Redheaded Jill

I have (kind of) met two of my heroes. In college I shook hands with Bob Newhart. In high school I was in the same building as Jerry Lewis. In junior high I became pen pals with my favorite author.

The Hollow Kingdom trilogy is my favorite, I mean ALL TIME favorite series. The author is Clare B Dunkle. She is a genius. The books are child friendly, with romantic themes that are PG. There are elves and goblins, Marak the Goblin King is the most lovable hero ever written. It’s like if King Arthur morphed with Samwise Gamgee and Tom Bombadil. She wrote the Hollow Kingdom series in letter form for her daughters who were away at boarding school (I think the story goes…) Eventually she put them into a book and was even praised by Lloyd Alexander, one of my other favorite authors. (He wrote The Black Cauldron, Time Cat, The Westmark Chronicles…)

When I was a teen I wrote her a fan letter (fan email) and she responded! We wrote back and forth and I wish desperately that I still had that email and could print them off for my scrapbook. When my mom bought me the second book of the series she got it off ebay and it was a paperback not for sale editor’s copy. I told Clare B Dunkle that’s what we received and I think that’s how we started conversing. The version I received was an alternate ending, so she emailed me the correct final chapter which I printed out and added to the back of my book. I don’t know where that copy of the book is, I eventually got a hardback copy to match the others.

She was so kind and encouraging. We even became facebook friends.

After college in my attempt to let go of the painful past I deleted my facebook. (Not dramatically with lots of warning posts telling people I was leaving. I’m not THAT dramatic. But I deleted things and felt very free.) Unfortunately that includes my facebook friendship with Clare B Dunkle.

She has also said that she won’t allow a movie to be made of her books because that will ruin everything. (I’m going based off of memories since I no longer have access to the emails.) She has written other books, but I haven’t read many of them. By These Ten Bones is a fantasy story that I found enjoyable. Another book she wrote was I think about Wuthering Heights, and maybe something like poetry? Not my scene, but you can bet if she writes any more fantasy novels they WILL be added to my collection.