"What inspired me to write the Ratha series... " “...The wonder, majesty, and terror of Earth's life, as embodied in cats, both large and small. The flashing beauty of the cheetah in the chase, the arch of the mountain lion's spring, and the quivering of flesh as two huge male lions rebound from each other in a fight. The fossils that speak of cats and cat-like creatures millions of years dead, yet alive and stalking in human minds. The small cats in my life who bring the jungle into the living room, who stalk and pounce on my emotions and deliver an alien but deep love….I can't say exactly what created Ratha and her world. I walk inside her skin, look out through her eyes, feel the muscles that retract and extend her claws...if readers can experience Ratha as I have, it is a great joy...Stay on this trail -- there will be more...” Clare Bell, an excerpt from her Blog, The Scratching Log. Clare Bell was originally born in England, 1952. She relocated to the United States in 1957, where she discovered a keen, ever growing interest in prehistoric fauna, a curiosity further provoked by the artwork of fabled illustrator Charles R. Knight. Clare gleaned her profound appreciation for intellectual beasts through the writings of Olaf Stapledon and his narrative Sirius, A Tale Of Love And Discord, and C.S Lewis‘s The Chronicles Of Narnia. Clare’s stories orbit around themes of evolution - how changes in climate, technology and external progression impact societies - by encouraging, if not forcing them to adapt in order to cope and survive. These passionate fascinations collided into the powerful masterpiece that became Ratha’s Creature, first published in 1983, followed by Clan Ground in 1984. Ratha And Thistle-Chaser continued the ‘Named’ saga in 1990, giving birth to Ratha’s Challenge four years later. 2007 will witness the public circulation of her fifth - and perhaps final addition to the fabled collection - Ratha’s Courage. Other works fashioned by Clare Bell include - her intriguing novels Tomorrow’s Sphinx (1986), People Of The Sky (1989), and The Jaguar Princess (1993) - The Ancient Tahiti series (mutual production by lady Clare and M. Coleman Easton - published under the pseudo-name Clare Coleman) consisting of Daughter Of The Reef, (1992), Sister Of The Sun (1993), and Child Of The Dawn (1994) - and short stories The Hunting Of Lord Etsalian’s Daughter, The Damcat, Bomber And The Bismarck, and, A Tangled Tahitian Tale. To learn more about Clare Bell, read her Author Biography at www.rathascourage.com Author Input "...Readers ask if the various creatures in the Ratha series really existed. The answer is yes, they are based on real fossils, but a few have been slightly modified. Keep in mind that I began the series in 1983. Paleontology has made huge leaps since then, finding many new prehistoric species and making new discoveries about old ones. The three-horn stag that Ratha encounters in the first page of the first book is based in part on the Miocene proto-ceratid ("before deer") species Synthetoceras. This animal had a y-forked nose-horn, but a very un-deer-like snout and little horn-stubs instead of true antlers. To make the creature more appealing (to me as well as readers), I added the branched antlers and the more elegant face of later deer species. Originally the dapplebacks were based on Hyracotherium, a fossil better known as Eohippus, "the dawn horse". Their dappled backs came from a painting in a paleontology book, showing the little proto-horses browsing in a leafy forest. Now researchers have decided that the "dawn horse" really isn't a horse ancestor at all; it more closely related to the hyrax and the elephants. In my mind, the dapplebacks are still horses, perhaps early versions of forest-browsing proto-ponies that later gave rise to the main branch of horse evolution, the hipparions, with their enlarged center toe of three. Not the modern horse Equus? No, actually Equus was a side branch. Hipparion and its relatives formed the main trunk of the horse-y tree. The “shambleclaw” that Ratha sees in the forest is a giant American ground sloth. Not monstrous, like Megatherium, but not tiny either. The name attempts to describe how the creature might have shambled along awkwardly, hampered by the huge fore claws it used to dig up termite mounds and strip leaves from trees. Young Ratha almost becomes bird food when she confronts a huge flightless “terror crane” based on the species Gastornis (Diatryma). After the dinosaurs vanished, mammals remained small and had to contend with feathered avian dinosaur descendents that resembled the recently extinct moas of New Zealand. The birds had a head start on the furries, and grew huge, dominating the forests and plains of the periods preceding the Miocene, the Eocene and Oligocene. They may well have hung on until the Miocene In the 1980’s, Gastornis species were thought to be carnivores, due to their huge hooked beaks. Now paleontologists debate that image, pointing out that the heavy beaks could have cut through vegetation as well as flesh. But mammal is still on the bird menu in the Ratha books, although the mammal in question manages to escape. Other prehistoric beasties stalk through the landscape of Ratha's world. Which ones do you think they are?..." Read More Author Input At Amazon.Com