[5] Sanders started his literary career in 1973 by writing books and magazine columns focused on sports and outdoor subjects.
[4] Among his later speculative novels are Journey to Fusang (1988), The Wild Blue and the Gray (1991) and The Ballad of Billy Badass & the Rose of Turkestan (1999).
[9] His most-anthologized and perhaps best known work is "The Undiscovered", an alternate history in which Shakespeare is transported to Virginia and writes "Hamlet" for the Cherokee tribe.
[10] A stickler for detail and accuracy, Sanders studied history, which led to the publication in 2003 of Conquest: Hernando de Soto and the Indians, 1539-1543, a book begun some two decades earlier and researched by travelling extensively in the southeastern quarter of the US, by motorcycle and small boat and on foot, retracing de Soto's probable routes.
[15] In 2008, Sanders wrote a rejection letter in which he called Muslims "sheet heads", "worm brained" and "incapable of honesty."
[16] However, the controversy ultimately resulted in several authors asking to pull their stories from the Helix archives after they found out Sanders had offered that option to N.K.