Countdown to release day! 4 days to go (I know I missed yesterday and I apologize): What initially inspired me to write The Moon-Eyed Ones was my love for genealogy and the research I did on my own family. My maternal great-grandmother (my mother’s father’s mother) always spoke of our Cherokee ancestry, and for most of my life, I was proud to be Native. Well, with research and a DNA test, that Cherokee ancestry turned out to be Melungeon, a mixture of multiple heritages (ours includes Scots-Irish, West African, and Romani. We have a connection with the Powhatan tribe way back, but from my research, it only involves a marriage or two). Mixes like these are common in Melungeon families.
From this discovery, I got a story: a Melungeon boy encounters Cherokees on his adventures and tells them he is Cherokee because that was what he’d been told and so on. Well, the Cherokee girl he meets is skeptical, and thus begins an odd friendship between the two. Ironically, despite my protagonist being a fifteen-year-old boy, the history that inspired the story was mostly from the women of my family, so I decided to post some photos that fueled my creativity. (Side note: I also fell in love with the photos of Melungeon people by Doris Ulmann during my research, and if you have the time, look them up.)
The Moon-Eyed Ones will be released on Amazon on October 10th and the first three chapters are available on my website for free reading!
AUTHOR | HISTORIAN | ARTIST 