Otherworld said:

 I offer the observation that Gryka is a captivating figure, with the potential to become a feminist icon.  That said, I would ask you why you wrote The Gnoll Credo.  What was your inspiration?   Is it Gryka's story, is it a message about the superiority of paleo culture, or something else?
 

The Gnoll Credo is Gryka's book: I just wrote it down.

She is absolutely real, and I'm the only one who knows her story.  I had to tell it as best I could, so that others could know at least a small part of the joy, pain, and wonder I felt—and the knowledge I gained—from knowing her.

I absolutely did not set out to write a book with an agenda—political, social, or otherwise. I simply wrote Gryka's story as best I could. She is fierce, joyous, hilariously blunt, absolutely compelling, and I'm very sad that she's gone. I still miss her.

The Epilogue is where I try to come to terms with what I learned from
her. The book summarizes it best (and it's much better to hear Gryka tell it), but I'll try to touch on some important points:

Gnolls aren't human...but they're much closer to human than we modern "civilized" people are today.  Our nature is defined by the millions of years we spent living in small, migratory packs and hunting down large animals with rocks tied to sticks—not by a few thousand years of plowing land, or by sixty years of driving cars to and from offices. 

And while agriculture was a necessary intermediate step to our future—because it pushed us to develop technology beyond the atlatl and dart and the bow and arrow—it is clear that hunting and gathering ("foraging") lasted us for several million years, whereas agriculture and extractive technology is about to destroy the Earth's ability to support us in perhaps ten thousand years. 

Most importantly, all our material wealth and awesome toys are not making us any happier than before...because humans have been shaped by our ability to make tools, work together, and hunt large animals, not our ability to write TPS reports or dig irrigation ditches.  Hunting is literally what made us human, instead of little 90-pound savanna apes with tiny brains.

No, we cannot "come home to the Pleistocene," no matter what Paul Shepard says: but our way forward as a species must involve acknowledging, celebrating, and most importantly, living our true nature as hunters and foragers. Otherwise we will continue on our current path, which leads in the short term to unhappiness, poverty, and slavery, and in the long term to our own death as a species.

udjibbom:

Most fiction provides the reader a safe harbor from which to view its narrative, providing distance from uncomfortably direct observations or awkward truths.  It is acceptable, even "transgressive" or "edgy", to write absolutely anything, no matter how violent or disgusting -- so long as the reader is allowed to compartmentalize it as "literary expression".  In other words, dangerous predators are acceptable, and even sexy, so long as they remain safely enclosed in the zoo, on the other side of the fence.

I have no interest in playing that game.  One moment of authentic, lived experience is worth an infinite number of manufactured spectacles.  You will have to decide for yourself how real Gryka is.