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There was an owl on one of the teepee poles at my ranch last night and, if you're lucky enough to live adjacent to Indian Country, you pay attention to such things. The Cheyenne see the owls as messengers from the other side, and I couldn't help but wonder who it was that was sending something a little more than special delivery.

I always thought he looked a little like an owl, even before I met him. The way the tufts of hair perched up on his head and the pointed nose-but most of all it was the eyes; not so much the eyes of an eagle because those carry a self-concern, but more like the eyes that see past self-interest.

He was 83, and he lived in Albuquerque with, in his own words "now-and-then rhematic arthritis, in-remission cancer, a minor heart-attack, a mediocre eye, one tricky ankle and two unreliable knees..." He began teaching at the University of New Mexico in 1967 and, with a wife and six children, he struggled to make ends meet. The story goes that he was typing away in his office late one night and an associate enthused, "You must be the hardest working professor we have here at the University."

He looked up with the twinkle his eyes always carried, his glasses perched at the end of his nose. "Actually, I'm writing a book."

Undaunted, the woman remarked. "How wonderful, what's it about?"

"It's a mystery."

She was crest-fallen. "With all your knowledge of Navajo art, culture, society and history-why are you wasting your time writing a mystery novel?"

Like most writers, I'm often asked what are my favorite books and from what other writers inspire me? My answer to that question is usually: it depends. Because I tend to write across genres, I find inspiration in many different places. When I began writing The Youngest Templar: Keeper of the Grail, I think my biggest influence was Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, a book I turned to time and time again.

The Youngest Templar: Keeper of the Grail is a hero's quest. What you discover in reading Campbell's work is that the hero's quest is a story told repeatedly in different forms in almost every culture. If you think about it, the hero of almost any dramatic work is on some sort of quest. It may be an internal quest for self-discovery or validation or a very external quest: to solve the crime, save the girl/town/world, or to complete some charge that the hero has been given.

In The Youngest Templar: Keeper of the Grail, my hero Tristan is given a very sacred duty. He is ordered by his knight, Sir Thomas Leux, to safeguard the Holy Grail. The cup of Christ. The most sacred relic in all of Christendom. Sir Thomas orders Tristan to return with the Grail from the Holy Land to Scotland. He must keep it safe at all costs. Tell no one. Trust no one. So begins Tristan's journey.