The Story Behind the Dagger Mountains

I grew up in Colorado, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, doing things I thought were normal. Like week-long backpacking trips in the Rocky Mountains as a family vacation.

Me in my 20s backpacking in the mountains. As you do.

I’ve always been an outdoor-oriented person, but when I was around 10 or 11, my mom rented an RV and took the family to Rocky Mountain National Park.

And I fell in love.

If there was any chance I’d grow up to be a normal person, it went out the window on that trip. (Subsequent trips to Moab and Glacier just reinforced that. Now I’m the kind of person who puts “get outside” on my daily to-do list.)

As a ten-year-old kid standing in the shadows of 14,000 feet of granite and snow, I promised myself I would someday write a fantasy novel set in those mountains.

At the time, I called them “The Mountains of Fire and Ice.” The story would need to be epic, kid me decided, with magic, wild creatures, and – of course – a really kick ass woman.

Thirty years later… I changed the name to the Dagger Mountains.

And I wrote the book.

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