Explorations: my author blog

Author Interview with Amanda McCrina!

Amanda McCrina, Author of His Own Good Sword and Blood Road, has a new book coming out tomorrow! It’s Blood Oath, the sequel to Blood Road, and Amanda was kind enough to answer some interview questions via email. BTW, if you haven’t read her books and are a Megan Whalen Turner fan, you should give them a try!

Amanda

(Amanda’s author picture. Click on it for her website!)

What sources did you use to create Tasso? Is it based on a real place? 

Tasso isn’t based on one particular place, though it’s probably closest to the North Africa of late antiquity. The indigenous people groups of Tasso are drawn loosely from the ancient Berbers. The enigmatic, unnamed female chieftain of the Mayaso tribe in Blood Road and Blood Oath is very loosely inspired by Dihya, the seventh-century Berber warrior queen, and the relatively high status of women in traditional Berber societies, such as the Tuareg, was something I really wanted the tribes of Tasso to reflect. Then again, the Tegeno people, whom we meet in Blood Oath and who inhabit the lands just north of Tasso, are (again, loosely) based on the Sarmatian tribes of the Pontic steppe—so really Tasso is just a very general reflection of several different places around the ancient Mediterranean/Black Sea rim.