the things in the book are real-life people and places. Juan de Velasco really existed, his ship was really the San Andrés, and he really sank in a storm off Mexico in 1600. The Skullcrusher Mountains are real, and so were Madryn of Gwent and Tristan of Tintagel, whose sword was really named Mercy and which has really belonged to all the Kings of England since Edward the Confessor. Iridium is a real metal, with the same properties which I described in the book, and along with platinum it has occasionally been called truesilver. They do indeed make spark plugs and fountain pens from it. Cape Mendocino is similar to what I described, including the exact location and depth of the very underwater canyon Zach and the others visited, which is called (uninterestingly) Mendocino Canyon.
Doing research on obscure topics like octopus wrestling or the history of sword fighting is actually one of the biggest pleasures of coming up with these adventures. I have a legitimate reason to satisfy my curiosity about everything under the sun, and what’s not to love about that?
This book contains characters which appear in other books not directly related to The Last Werewolf Hunter series. I’ve always liked big, intricately connected worlds in which I can learn more about any character I like just by finding another book. It’s a closer reflection of the real world, and it adds so much more depth and richness to all the stories. The story of Cameron and Joan continues in Tycho, for example.
Cody McGrath’s tale is told in Many Waters, a book which is closely related to this series even though it’s not really part of it. But since Zach found the story of Cody’s fight with Layla Garza so interesting (even though he never asked about it), I thought other readers might be curious, too. Matthieu Doucet plays a big part in that story, and so does Brandon Stone, from Unclouded Day. No doubt in the future I’ll continue to explore other connections like this.
But in the meantime, I hope my readers enjoy this fourth book of Zach’s adventures as much as they have his past ones. There will be at least three more Werewolf Hunter books, I think, even if they’re not about werewolves anymore!
In the future, as Zach himself says, he’ll move on to greater things; to fighting whatever kinds of evils there may be in the world, so you never really know what might pop up in the future. This time it was evil sorcerers, tomorrow it could be anything. I think that’s a broad enough scope to provide Zach with adventure and purpose for the rest of his life