F. Jay Fuller

              
Thomas Mann wrote, "Very deep is the well of the past.  The deeper we sound, the further down into the lower world of the past we probe and press, the more do we find that the earliest foundations of humanity, its history and culture, reveal themselves unfathomable."

The most meaningful and expressive vehicle for exploring our past -- that which gives us the greatest insights into what it means to be human, is found in the art of the story.  Nothing touches our hearts and minds, conveys our hopes and dreams, our fears, our triumphs and tragedies like a well-told tale, myth, epic, legend, ballad, or poem, expressed in such a way that it both entertains and conveys its message with clarity and passion.

This is the starting point for everything I write.  I stand on the shoulders of giants.  I drop an empty bucket into the well of the past, wait a while, and then draw up in it ideas, visions and stories -- gifts of the ancestors.

"Before time, before seasons, before Reindeer and Sami came to this land, there was Bieggolmai -- the Wind God.  Great in stature, great in strength, foul of disposition, he ruled the north from his ice cave atop the world with the aid of his twin wind scoops, Cruel and Everlasting."

Opening lines of the Prologue 
"Shadows in Winter"
a novel