Writing Skanderbeg: mountains, myths and manuscripts

I first saw the walls of Krujë in the rain. The castle sits on a spur of rock like a ship about to set sail, and I understood immediately why an army of a hundred thousand could not take it.

The novel took four years to write. Most of that time was spent not writing but reading — Barleti's Latin chronicle, Ottoman campaign records, the letters of Venetian ambassadors.

History gives you the skeleton. Fiction has to find the heartbeat.