What is the importance of Native American mythology to the story you tell in THE GHOST ORCHID?
Ive used Greek mythology and fairy tales in my novels to create a sense of an alternative world to whats going on in the realistic narrative. Because of this novels setting, I thought it would be great if I could integrate Native American mythology into the story. I real a lot of Iroquoian and Algonquin mythology and the first draft of the novel had a lot more of that in it, but ultimately I thought I had to pare down that material. I wanted, though, to suggest with it the long history of the place, a history that predated its European settlers. What can your readers expect to see next from you? Im working on a novel called Villa of the Mysteries. Its about a Renaissance Sonnet scholar, Rose Blum, who discovers a series of love sonnets by an Italian woman poet of the sixteenth century who may, or may not, have been writing her poems to William Shakespeare. It starts in Manhattan, at a fictitious college called Hudson College, and then moves to a villa outside of Florence, where..[drum
