I always have one or two sometimes more Navajo or other tribes' cultural elements in mind when I start a plot. In Thief of Time I wanted to make readers aware of Navajo attitude toward the dead respect for burial sites.
The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present but it is a source of inspiration of vitality and hope where others have resigned it enables a man to hold his head high to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.
