Harbor City, California
June 2014

To family and friends:

You know me as David Casterline, and I'm announcing the release of my new novel: And the Hills Replied. I can assure you that you're not named in the book, and your identity is not implied. For that matter, my name isn't mentioned either, hence, my pen name: Sparhawk Hutchins.

For those in my generation of the family that called Winifred Hutchins Andrews our grandmother, you'll know about Sparhawk's contribution to the family myth that we're descended from King Robert I of Scotland. To those who know nothing about this let me say that there were actually two Sparhawks: father and son. Senior was my great grandfather's brother and Junior was Winifred's first cousin. In 1924, he published a family record of his kinship with the king.

So, why have I taken his name? Here's one way I treat it in the Prologue:

The story is Sparhawk's to tell. I think pen names fanciful and his writings had sparked my idea in the first place. After all, he didn't have the benefit of high-speed Internet and DNA evidence to do the research and confirm his findings. He'd spent years in darkened church basements and public offices blowing the dust off volumes of vital statistics that hadn't been opened since they were inscribed with garbled script from quill pens.

My publishing company has placed And the Hills Replied in the genres: Sagas; Historical Fiction/Fantasy; Alternate History. I'm fine with it.

The saga is of an immediate family unit - King Robert I, his queen consort Elizabeth, his daughter Marjorie, and one obscure - the one who might save them. The main story line is of their ten-year quest to survive dangerous and horrendous circumstance. It is set in Scotland and England: 1306-1316 ... but the story actually starts near the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty in Amarna, Egypt, and ends in 1938 beneath the Bell Tower archway to the quadrangle of Saint Salvator's College, the oldest of the University of Saint Andrews, Scotland.

Real characters and their associations, timelines and settings; actual events and circumstances mark the historic contribution of the book. However, I didn't want to write it in the style of encyclopedic narration. I wanted to give imagination a hope for belief, and that's where I left the story. After the Prologue, I handed it off to Sparhawk. He provides the historical context and backup to my lead character and principal narrator. Her name is Elizabeth de Burgh de Bruys, and her rank is Queen of Scotland.

I hope you'll take a moment to look at the remainder of this site for more details and storyline. About the Publisher tells of the events in 2012-2013 that forever changed the face of book publication. It's an advancing story of when my publisher transformed from an Indie publishing house into an industry giant.

And the Hills Replied is distributed worldwide, and is currently for sale by booksellers located in more than thirty countries.

In closing, I would love to hear from you. Please contact me, as I will be updating this site as my book settles into the marketplace and word gets out. I thank you for being my family and friends.

Warmest Regards,
Sparhawk