Emily writes…

Hello!

I just wanted to say that this series, even as a 24 year old, holds the biggest place in my heart. I have never felt so immersed into a world before. I read these when I was very young, and have re-read them so, so many times since. Young me always dreamt of living in the woods, exploring, gathering and obviously having a friend Wolf to be with. These books made me feel at home, as unusual at that may sound.

In the last year or so, I have recently thought about attempting to write a book. I have been an avid reader my entire life. I want to thank you for kickstarting my reading passion with your Wolf Brother book. I don't think I will ever find the magic again as I did reading them. I wanted to ask, what inspired you to write this series? And what made you decide to set it around 4000BC? I find the age absolutely fascinating, and I've never seen it done anywhere else in a book I've come across so far.

Thank you so much for inspiring me to push myself to give something new a go. I may ask you a few questions in the future about how you helped gather the information and culture inspiration for these books, as I saw you took several trips throughout Europe to explore these cultures, which is absolutely amazing.

Michelle Replies…

Dear Emily, what a delightful message.  I’m so glad that you continue to enjoy my books – and particularly that they’ve inspired you to think about writing yourself. Your question about inspiration is tricky to answer, because usually I can only work that out long after I’ve written a story, by trying to see what in the past may have fed into it.  If you go to the wolfbrother.com website and into the Cave, there’s a section called Why I Wrote Wolf Brother in which I give more details; but the bottom line is that most stories come from the unconscious, so their origins are always a bit mysterious!

Choosing the period in which to set the story is easier.  My original idea was simply for a story about a boy, a wolf, a girl and a bear, set in a huge forest.  As for when to set it, I considered three options: the near future, after some sort of global catastrophe had destroyed civilisation; the present; or the distant past. It took about five minutes to ditch the first two and go for the distant past, and another two minutes to go for the Stone Age – probably because as a child I’d been entranced by a wonderful book on the archaeology of Stone Age hunter-gatherers in my father’s study (although I didn’t remember it at the time).  An afternoon’s research suggested the Mesolithic, and to begin with I set Wolf Brother seven thousand years ago; but more research revealed that at that time the Scandinavian coast had been inundated by a sort of tsunami – so I swiftly moved things along a thousand years, and the tsunami became the Great Wave, a distant memory of the clans!  Also, six thousand years ago worked well, because the people of my chosen area were still living as hunter-gatherers, and the neolithic way of life, ie farming, hadn’t yet reached them, unlike in most other parts of northern Europe.  So this kept things simple.

Thank you so much for getting in touch.  I hope you continue to enjoy Torak’s world, and good luck with your own writing!  With best wishes, Michelle