Jonathan Rogers on the Wilderking Trilogy:
"The Wilderking is about virtue. It’s a word we don’t use very much any more. But when it first entered our language, the word virtue was defined as “manliness” or “valor.” That is to say, the idea of moral excellence was closely tied to a soldierly sort of courage and initiative: the power to make good things happen. Today we equate virtue with chastity—an important facet of moral excellence, but one defined by what you won’t do, not by what you will do or can do. Modern dictionaries list “manly courage” as an obsolete definition of virtue. It’s my hope to help restore the old definition to its rightful place."

"I like to call The Wilderking a fantasy-adventure story told in an American accent. The great fantasy stories in our tradition tend to look and feel British or European. You read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and there’s no doubt an Englishman wrote it. Or think about Tolkien’s orcs with their Cockney accents. I thought it would be fun to write a knights-and-castles fantasy story set in an imaginary world that feels a little more like the world on this side of the ocean."

"In part it was a practical decision. From the start I knew that even though the setting of The Wilderking would be imaginary, the story would be very rooted in the natural world. And the natural environments I know best are the woods and rivers and swamps of the southern half of Georgia. About the time I first conceived of The Wilderking, I was reading the naturalist William Bartram’s account of his trip up the Altamaha River in south Georgia. This was in the eighteenth century, when the river was still in its primeval state. And the scene Bartram described couldn’t have been more wild or exotic if it had been the Congo itself. I knew then what the world of the Wilderking would look like."

"There’s been a re-awakening of interest in healthy boyhood in the last few years. Books like Wild at Heart and Bringing Up Boys remind us that to raise a God-fearing boy is not to domesticate him, but rather to harness and direct his sense of adventure, his warrior spirit—his God-given wildness. But parents who are inspired by these books still face the challenge of finding books that will inspire their boys. The Wilderking grows out of my desire to write that kind of book."