Deborah J. Ross

Deborah Waves Hi From The Nebula Weekend

2013-05-18T08:47:00.000-07:00

The 2013 Nebula Awards Weekend began rather spectacularly for me with a panel (typically, if you get to be on a panel at all at the Nebs, it's only one -- and it's a big deal, at least for me, because the audience is professional writers). My panel was Writing in Someone Else's Universe: What are the rules? How can you push the boundaries?

My co-panelists were (takes a deep breath) Robert Silverberg, John Scalzi, Terry Bisson, and William C. Dietz. The discussion was amazing, ranging from writing in established universes (whether literary, film, or games) to shared-worlds that are created by a group of authors to collaborations to fanfic. Silverberg shared about working with Randall Garrett in the days of John Campbell's Astounding magazine, when he (Silverberg) was a "youngster" and still a student, and with Asimov at the very end of Asimov's life. Dietz writes not only his original fiction but video game tie-ins; he talked about what it's like working with a committee of mostly very avid but very young game designers. We veered into a discussion of copyright with John Scalzi's adventure in a modern take on H. Beam Piper's Fuzzy stories (the first of which is in the public domain, but he asked for the approval of Piper's estate anyway). Terry Bisson has done an amazing range of writing, including novelizations (as opposed to tie-ins, which he has also written). One of the points that emerged over and over was the importance of your own creative vision, that some writers have the temperament and ability to Play Nicely according to a pre-set list of rules, but others will take the rules as a challenge and "do their own thing." Silverberg said that for a shared-world or sequential anthology, he preferred to write either the first story (the set-up) or the last (the wrap-up). And I held forth with my usual brilliance about both my Star Wars story and my Darkover collaborations. A great time was had by all.

After that, I entered decompression mode for lunch, attended a panel on What Happens to Your Novel After You Turn It In? which could have been about book production but kept veering into what the author can do for publicity, as several of the panelists had major chops in this area. The cool thing, for me anyway, was that this was not the "Publicity 101 For Beginners" but a serious discussion of changing role of publishers/distributors/wholesalers.

The evening's event was a mass autographing. Authors Of Note were assigned strategically-placed spots and the rest of us set up our tent cards anywhere we liked. So I hobnobbed with friends and was pleasantly surprised when a number of people brought books for me to sign. Signings, like readings, are impossible to predict. I see both as "paying my publicity dues" and a chance to meet my readers. Or reader. And in this case to also cheer the long lines for the better-known authors -- the fans waiting so patiently are buying books! and reading them!

And surely that's a good thing for everyone.

Needless to say, if you ever have a chance to attend SFWA's Nebula Awards Weekend, grab it. You don't have to be a member to attend (you just can't attend the SFWA Business Meeting, but the panels and awards ceremony are open to registered peeps).

Where's Deborah?

2013-05-14T09:09:00.002-07:00

I haven't dropped off the face of the Earth, despite the long absences. I've been wrestling with some physical problems that severely limit my computer time, and here's how I've been spending that limited time:

Getting ready for the launch of Collaborators (as Deborah Wheeler) from Dragon Moon Press, including a series of blog posts about world-building and creating a gender fluid race. I'll post a link once it's available, along with snippets.

Editorial revisions for Shannivar, the second book in The Seven-Petaled Shield trilogy. The first one, by that name, is coming out next month. You can pre-order the first one here.

Description: Eons ago, a great king used a magical device—the Seven-Petaled Shield—to defeat the forces of primal chaos, but now few remember that secret knowledge. When an ambitious emperor conquers the city that safeguards the Shield, the newly-widowed young Queen, guardian of the heart-stone of the Shield, flees for her life, along with her adolescent son. And much adventure ensues...

Putting together a collection of short stories, Azkhantian Tales, which will be released from Book View Cafe June 11. These stories, originally published in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword & Sorceress formed the foundation for the world of The Seven-Petaled Shield and its cultures. There's a new Introduction about the process of exploring that world, as well as a sneak peek at The Seven-Petaled Shield.

Putting together a proposal for my agent to do magical things with. News will follow when I have it.

Working on editing 2 anthologies. News will follow as release dates approach.

GUEST BLOG: Steven Harper on Havoc In The Family

2013-05-10T01:00:00.000-07:00

Can you keep a secret? I totally based one of the characters from THE HAVOC MACHINE on a real person. Truth!

They tell you at Author School never to do that. It results in hurt feelings or even lawsuits. Kathryn Stockett, author of THE HELP, was embroiled in a legal battle over this very issue, in fact. But me--I'll get away with it.

The character in question is Nikolai, a boy of about nine years, and the person he's based on is my son Maksim.

I first met Maksim at an orphanage in Ukraine nearly nine years ago. He was three, but looked two. My wife and I talked to him and played with him every day for two weeks, and he always cried silently when it was time for us to leave. That soundless weeping was a dagger in my heart every time. One of the greatest joys of my life was when we told him he was saying good-bye to everyone else and coming home with us.

Maksim did everything firmly. When you asked him a yes-no question, he nodded his head once, firmly, or shook his head once, firmly. He ran firmly. He pointed firmly. When he learned enough English to make himself understood, he had firm ideas about what a family should be like, and he voiced them firmly.

"We need to do a family activity," he would say. "We have to go to the park." Or, "A papa is supposed to show his son how to ride a bike," or "Brothers are supposed to help each other."

Maksim wrapped me around all ten of his fingers. I would do anything he said, and the slightest hint

In some ways, being a father to Maksim was easy--he was perfectly willing to tell me exactly what he needed and when. On the other hand, the ferocious attachment between us complicated a number of things. Sometimes a parent has to say no, and a child does have to learn independence.

Maksim has handed me a number of surprises over the years, and I don't mean the "Guess what I found in the woods, I have it in this box" sort of surprise. Like many orphanage children, he turned out to have a penchant for hoarding--including a stash of ice cream sandwiches in his toy box. He was violently afraid of thunderstorms and of bathing, but swam through deep water like an eel and learned to ride a bike in ten minutes. He recognized the McDonald's sign but hated french fries. He struggled with math for years, then suddenly tore through it like Einstein.

One of the main themes from THE HAVOC MACHINE is father-son relationships, and how such relationships never quite turn out the way you expect. Thad, the protagonist, doesn't want to be a father, but the boy Nikolai forces him into it. Even before I started writing about him, I knew that Nikolai would be quite a lot like Maksim and his relationship with Thad would be firm and filled with surprises. And I knew that as the book progressed, Thad would be forced to confront what it means to be a father, whether he wanted to or not.

And Nikolai tells him what it means to be a father. Firmly.

Maksim, now eleven, has so far shown no interest in reading my books. I'm wondering if, one day, he'll pick up THE HAVOC MACHINE and say, "Wait . . . " Or if I'll hear from his lawyer.

Don't tell him yet.

THE HAVOC MACHINE, by Steven Harper, is the fourth novel in the Clockwork Empire series.

In a world riddled with the destruction of men and machines alike, Thaddeus Sharpe takes to the streets of St. Petersburg, geared toward the hunt of his life….

Thaddeus Sharpe’s life is dedicated to the hunting and killing of clockworkers. When a mysterious young woman named Sofiya Ekk approaches him with a proposition from a powerful employer, he cannot refuse. A man who calls himself Mr. Griffin seeks Thad’s help with mad clockwork scientist Lord Havoc, who has molded a dangerous machine. Mr. Griffin cares little if the evil Lord lives or dies; all he desires is Havoc’s invention.

Upon Thad’s arrival at Havoc’s laboratory, he is met with a chilling discovery. Havoc is not only concealing his precious machine; he has been using a young child by the name of Nikolai for cruel experiments. Locked into a clockwork web of intrigue, Thad must decipher the dangerous truth surrounding Nikolai and the chaos contraption before havoc reigns….

of tears sent me back to those days in the orphanage and turned me into a helpless blob of protoplasm. It was hell keeping this fact from him.

Northlight: Evolving a Novel

2013-05-02T01:00:00.000-07:00

After I submitted Jaydium, which was to become my first published novel, I began work right away on my next project. Or rather, I took a look at all the ideas and characters which were screaming inside my skull to be made into stories and tried to decide which one would cause me the most anguish if I didn't work on it first. High on my list was to rewrite the last novel I'd written before Jaydium. It had received careful attention, not to mention three single-spaced pages of critical feedback, from the editor who would later buy Jaydium.

I felt that if an editor had taken that much time and trouble with the book, there was something of value, something that perhaps I was now a good enough writer to bring out fully.

The book's working title was Weiremaster, and it was based on the world of my very first professional short story, "Imperatrix", which appeared in the debut Sword & Sorceress anthology. Weires are bipedal ape-like creatures, seven-feet tall, fanged, silver-furred, immensely powerful and receptively telepathic. In the world of "Imperatrix," they obey people of imperial blood. For the purposes of that short story, no further explanation was needed.

Now, years later, my world-building had matured. I wanted to know how these creatures had come into a human world, how the control worked, and how the dynastic characteristic had been established. I concocted an adventure which would lead my hero into the world of the Weires and back home again, changed. He would carry me -- and the reader -- along with him, a classical hero-quest.

I began the story as Terricel, a young scholar, received word that the democratically elected ruler of his city had been killed -- shades, no doubt, of my own memories of the Kennedy assassination. "Imperatrix" had portrayed a worthy monarchy, with heavy overtones of The Divine Right of Kings. Now I shifted in my world view to a populist leader. After all kinds of political turmoil, a second main character appeared -- Kardith, a Border Ranger, looking for help in searching for her missing partner, Terricel's sister. And so the action began.

When I sat down to actually write the new version, I realized that the assassination had to happen on the page or not at all. It was simply too pivotal an event to tell second-hand. And twist them as I might, I couldn't seem to make the politics of the city anything but deadly boring. I wrote and rewrote the first 150 pages four or five times, until I was heartily sick of them. And they were still boring. The shift toward democracy had been right in tone but wrong in emphasis. This wasn't in essence a political story.

Then I asked myself, When does the story get interesting? I realized that everything up to the entrance of Kardith was preparatory. She came barging into the city -- and Terricel's staid scholarly life -- and set off the chain of events that made up the backbone of the story. Okay, I said to myself, let's chuck the preliminaries and get right to the good stuff. But what about the assassination, which plays a pivotal role in shaping future events? I moved the assassination in time to shortly after Kardith arrived in the city. And as I wrote about these events, something strange and wonderful happened.

Kardith herself started talking to me.

I'd known she was brazen, obstinate, darkly humorous, an accomplished knife fighter. But as her voice came clearer, I realized that she was telling me a much more powerful and moving story than I ever envisioned. Her courage and the abiding pain of her past ran like a counterpoint through the dramatic action.

You can't turn a story over to someone like Kardith and expect it to come out unchanged. By the time Kardith was done with it, there were no more Imperials and no more Weires. There was, instead, a far different world to be explored, and very human lessons to be learned.

One of the interesting questions that comes up is how much of the author is in the character. This was particularly relevant since Kardith is a knife fighter, and I used techniques from my style of kung fu (san soo, as taught by Jimmy H. Woo) in describing her fighting style. I'd never written a character who was so vivid and yet so different from me. But I never felt that Kardith was me; rather, she was someone I had something in common with. I think a writer needs the sensitivity and imagination to have empathy for the character she creates; there must be some bridge, some understanding, but the character must not be limited to the writer's own experience and taste. It was only logical that a character as colorful and determined as Kardith would shape the story in a new direction.

But the direction was not hers alone. She'd brought along Terricel and had given him a new name, Terris. In the original version, Terricel was a cipher, a place holder whose function was to take the reader along on the adventure. After Kardith was through telling her tale, I was left with a wimpy, Terricel-sized hole in the story.

Terris turned out to be a more complex character than I'd dreamed, just as full of surprises as Kardith was, and more difficult to get a hold on. For one thing, Kardith's focus was intensely personal and emotional, whereas Terris had the ability to see a larger picture, to dream larger dreams. His gifts were those of empathy and imagination. He took Kardith -- and me -- clear across the wilderness to places and times I hadn't imagined existed.

If Kardith was the story's heart, Terris now became its soul. With the two of them as anchors, I could now explore the political aspect of the story without turning it into a recitation of dreary details. The book acquired a new title, Northlight, which then became a metaphor for transformation. But the center of the story remained with these two characters, their dreams and passions, the web of their lives. In order to find that center, I had to be willing to let go of my preconceptions of what the story "was supposed to be" in order to discover what it could become.

Afterword: In the process of bringing out a digital version of Northlight, I refocused the cover image. Judith Tarr was kind enough to allow me the use one of her splendid horses for Karrdith's gray mare.

The Feathered Edge: Ghosts in a Garden, and a Farewell

2013-04-30T01:00:00.000-07:00

I've been wondering how I can write about K. D. Wentworth's marvelous, touching story, "The Garden of Swords." I put off this essay until the last, and you'll see why. In the story, a young scullery maid finds solace in the castle garden, in which the slain opponents of the power-mad baron are buried. This is a magical garden, and the ghosts of those swordsmen (and swordswoman!) become the girl's friends, confidantes, teachers, and on occasion her protectors. When I read it over, I feel as if Kathy's ghost is there, too, welcoming us all into her special realm of enchantment and friendship.

I met K. D. Wentworth back in the days when GEnie was a vibrant and interconnected community. I don't know how well the site worked for others, but we sf/f writers took to the bulletin board topics like ducks to supernovae. The various round tables were like rooms in an ongoing convention, with some silly chat and some serious conversations. Professional relationships formed and deepened, and many beginning writers found support and encouragement there. Alas, GEnie with its text-only format went the way of the dinosaur as the clocks ticked over into 2000, but many of the friendships are still going strong.

We met in person a few times, although I did not frequently travel outside the West Coast and she hailed from Oklahoma. I found her as charming and thoughtful in person as online. A number of her short fiction pieces were Nebula Award finalists (the novelette, "Kaleidoscope" 2008, and "Burning Bright" 1997, "Tall One" 1998, and "Born Again" 2005) have been Nebula award finalists. I knew she was one of the writers I wanted for The Feathered Edge.

True to her high professional standards, she sent me a story that is extraordinary. In clear prose and straightforward narrative, she managed to reach into my heart. "In the Garden of Swords" fits loosely within the theme of elegant romantic fantasy, a ghost-story-with-a-twist, sword and sorcery, but it is also a story of how love and kindness, strength and truth, transcend death. Whenever I re-read it, I hear Kathy's literary voice still spinning out tales of wonder and hope.

Kathy died in April 2012. I had no idea she was so ill. We weren't close, except in the sense that all writers who love fantasy and whose professional paths cross are close.

Wherever you are, Kathy, thank you for your marvelous stories. The world is richer for having had you in it.

The Feathered Edge: An Outlander Takes on Masks and Feathers

2013-04-23T01:00:00.000-07:00

Writers form communities in various ways, and I think there is no finer, more supportive or interwoven community than people who read and write fantasy and science fiction. Sometimes it feels as if there really are only about 300 of us, and we mill around, meeting one another through yet another different connection. Just as I wouldn't have met Rosemary Hawley Jarman except through Tanith Lee, who I had met through Norilana's publisher, I wouldn't have had the joy of editing Samantha Henderson's "Outlander" if I had not been friends and colleagues with Sheila Finch (whose "Fortune's Stepchild" also appears in The Feathered Edge).

Samantha was such a discovery that I searched out her other work. It came as no surprise that's she's also a poet and winner of the Rhysling Award, or that her fiction spans a spectrum from hilarious to very strange-and-dark, with a little steampunk thrown in, too. As one whose own poetry efforts are best forgotten, I'm a bit in awe of writers who can do this well, and even more so when they, like Samantha, are adept at prose stories as well.

"Outlander" has many of the superficial trappings we've seen before, in the adventures of a man from the "sticks" who is seen by members of a caste-bound aristocracy as uncouth and dull-witted, although physically strong. We expect to find him in the dueling arena instead of the drawing room, and so we do, but not for the reasons we -- and the narrator -- assume. The story is told from the point of view of a member of the nobility who, while unable to see beyond his own prejudices, provides a transparent window for the reader's experience. Throughout the story, from the very first sentence, runs a vein of wit, not to mention keen social commentary. The result is a delightful mixture of humor and romance, with a twist at the end.

And I'm not saying any more about it, lest I spoil the surprise.

You can listen to this marvelous story on Podcastle.

Music and grief

2013-04-22T13:44:00.001-07:00

Our elderly and Highly Opinionated tortoiseshell cat, Cleopatra, died Saturday morning. She's made it to her 20th birthday last month, which astonished us all. Privately, I think she wasn't about to let the dog outlast her. (Oka, our wonderful German Shepherd Dog, died on Wednesday.)

It's a bit much to take in, the loss of two pets within a week. We're keeping an eye on the black cat who was Oka's buddy. He wanders around the house, clearly looking for Oka. (He still has a cat friend, one-eyed lady pirate Gayatri.)

I've been studying piano as an adult for about 7 or 8 years now. I play mostly classical, but add in fun stuff, too, like music from The Lord of the Rings. Earlier this spring, I began working on "Into the West." It's an easy setting, and it's flowing nicely, although in a key I can't sing. That's okay. Since Oka died, I've played it with tears streaming down my face. "All dogs pass...into the west." The music brings up grief in a way words can't. A healing way, a gentle way that lets me go as deep as is right for me at the moment. It's not the same as listening to music because I'm inside of it, I'm creating it right now in this moment and no two performances are ever the same. It reminds me poignantly of how pets live in the "now."

Today's practice was a little different. One of my serious pieces is the 3rd Gymnopedie by Satie. The tempo is Lento e grave. I slowed it a bit, focusing on the full tone of each chord, and realized I was playing it for both animals. The right hand melody soars above the funeral bass rhythm in that aeolian mode. Sweet and sad and profoundly honoring the memory of these friends-in-fur.

Space Opera Fridays Revisits: Is Darkover Space Opera?

2013-04-19T01:00:00.000-07:00

This post from a couple of years ago still gets viewers, so in case you missed it, I'm giving it another day of blog-glory. With the recent publication of The Children of Kings, which takes place entirely on Darkover, but does involve things going 'splody in space, it seems appropriate.

My husband, sf writer Dave Trowbridge, and I were discussing the appeal of space opera at breakfast, what it is and why it appeals. Basically, space opera is a type of science fiction set on a large scale, highly dramatic and sometimes melodramatic. It tends to have military elements -- huge battles upon which hinge the fate of galactic empires, that sort of thing. Although wikipedia says it has nothing to do with the musical form, I think that reflects their own ignorance. What space opera and musical opera have in common is being larger than life, or rather brighter and more intense than life. Opera was, after all, the epitome high-tech special-effects knock-your-socks-off entertainment for centuries. Music, lyrics, sets, and costumes, not to mention trap doors and wire harnesses, exotic animals and fireworks, all enhanced one another. But that's another topic.

We agreed that we love the grand scope of such tales, but that it needs to be balanced by emotionally intimate moments. The same is true, for me at least, in epic fantasy. Monstrous dark forces are threatening the entire world, volcanoes exploding by the thousands, rivers of fire and poison...and then a detail in the characters that's so human, it touches my heart, not just my things-go-boom adrenalin endorphins.

Which brings me to Darkover.
Technically, the series is science fiction, and if you read the very early books, this is more clear. As Marion developed the world and explored its history, fewer of the stories actually involved events in space and the clash of cultures, and more were focused on conflict within the Seven Domains. For me, that iconic first experience remains, "Character comes to Darkover and discovers...adventure, danger... himself and his past," and I discover these things along with him.

Somewhere along the line, the romantic sensibilities of the early Darkover novels took on the feeling of fantasy. After all, people were riding horses and thwacking each other with swords. Laran took on the aspect of semi-magic, even the terminology ("spells"). But there is something grand and opera-like about many of the stories. Think of Stormqueen! or The Heritage of Hastur, landscapes rent with supernaturally-charged storms, space ships bursting into flame, mental powers concentrated in crystals and then bursting out, wild and uncontrolled...characters faced with terrible choices and even more painful sacrifices. One of the joys of working with Marion on the "Clingfire" trilogy was creating a big, overarching story that spanned generations and came to a resounding climax with the adoption of the Compact. Verdi would have adored it. Not to mention Mozart! (I can't help wondering what the man who composed The Magic Flute would have done with Darkover.)

Marion was a life-long opera enthusiast.As a young woman, she'd wanted to be an opera singer, and she never lost her love of it. One of my favorite memories of her was going together to hear Puccini's Manon Lescaut at the San Francisco Opera. I wonder how much of that love of opera -- music, words, color and movement coming together to make a whole greater than the parts -- helped shape the world of the Bloody Sun.

Darkover may be only one planet, and hence the term "space" may be subject to question, but is it space opera? What do you think?

Good night, sweet boy

2013-04-18T17:26:00.001-07:00

Most of my blogs are about writing and writers, my projects and those of others. But I want to step aside from that and share a very special life and passing. For those of us who are dog people, the short years we share with a canine companion enrich our lives immeasurably. Our sweet, brave German Shepherd Dog, Oka, died peacefully yesterday. He was 12 1/2, quite old for that breed, had had been battling lymphoma and degenerative myelopathy. We'd hoped to have him for a little while longer, but he developed leukemia, lost the ability to walk, and most likely had an embolism and a stroke. The vet came out to our house and he slipped away with "his people" holding him and talking to him. Also, "his cats" - all 3 gathered around, especially Oka's "best buddy," who cuddled up next to him when it was all over.

Here are a few images to share with you:

Oka at 8 weeks. The green coloring in his right ear is the Schaferhundverein breed tattoo, certifying that he really is a German Shepherd Dog (i.e. both his parents were Schutzhund titled; in fact, his father was the Weltsieger: the world champion).

Attempting to wrestle the cat toy into submission.

About 1 year old, hiking in our area. He would have made a super search-and-rescue dog, he was so focused on scent. You can see how he's "tracking" naturally.

About 2, getting his basic obedience title. You can see the bond between Dave and Oka."What next, Dad? What do we get to play next?"

Herding his hard rubber horse ball. He would do this for hours, bringing the ball back so we could roll it away for him and barking at it to let it know who was boss. We tend to forget that German Shepherd Dogs are indeed sheepherding dogs. This is his spherical "sheep."

I think he's 3 or 4 in this picture. This is how I'll remember him, a loyal, loving friend, steady in temperament and eager to do anything we asked of him.

The Feathered Edge Ventures into an Algerian Brothel

2013-04-16T01:00:00.000-07:00

As I've discussed in earlier posts, one of the joys of editing is getting an inside view of another writer's creative process. Sometimes this comes in the reading process, but more likely it happens during the editorial discussions with their give-and-take. Often a good editor can pinpoint places where what is on the page does not fully or accurately convey the writer's intention. We then become conspirators whose goal is to make the story the best incarnation of that authorial vision. When I began editing, I had no idea that I'd also get to witness yet another joy of short fiction -- the inception and development of a series of related stories that trace not only the adventures but the emotional development of a character.

The first anthology I edited was Lace and Blade (Norilana Books, 2008), and I asked Diana L. Paxson, who I'd known about as long as I'd known Marion, to send me a story. The premise of the anthology was elegant, sensual sword and sorcery of the "Scarlet Pimpernel With Magic" or Alfred Noyse's poem, "The Highwayman," variety. Diana gave me a dashing young hero, Baron Claude DeLorme, newly come into his title, and promptly took a right angle turn from the expected European-centered fantasy by sending him off to Brazil to claim an emerald mine as his inheritance. The magic that imbues "The Crossroads" is anything but conventional, but this adventure was only the beginning. If "The Crossroads" taught Claude about Brazilian/African magic, then his next story (in Lace and Blade 2) brought him back to Paris to face a very different sort of supernatural evil in "The Crow." One of the things that most appealed to me in this second story is how, although it stands perfectly well on its own, it's a true, developmental continuation of the previous story. The Claude DeLorme who arrived in Brazil is not the same man battling an occult cabal in Paris...and not the same man who arrives in Algiers.

"Blue Velvet" is not an easy read, for Claude's adversary is a sadistic, equal-opportunity-rapist slave-master, and Diana doesn't pull any punches. As in the previous stories, Claude finds himself in danger that is both physical and magical. But he is not without resources -- his innate compassion, the loyalty he shares with his friends, and his hard-won understanding of the supernatural. At the end, Diana suggests that Claude might next be off to West Africa. I hope she has the chance to write that story -- and that I have the chance to edit it!

Space Opera Fridays: Dave Trowbridge on Space Opera and the Siege of Vienna

2013-04-12T01:00:00.000-07:00

Space Opera and the Siege of Vienna: the Archetypal Perspective

In their 2003 article How Shit Became Shinola: Definition and Redefinition of Space Opera, David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer defined modern space opera as “colorful, dramatic, large scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character, and plot action … and usually set in the relatively distant future and in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone.”

It would be hard to improve on that definition using words (although I could write an entire blog post concerning the exceptions that prove the rule—and maybe I will one of these days), but I can show you what I go to space opera for with a single image.

That’s the Alexanderschlacht (The Battle of Alexander at Issus) by Albrecht Altdorfer, which was commissioned in 1528 by William IV, Duke of Bavaria. Altdorfer’s conception of the painting was almost certainly heavily influenced by the defeat of the Suleiman the Magnificent at the Seige of Vienna the next year, and his execution of the commission epitomizes what I look for in space opera, and what Sherwood Smith and I tried to do in our space opera Exordium, which is being reissued in a revised edition by Book View Café.

Alexanderschlacht portrays the victory of Alexander over Darius III in a battle that was the beginning of the end for the Persian Empire, which fell in 330 BCE with the death of Darius and Alexander’s assumption of his title as king, assuring the Hellenization of the Near East. The work’s composition is thought to echo the four-kingdom eschatology of the Book of Daniel—Babylon (note the distant Tower of Babylon at the left side of the painting, under the crescent moon), Persia, Greece, and Rome), with Alexander’s victory representing the triumph of Greece over Persia, and echoing the hope that the relief of Vienna represented the triumph of Christendom (i.e., Rome) over Islam.

The description of the painting in Wikipedia starts by noting the “impossible viewpoint” of the painting, but that’s precisely what the Alexanderschlacht shares with space opera, and why it can serve as the picture-worth-a-thousand-words definition of the genre. Rather than “impossible viewpoint,” I’d call it the “archetypal perspective:” a close-up and even intimate view of heroic characters against a highly-detailed yet sweeping background meant to illustrate the fundamental struggle between good and evil, light and darkness. That’s what I go to space opera for.
Look at how Altdorfer laid out the action: the incredibly-detailed foreground that highlights the two antagonists: Alexander sweeping in from the West (out of the Sun) at the head of his Companions, pursuing his defeated enemy Darius on his chariot fleeing to the East (towards the Moon), all surrounded by a swirl of cavalry and foot soldiers. All this is portrayed in a physically impossible perspective that rises up past the chaos of battle to portray the Mediterranean Sea, Cyprus, the Nile, the Red Sea, and eventually encompasses three continents (Europe, Asia, and Africa) and reveals the curvature of the earth at the horizon, with an apocalyptic sky dominating the whole. (And if you tilted the suspended description panel at the top of the painting back away from the viewer…Star Wars, anyone?)

The painting is dense with symbolism and detail, ranging from unrealistic ones like ladies in court dress at the edge of the battle, to highly-archetypal ones like the Sun and crescent Moon. It’s a visual feast that invites zooming in and out, one that you can return to again and again, gaining something new each time, just like re-reading a big, chewy space opera (or epic fantasy, for that matter: check out my co-writer Sherwood Smith’s blog post on that subject). And really, one need only change a few details in the painting, add some spaceships, substitute blasters for lances, pull back a little farther so the Earth is just one planet in an even bigger panorama, and, voila: space opera.

Basically, I think space opera, like epic fantasy, is simply the way most people see the world on any scale, from the personal to the grand sweep of history: as a story with a goal, a story where every pattern, every detail, points to deeper meaning. The dark side of this perspective is conspiracy theory; the light side, great art.

What do you think?

One World, Many Stories

2013-04-11T01:00:00.000-07:00

From time to time, I take my pile of newly-read books and post reviews. As I sat down recently to do this, I realized that not a single one of them was a true stand-alone. They were either the first book at led to others set in the same world (Kage Baker’s The Garden of Iden, her debut novel and also the first “Company” novel; Garth Nix’s Sabriel, the first book of the “Abhorsen” trilogy); or they were middle books in a series (Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe’s Prey and Sherwood Smith’s Blood Spirits). The Baker and the Nix novels differ in that Baker’s story is complete in itself. No previous knowledge of this world is necessary and the reader is left in a place of rest. Sabriel, on the other hand, clearly is part of a defined trilogy – one long story arc, with only a partial resolution at the end.

The Cornwell is clearly part of an ongoing series that follows one primary character through a certain historical time period, with occasional minor characters, both allies and villains. It is interesting because Cornwell’s first “Sharpe” book began in the middle of the hero’s career. After writing a number of novels, he returned to an earlier time and also “between times,” novels interpolated between previously-published episodes. Each book centers on a battle or other specific, time-limited military event in the Napoleonic Wars and adjacent time periods, and although it is enjoyable to meet old “friends,” there is little sense of development in plot or tension from one story to the next. True, the central character matures with experience, but his personal arc is not the driving force of the novels. The escalating tension, climax, and outcome of each battle provide the structure for the plot.

Smith’s Blood Spirits is the middle book of a three-book series (Coronets and Steel; Blood Spirits; Revenant Eve). The “Dobrenica” books are not a true trilogy, nor are they a sequence of independent episodes. Enough information is provided so that it is not absolutely necessary to read the books in order, but it is definitely better to do so. There is a degree of continuing momentum from one book to the next, so the books have less of an episodic nature than do the Cornwell novels.

I’ve been thinking about the whole issue of book “series” because for the last dozen years I have been continuing the “Darkover” series, created by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Especially in the early years, Marion insisted that each book had to stand on its own and that they could be read in any order. I think that’s a laudable goal, and for the most part, the early and middle Darkover books achieved it. Eventually, she began writing books that, while they may not have been part of a single overall story line, were most definitely sequels. Readers may argue with me, but I think that novels such as Thendara House and City of Sorcery fare less well if they are not considered as an extended story line begun with The Shattered Chain. To a lesser extent, Sharra’s Exile (which was itself a rewrite of The Sword of Aldones, a very early Darkover novel) is a sequel to The Heritage of Hastur.

The first project I worked on (with Marion, in the last year of her life) was conceived as a trilogy (“Clingfire”), in that we wanted to relate a very large story, how the Comyn came to adopt the Compact, which forbade the use of distance weapons, whether physical or psychic. As it turned out the first and second volumes (The Fall of Neskaya and Zandru’s Forge) were separated by a generation as we set up the political background, the alliances and feuds that would come together in a catastrophic battle in the final book. This had the effect of beginning the second book with a mostly-new set of characters, giving the trilogy two beginnings and the first book the character of a stand-alone.

In writing the next two books (The Alton Gift, Hastur Lord), I struggled with the demands of placing each story historically between already-published works and the ideal goal of making it entire in itself. Hastur Lord was based around a manuscript Marion had written when she was very ill, so the time placement and central plot were her conception; it’s one of those “here’s what happened between Book A and Book B” stories. The appeal of such stories is that established readers who love the world and its characters are happy with “fill in the blanks” stories, but the drawback is that both beginning and end points are fixed. Marion had concocted a few surprises to counteract the resulting predictability, but even so, I appreciated the challenge Cornwell faced in going “backward in time” in the life of Richard Sharpe because we already know Sharpe is going to not only survive, but rise through the ranks.

For the most recent Darkover book, The Children of Kings, I made a concerted effort to create a stand-alone novel, one that would be a friendly welcome to new readers unfamiliar with the world, without disappointing long-time fans who look forward to playing with their favorite characters. In this, I was returning to Marion’s initial vision of the Darkover series – unrelated or minimally-dependent novels that draw on the same world-building and sources of conflict. I used characters who were either original or played very minor roles in previous novels, and sent them on a journey to areas of the planet that Marion had touched upon only lightly. The generalized tension that permeated the early Darkover novels – the clash between cultures – is not resolved, and indeed is not resolvable, but this specific set of circumstances and the resulting crisis is. The reader does not have to have read any previous Darkover novels to understand what is going on, who these people are and what their values are, and hopefully if readers are screaming for more, it’s because they love the world, not because they want to know how the story ends.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with Margaret Chang, who collaborates with Harry Campion as M. H. Mead. They write computer/virtual-reality based science fiction and call their collective work a set rather than a series. Each story takes place in the same world in approximately the same time period, and is complete in itself. Minor characters from one story may appear in the next, and in terms of time-line, there are occasional references to events, but in the way any background or history might be included.

This summer, the first volume of my original fantasy trilogy, The Seven-Petaled Shield, will be released by DAW. It is a true trilogy, one long story arc with incomplete resolution at the end of the first two books. Fortunately, DAW is committed to bringing out the subsequent volumes at fairly short intervals so I will not be obliged to hire bodyguards to protect me from frustrated readers, demanding to know how I could make them wait to find out what happens next. The trilogy is itself based on a series of short stories that I wrote for the Sword & Sorceress anthologies. I’d begun with a tale based in the conflict between the Romans and the Scythians, each culture with its own magic, and the more I wrote, the larger the landscape and its possibilities became. I’ll be bringing these four short stories together in a collection, Azkhantian Tales, in June from Book View Café.

Which brings me to the point of writing a series, or sequels, or a “set” of stories. Sometimes when we create a world, whether it is for a novel or a shorter piece, we realize how much of it exists “off the page” and we come to love it so much we want to go explore. Or to stay in the same location or time period and delve more deeply into it. Or simply to run away to our favorite imaginary place with our favorite characters. These multi-novel variations allow us to do that, to create related stories, to use and build upon our vision of a world. Incidentally, I have been known to bribe secondary characters who are threatening to run away with the plot with their own stories. Knowing that I can “spin off” such tales helps me to focus on this story, to keep plot and subplot from burgeoning into a shapeless and planet-consuming proteus. Sometimes I find that secondary characters or places mentioned only in passing turn out to be more interesting, more complex and ambivalent, dark and transcendent, than my original conceptions.

The pitfall of writing a series (etc.) when a writer is still new and learning craft is that working in an established world means we don’t create new ones, and world-building is a skill that improves with practice. If your first story is the only one you ever want to write, that’s less of a problem than if you are like me and your head is filled with a spectrum of story ideas, each screaming to be told. In that case, I think you do yourself a disservice in committing years of your formative literary life to one vision, instead of pushing to make each new world more complex and fascinating. One of the benefits of writing short fiction is the relatively small time investment in each story, as compared to working at novel length. Mistakes cost a far smaller fraction of your overall career, and each story is an opportunity to start fresh, aim higher, and twist reality in a different way.

WWW Wednesday 4-10-2013

2013-04-10T11:05:00.001-07:00

WWW Wednesday. This meme is from shouldbereading.
To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…
• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently reading: Charles de Lint’s Muse and Reverie: A Newford Collection. I love de Lint’s work. A couple of paragraphs into each story, some undefined tension in me sighs happily and lets go. I suspect it’s the effortlessness of his craft, or maybe just that I read his prose with a different part of my mind than I write my own. I’ve long given up trying to analyze why this is so.
I’ve been overworking these past few months, so I crave refreshment of the spirit. At bedtime I’m slowly savoring my way through The Book of Words: Talking Spiritual Life, Living Spiritual Talk by Lawrence Kushner. Kushner (there are two – the other is Harold) was my introduction to Jewish mysticism. I re-read Honey From the Rock every few years and get even more out of it. I find I sleep better and am kinder and yet stronger during the day if I enrich the gentle transition to sleep. I read a little in Hebrew to signal to my brain that this is now a time of rest, a sacred time. Then I switch to English because although I can sound out the words in Hebrew, I’m very, very far from fluent in it. I read:

Blessings give reverent and routine voice to our conviction that life is good, one blessing after another. Even, and especially when life is cold and dark. Indeed to offer blessings at such times may be our only deliverance.

… and my spirit gives that sigh of relief, just the way my writer’s mind does when I read de Lint. No matter what sorrows the day has brought, in this moment they are over. I can rest easy. Tomorrow I will begin the struggle anew.

Recently finished reading: For fun and delight: Sherwood Smith’s Blood Spirits; Kage Baker’s In the Garden of Iden (which I think is the first Company novel), a novel-in-beta-form by Juliette Wade, a rising star in science fiction, For Love, For Power. And at night, Ethics for a New Millennium by the Dalai Lama. It took me a long time to read the latter, as I wanted to let each thought sink in; small bites, small moves.

What I’ll likely read next: I’m up for more Molly Gloss, who is a terrific writer; maybe The Jump-Off Creek or rereading The Hearts of Horses. I’ve been saving Carol Berg’s The Soul Mirror and now’s a great time. I have the next Dobrenica book, also several Caitlin Brennan/Judith Tarr novels. And if life gets too crazy, I can always dive into the next Sookie Stackhouse. For bedtime, maybe rereading Jonathan Sacks To Heal A Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility or Elyse Goldstein ReVisions: Seeing Torah Through A Feminist Lens. Or Mary Oliver’s poetry, which always speaks to me.

The Feathered Edge Tackles Norse Mythology

2013-04-09T01:00:00.000-07:00

My relationship with Rosemary Hawley Jarman is all Tanith Lee's fault. Which is actually a good thing. In my more whimsical moments, I suspect there is a secret society of British fantasy authors who, if they don't actually know one another, enjoy only a single degree of separation. (Sometimes that degree is me, and it's both odd and delightful to be performing introductions across the Atlantic between people who live on the same island, but that's another story.) So when Tanith introduced me to Rosemary, Rosemary and I also had another connection, which is that the small press Norilana was publishing both the first anthology I'd edited and Rosemary's romantic fantasy, The Captain's Witch. Her 1971 novel, We Speak No Treason, featured the much maligned King Richard III.

Rosemary is one of the authors who teach me about editing. It's quite a humbling experience to work with writers with far more years and experience than I have. I feel privileged to get a peek into their

"Ever since my first glimpse of fjord and glacier," she writes, "the Norse legends have become emotionally significant. The magical sword I see as the archetype of mortal striving and desire. In this story I have departed from the Wagnerian tradition and it is a woman who, like the hero Siegfried, renders the broken weapon into a sacred force. The Ring has elements of the Sleeping Beauty, the longed-for princess, and the flames symbolise the ordeal to be passed through in search of fulfillment. Nothing changes, even today, so long as love is pure."

own processes. More than that, I've come to see that editing-according-to-Deborah is like a dance. The author does her best to put her vision (or, as Rosemary puts it, her "creative plan") into words on a page, and I do my best to discern the heart of that story and, upon occasion, to make suggestions aimed at realizing that heart more fully. Sometimes I'm spot-on, but at other times I can misperceive or get overly enthusiastic about what I think the story is about (as opposed to what the author intended). I know I'm on the right track when I'm able to judge when to drop it, what is the author's creative prerogative, and when to press a question, when there's something unresolved that in my judgment impairs the story from reaching its potential. Working with Rosemary, especially seeing how she thinks in terms of a "creative plan" has given me great insight into the flexibility needed for good editing. This was especially helpful with "Fire and Frost and Burning Rose" because she's taken a mythology and shaped it in unexpected ways.

As with Rosemary's other stories, it's best to leave your expectations at the door when you venture forth into her world. Just when you think you have it figured out -- oh, this character is this Norse god, and so forth -- she spins the story around and you're not in Kansas -- er, Norway -- any more, but in a realm that sometimes playful, sometimes tragic, sometimes erotic, always refreshing.

Rosemary lives in an antique stone cottage between sea and mountain in West Wales, which strikes me as an exactly perfect place in which to write her stories.

Space Opera Fridays: Judith Tarr on From Fantasy to Forgotten Suns

2013-04-05T01:00:00.000-07:00

Forgotten Suns is a “heart book”—an Attack Novel that grabbed me by the throat and refused to let me go until it was more than halfway done. Now it has me again, as I’ve set aside other projects to oversee the Kickstarter that has already reached its funding goal and is now advancing toward (I hope) wonderful professional cover art and a print as well as a digital edition.

I didn’t know it was a space opera at first. I just knew that there was a planet out there, which used to be inhabited but for the most part no longer was. I didn’t know why it was empty, or where the people had gone. I started writing the novel to find the answers. Then as those answers took shape (or as I took dictation—because Attack Novels are like that), I realized that there were starships. And space pirates. And devices that could shatter worlds.

Why all these things? Why science fiction? I’m known as a fantasy writer, after all. Fans beg me for more rooted-in-real-facts historical fantasy. One of the projects that’s in the to-be-written pile now is alternate history with a fantasy component. Another is the kind of historical fantasy I’m known for. I’m excited about both, and looking forward to both.

But here we are, rampaging down the spaceways with a group of renegades and runaways, and as I write this, we’re about to meet the sentient starship. My brain, which has a weird slant, is showing me ways to put the “opera” in space opera.

That’s not a brain that fits itself into tidy marketing categories. The first rejection I ever received for a novel, from the legendary Lester Del Rey, was extremely kind and complimentary, and very detailed—he went on for pages. His main point was that my submission, while well written and engaging to read, wouldn’t fit the market because it didn’t fit into any one genre. “Fantasy readers seem to be fairly tolerant of science fiction in their fantasy,” he said, “but science-fiction readers have no tolerance for fantasy in their science fiction.”

The agent who took me on after that agreed, and steered me gently but firmly toward the historical fantasy I was playing with at the time. She didn’t need to know that I had worldbuilt it as science fiction in a medieval stetting, or that the real inspiration was not Tolkien but The Uncanny X-Men.

Because, actually, fantasy readers don’t much like science fiction in their fantasy, either.

Meanwhile, I still had my crazy, endless science-fantasy epic, not yet space opera, because nobody had gone into space in it. Yet. And I discovered that if I wrote the distant, dawn-time, Bronze-Age prequel to that, lo and behold, I had epic fantasy. And it sold as such, and was marketed as such, and it wasn’t a huge success, not like the historical fantasy, but it did well enough to last for six volumes and even to get far enough along that we found ourselves in space. With aliens. Which sank without a trace, but I loved writing that book.

Time went on. Publishing changed. I found myself being pushed farther and farther into tighter and tighter corners of genre, till I couldn’t move or breathe at all. Finally I reached the point that it felt as if there was nothing left. No story I could sell, that I wanted to tell. I didn’t even want to write any more—and writing, for me, is up there with breathing when it comes to things that keep me alive.

Two things saved my life, literally and metaphorically. One was Book View Café, with its cooperative structure and its scope for resurrecting backlist and making it at least minimally profitable in the new digital age. The other was a friend who made it possible for me to keep the bills paid while I wrote something new. Anything. Whatever I wanted. It didn’t matter what. They didn’t care if it was marketable. I could put it up on BVC if no one else would take it.

It was as if I’d been let out of prison. I could write anything. No more restrictions. No more “you have to write what will sell, and only what will sell.” The thought made me dizzy, and I flailed from project to project.

Then I knew what I had to write. It started like this:

“Aisha had blown the top off the cliff.

“It was an accident.”

And it went from there. Headlong and full-tilt. Growing itself as it went—and I’m an outliner, not a pantser. This I flew by the seat of my well-worn riding breeches.

It did stop eventually, for various reasons, but it was always there in the back of everything else, waiting to be picked up again. At one point I ran it by my agent, who said with real regret, “Twenty years ago this would have been an instant sale. Now, nobody will look at it.” And he added, “Unless you were a twentysomething guy.”

Which is another ranty bit, but I’ve done that one before. The main issue, that “science fiction doesn’t sell,” didn’t surprise me at all, because I’d heard it so often. Still, I knew a not insignificant number of readers, fans, and fellow writers who loved science fiction, and especially space opera. I thought they might like to see a new one—and they, being wonderful and eclectic and flexible of mind, wouldn’t insist that I stick to “my” familiar genre. All I had to do was do it right, or try, and make it fun to read (because oh my is it fun to write).

And of course, me being me, a good part of the fun is playing with Clarke’s Law—and its converse. Mixing up genres again. But in space opera, one can do that. The Force, laran, the Weirding Way—it’s all part of the tradition. Along with the starships and the space pirates and the ancient mysteries and the forgotten worlds. All the great good things that make the genre what it is.

The Feathered Edge: Moonlight and Martial Arts

2013-04-02T01:00:00.000-07:00

I love the way each story in this anthology carries with it a history, not just of that particular tale itself but of the growth and comradeship of the author. So in order to talk about Dave Smeds's wonderful "A Swain of Kneaded Moonlight," I have to go back to how I first met him. We both had stories in the fourth volume of Sword & Sorceress (1987), edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley. (It's a marvelous volume, if I do say so, with stories by Mercedes Lackey, Jennifer Roberson, Charles de Lint, Diana L. Paxson and more, some of us just starting out our careers.) As an editor, Marion encouraged new writers and eventually a whole community of successful authors who'd made their first sales to her emerged. "Gullrider" wasn't Dave's first sale; he was already building a reputation as an up-and-coming fantasy writer with quite a few short fiction sales, a novel in print (The Sorcery Within) and another in publication when Sword & Sorcery IV came out.

"Gullrider" showed a number of characteristics I would grow to recognize as hallmarks of a Dave Smeds story - an original idea, carefully developed, meticulous attention to story craft, and a "heart" that stays with me long after I've put down the volume. At a time when the generic fantasy default was telepathic dragons, Dave took us soaring with sea birds and diving with mermen.

Various of us whose early sales were to Marion managed to hook up at conventions, this being before the internet made geographical separation irrelevant. I might have been introduced to Dave by Jennifer Roberson, another rising star I'd met through Marion, or perhaps we made our way to one another on our own. Dave and I discovered that we were not only writers of fantasy but martial artists. Dave's art was goju-ryu karate and today he is a senior black belt and instructor in that style. I'd met other writers who were also martial artists; it was like a secret underground, with the recognition of the discipline required, an appreciation of the balance of mind, body, and spirit. Not only that, most of us found our martial arts experiences sneaking into our fiction. This was certainly true for Dave!

The overlap of interests, the willingness to "talk shop," and the mutual respect for each other's achievements set the groundwork for a deeper professional relationship than merely one of having stories in the same anthology. Those early conversations were like threads that, woven together over time, formed a tapestry of community.

Dave's story, "A Swain of Kneaded Moonlight" arose from his questioning a time-worn trope: the damsel in distress in need of a rescue. Dave says, "the inspiration boils down to a simple observation that in situations where a male comes to the rescue of a damsel in distress, the damsel is usually playing a far more active role than the stereotype gives her credit for." Dave's stories can be gritty, romantic, action-packed, heart-breaking, but they are never predictable. This one's no exception.

Long ago, the story begins, silver dripped from a crescent moon. The drops fell upon the land and became the glimmering brides. They were magical women. The great men of long ago won them as consorts--whether by force, seduction, or contract--and sired children upon them.

The brides lingered in the known realms until their children were grown. When their mortal flesh had aged and its grip upon them loosened, they slipped away. Now they are the stars that wander in the skies.

Or so they say.

You can read the story either in The Feathered Edge or Raiding the Hoard of Enchantment, Dave's

short fiction collection from Book View Café.

Cover - The Seven-Petaled Shield

2013-03-29T12:50:00.000-07:00

My love affair with this world and its people began with a series of short stories in Sword & Sorceress. I kept wanting to go back and explore more...and before I knew it, I'd committed trilogy -- one long story arc with four major cultures, a vast and wonderful landscape, and characters I came to treasure for their compassion, their arrogance, their wisdom, their courage, their human frailty.

The first part, The Seven-Petaled Shield (which is also the name of the trilogy) comes out from DAW in June. Here's the cover, with a painting by the wonderful Matt Stawicki:

I am such a happy camper. (And you can pre-order it from your favorite indie bookstore or the usual internet sources.)

I'll be blogging more about it as the time approaches.

Reaching More Than One Audience

2013-03-29T01:00:00.000-07:00

I sometimes joke that my work is fiction -- "I make it all up" -- but that isn't true. All writers draw to some extent on our own experiences and environments, not to mention what we've studied, heard about from other people, or researched properly. Whether we take a real-world element and put it unchanged into a work of fantasy or science fiction or whether we use that element as a springboard to create something "new" (AKA, a fantastical variation), we weave things, people, and events that actually exist into our fictional worlds.

For my novelet, "Among Friends," (F & SF March/April 2013), I drew heavily on the history of Quakers and the Underground Raillroad. The sfnal element in this story, which might be categorized as antebellum steampunk, revolves around the interaction of the Quaker community and a slave-catching automaton. While history, particularly the biography of Thomas Garrett, provided a wealth of plot points and setting details, the heart of the story was how this community of people might question whether a mechanical device partakes of the Inward Light. I used the Quaker community because it's one I know well, at least in its present progressive version. My husband is a member of the Religious Society of Friends, Pacific Yearly Meeting, and I've attended meeting regularly for a number of years. I'm not a theologian, Quaker or otherwise, but I have first-hand familiarity with the ways of thinking and speaking about spiritual issues in that tradition. Quakers today, as then, strive to see "that of God in every person." So how would they regard an entity that looks human -- would they "try what love can do"? Would that entity, treated as if it had moral agency, then acquire the ability to seek the good? With the goal of creating a vivid and internally consistent culture, one that is familiar enough to the average reader to be comprehensible and different enough to be fascinating, I wove together historical research, personal experience, and a fantastical element. Mindful of my own limitations, I asked several "weighty Friends" to review the draft for background accuracy.

A couple of weeks ago, I took my author's copy to a potluck at the Meetinghouse. I had no thought beyond sharing an occasion of celebration, but was convinced with Quakerly velvet-clad determination to read it aloud. The fascinating part was how deeply my Quaker audience connected with the familiar elements of the story and how delighted they were to hear their traditions presented. The automaton, however, posed particular challenges for them. A few knew Asimov's Laws of Robotics and even fewer had heard of the Turing Test (a way of evaluating whether machines can "think" like humans). The ensuring discussion took quite a different direction from one in an audience familiar with science fiction tropes but much less so with Quaker history and process.

The reading and discussion reminded me of my experience reading aloud my short story, "Survival Skills" (Sisters of the Night, 1995). The short version is "vampire mother struggling to raise 2 kids joins the PTA." I read it to the PTA at my younger daughter's elementary school and also at sf conventions. The PTA moms got all the PTA jokes, even saying they knew some of the characters. And the fans got the vampire jokes. (I should add that everyone got the awful puns.)

The door opens in both directions. Maybe some of the fans who read "Among Friends" will become curious about Quakerism, because some of the PTA moms did go out and buy the whole anthology and who knows, some of them might now be avid fantasy readers? Maybe "Among Friends" will prove to be a portal for Quakers to discover the world of science fiction?

We have a tendency to keep within our own community, or the target readership. I think that does our work and our potential audience a disservice. When we set our stories or use history in our work, we create an entire second readership. So far, my experience in reaching out to those new readers has been richly rewarded. I invite you to try it with your own work.

The Feathered Edge: Desire and Demons in Renaissance Florence

2013-03-27T01:00:00.000-07:00

Florence, by Thermos

Venice, by Paolo da Reggio

My own adventure began in 1991, when I was living in France. We used our children’s spring break to visit Italy, and that meant Florence and Venice. These places overwhelmed me with a sense of being not quite in the same reality as other places I’d been. I was accustomed to living near water (having come from Venice, California -- all right, just across the street from the Venice city line), but not the pervasive sense of dark, fluid depths underlying every building and every walkway, nor the atmosphere of age and history, or the constant reminders of private lives – of secrets – behind those shuttered windows and doors. Whether strolling through the piazzas or over one of the many bridges, or riding in a gondola, or sitting in a café, I felt myself surrounded by stories. I remember the moment of awe when I stepped out into the plaza of the ghetto (the original ghetto, after which all others are named). There isn’t much to see, just a well-swept space surrounded by tourist shops; it’s not what I saw but what I felt, century upon century of hope and despair, of huddled safety and wellsprings of determination.

A tourist brochure, perhaps from the city of Venice itself, I can’t remember now, featured images from carnevale. One of these was the famous character, Bauta. This costume consists of a unadorned white mask, flared at the bottom where the mouth should be, a black tricorned hat, and a black cloak. It is impossible to tell if the person wearing it is old or young, man or woman, rich or poor – a true disguise for that brief time of merry-making when such distinctions no longer hold sway. In the publicity image, indirect, diffuse lighting cast the figure in mysterious shadows. You can see something of what it looked like here.
Or here.

Oh my, I thought. Story material.

When I returned to the US, I pinned the picture on my bulletin board beside my computer. Although I worked on other projects, my eyes kept drifting back to this enigmatic, slightly menacing figure. I had a chance to take some of those shivers and weave them into a story when I was invited to submit to an anthology of historical fantasy, Ancient Enchantresses, edited by Kathleen M. Massie-Ferch. I based my story, "Unmasking the Ancient Light," on the life of Dona Gracia Nasi, one of the most extraordinary Jewish women of the Renaissance. My friend Bauta did not put in an appearance in my story, but furnished a wealth inspiration for an ancient, brooding menace.

Then, as I was reading stories for The Feathered Edge: Tales of Magic, Love, and Daring, I opened the one Jay and Shannon had sent me and read:

Firenze, 1498

I peered around the rough-edged corner of the Palazzo Martelli, searching down the long, night-shadowed lane but seeing nothing save the muddy path to the river Arno below. The Ponte Vecchio glimmered in the distance, lit by a single torch at the near end.

Palazzo Martelli, by sailko

Oh my. Italy, again!

And what a marvelous time this is! Florence is ancient and brooding, but infused with the vigor of magic, of a living, working city, not a vacation destination. This is not the Florence of picture postcards and tourist brochures. Dangerous things lurk in waters, and watch you from the rooftops…and behind the gaity and mercantile riches, a battle is being waged, one whose stakes are hearts as well as souls. Jay and Shannon weave the vivid details into an erotic tale of desire, sorcery, and power.

Deborah Discovers Darkover

2013-03-25T01:00:00.000-07:00

The next Darkover book, The Children of Kings, was released on Tuesday, March 5, from DAW Books. Here and in the following weeks, I'll also talk about how I met Marion Zimmer Bradley, how we came to work together, and a few thoughts on "playing in her sandbox."

I frequently am asked how I came to work with Marion and to continue her Darkover series after her death. Here's a bit of my own journey into this marvelous world.

Marion Zimmer Bradley had published several novels set on the world of The Bloody Sun when I first discovered Darkover with The World Wreckers (1971). The Planet Savers and The Sword of Aldones had come out in 1962, followed by The Bloody Sun (1964, revised in 1979) the YA Star of Danger (1965) and an Ace Double, The Winds of Darkover (1970). The early Darkover novels were action-adventures, solidly written but also well within the fantasy genre. The World Wreckers (1971) pushed the boundaries of acceptable topics. Although a secondary plot, the evocative love story between a Terran man and a hemaphroditic chieri brought up issues of sexuality and gender in ways I had never before read. I believe it was Marion's first "breakthrough" in the Darkover series, and it firmly established me as an avid fan.

The next two Darkover novels added depth and complexity to my experience of Marion's special world, and I admired Marion tremendously for not shrinking from presenting provocative questions. In Darkover Landfall (1972), she confronted a shipload of marooned colonists not only with a strange world and their deepest fears, but the necessities of survival. To the outrage of many in the burgeoning feminist movement, Marion depicted a situation in which, for the human colony to have a future, every woman of child-bearing age must contribute to the gene pool. She went on to ask what kind of cultural mores -- towards monogamy, towards intergenerational sexual relations -- would then evolve. The Spell Sword (1974) continued the idea of telepathic intimacy and non-exclusivity.

The next year, 1975, saw the publication of The Heritage of Hastur, considered by many to be the definitive novel of Darkover. Marion had set out to write a novel featuring a sympathetic and heroic gay protagonist: Regis Hastur. She took a character from an earlier novel (The Planet Savers) and placed him not only under the pressures of an heir-apparent, but in the cross-hairs of a story of power and its abuses. She followed up the next year with The Shattered Chain. Having created a world in which most women had little power or freedom, she showed how even under the most oppressive circumstances, women do have choices. Her depiction of the Free Amazons or Renunicates was so compelling that women set up "Guild Halls" and even changed their names to the Renunciate form of daughters of their mothers.

About 1980, Marion and I became personal friends and soon thereafter, she bought a story from me for the first SWORD & SORCERESS. 1984 marked my first sale to a Darkover anthology. Marion had long considered fandom her community and welcomed others to explore Darkover and edited a series of anthologies based on that world until the increasing legal complications of copyright ended such openness.

When I heard Marion was reading for a Darkover anthology with a Free Amazon theme, I concocted a tale of justice and revenge, impossibly grim and melodramatic. Luck was with me, for I never submitted it. While visiting my mother, I was struck by a hilarious idea--a Free Amazon, while traveling in the Hellers, accidentally imprints a newly-hatched banshee chick. Banshees are giant carnivorous birds, vile and smelly, who haunt the mountain passes and prey upon unwary travelers. The idea of a hapless woman pursued by one of these flightless monsters who thinks she's its mother, was too hilarious to resist. The story wrote itself and Marion approved.

Other tales followed, and another. Some were grim, others light-hearted, although none so demented as "Midwife" (Free Amazons of Darkover, DAW 1986). With each successive story for the Darkover anthologies, I ventured more deeply into a new world. The challenge was to discern and remain true to Marion's vision while also remaining true to my own creative voice, to tell the stories that were mine to tell. Occasionally, a story would push and tug at me, pleading to continue beyond its final pages. This was especially true for "The Death of Brendon Ensolare" (Four Moons of Darkover, DAW 1988). Alas for the "inelasticity of typeface," to use Marion's phrase.

Writing an entire novel set on Darkover was another adventure entirely. In my own novel-length work, I was used to world-building, creating cultures and landscapes and histories as well as characters. When asked what it is like to write "on Darkover," the only reasonable answer is that it is akin to writing historical fiction. The world is there, so I cannot invent it as I go along. Marion, on the other hand, did not always envision Darkover in the same way she did when it was mature. So when I do research, I keep in mind when this particular story was written. Marion never let details of geography interfere with a good story, so she refused to create any maps. Others have attempted it, always with imperfect results. I try to follow Marion's lead in focusing on a satisfying and complete story experience, rather than trying to reconcile incompatible details.

Following Marion's example, I have tried to create each novel as complete in itself, even when part of a larger story arc. So, although the first three we worked on together, "The Clingfire trilogy" was marketed as a series, the books can be read separately, with the one caution that it is best not to read the third (A Flame In Hali) before the second (Zandru's Forge) because they are chronological and involve many of the same characters.

SPECIAL: Jaydium - Revising a False Start

2013-03-22T01:00:00.000-07:00

As a special thanks to all of you who've been following along with the adventures of Kithri, Eril, Lennart, Brianna, and assorted invertebrates, here's a special backstage tour of the opening...

Jaydium, my first novel to see print, had a long and colorful history, with almost as many adventures as its characters. It began life as a few pages scribbled in a spiral bound notebook while my first child (who is now in her 30s) attended swimming class. The idea for the "space ghost" in Chapter 5 came to me in a dream. Eventually these scrawled pages became the beginning of the first draft.

In those days, I knew almost nothing about editing and even less about revision. I learned about them by writing Jaydium. And re-writing, and re-visioning, and taking apart and putting it back together in some completely different way . . . until I got it right. Here's the first version, the one I inflicted upon my local writers' group:

Chapter 1

"I'm sorry about what happened in the bar," the stranger said, and Kithri Jump/laughter looked up at him from her preliminary safety check on her scrubject BUSHWACKER. Jump/laughter, that was her Brush name, worn for enough seasons now that her real, ordinary name began to feel heavy on the tongue. Kithryne vont'Sunnai Gildreath, who was she but some penniless honk with nothing but a third-rate, down-at-the-pharings local hopper to her name? Kithri Jump/laughter, now there was a handle to make the tavern buffoons sit up and take notice.

So Kithri Jump/laughter was rarely made a fool of, and she squinted her eyes at the man who had been a witness to one of those rare occasions. His body was slender, hard-muscled under his flightsuit and he'd rolled the sleeves to bare his forearms. His skin glowed like warm honey in the noon sun -- smooth, his face with its trace of epicanthic folds and full lips saved from prettiness by a small, jagged scar on one cheek. Not her type, but Kithri couldn't afford a type. She knew he was studying her, wondering what he thought of her muscular shoulders and broken nose. She couldn't whore for survival money even if she wanted to.

She said, "You don't have to come."

"Lyu, my name is Lyu. And my brother-in-law didn't desert you on purpose. It was an honest mistake, a shock seeing you there."

Kithri flapped the safe-cover down over the backup 'chute system. If he wouldn't shut up, she'd have to find some excuse to back out of the substitution. "Look, Lyu -- Hank, that scrub-pilot turned war hero who married your sister was no sweetheart of mine. Not even a bedmate, although not from want of trying. We've run Jaydium from the Hillers for five years now, war or no war. He may well forget it now that he's got your rich sister, but it's all that keeps me going off-season." And I can't do it alone, or I'd never agreed to this crazy scheme.

"He --"

"Stop apologizing for the bastard, will you! Sure, he and his bride come wandering through his old haunts for nostalgia's sake, and what inconvenient boobie shows up but his old Jaydium running partner? What's he to do? 'Oh, sorry my dear, I'm off to risk life and impotency for the sake of a few shekels?' If I were in his booties, I'd back out just as fast."
Lyu pulled tight the last tensegrity-reinforcement strap and slid into the second pilot's seat. The pseudo suede seemed almost new compared to the primary's. He said, "Don't do this often, do you?"

"Run Jaydium? Hell, you know the risks. Stuff's so labile the only way to get it in is flying duo, and I don't often find a match I'd trust with my life" . . . and mind. For all his womanizing, she'd been able to trust Hank. Why was she taking such a damned risk with this stranger? She watched him again as he began the instrument check, liking the way he moved, the care with which he double-checked everything. He'd had good training, why did he need to run Jaydium? For kicks?

Lyu looked up as she slid into the seat before him. Almost a lover's fit, his knees beside her elbows. Could he be one of those few who, like herself, risked a marginal existence for the occasional dip into the nirvana of duo-flight? Hank had been greedy but steady, unable to comprehend why the intense, melding closeness of duo never led her to his bed. They weren't that close a match, for all his arrogant good looks, and the joy of duo had been enough in itself for her.

This opening reads like a textbook example of beginner's errors. I'd read somewhere that you had to hook the reader early and to me that meant something exciting had to happen right away, a spasm of instant adrenaline. I decided to start with a tension-filled scene and segue into a hair-raising Jaydium mining run. What I did was to dump the poor unsuspecting reader into the middle of an unreasonable argument, with no sense of place or personal history or motivation. I then scrambled to introduce background explanations, mostly in dialog because I didn't want to slow down the "action". I didn't realize then that when characters tell each other what they already know for the sake of the reader, they appear stupid and arrogant, hardly sympathetic.

The chapter continued at a breathless pace that left my first readers confused. The most common reaction was an irritated, "What the heck is going on?"

I also indulged in a good deal of playing around with funny names and ideas, many of which don't make sense or even fit with one another. This is one work habit I haven't tried to change and it's still typical of my first drafts. It's important to my style of working that I be free to put down whatever nonsense pops into my head. I usually edit out the embarrassingly bad ones before I let anyone read my drafts. Some of my targets here were names and technobabble. Some I dropped, others I transformed, and in a few cases I couldn't resist the temptation to create new ones. My goal was for the jargon to enrich my portrayal of the characters and their unique world, not intrude or exist only for the sake of weirdness.

Three workshop and two editorial revisions later, the final version of Jaydium's opening invites the reader into this new world, introducing characters, concepts, and relationships in a developing progression. To do this, I not only had to slow the pace but to back up my point of entry.

Chapter 1

Dust, Kithri thought as she shoved her shoulder against the door of The Thirsty Miner Tavern. The pitted duraplast jerked open, sending a drift of gray-brown powder over her boots. My whole life is turning to dust.

Dust was everywhere on the single inhabited continent of the planet Stayman. It clung to the folds of Kithri's dun-colored overalls and sprinkled her ragged brown curls. Sifting past the shutters or tracked in at the door, it invaded even the corners where shadows lay thick and stale.

The Thirsty Miner gathered its fair share of dust. Other bars catered to insystem traders, the few Federation agents who cared to rub shoulders with locals or the farmers who, when they came into town at all, kept stubbornly to themselves. But this bar, small and far from the center of Port Ludlow, attracted only its regular customers, Jaydium miners all.
Look at them, Kithri thought, pausing as the door swung shut behind her. They're already drinking up every credit they've made on this run.

Old Dowdell and his two tavern buddies, identical in their rumpled miners' overalls and grizzled faces, looked up from their usual places at the centermost table. Kithri turned her back on them and leaned her elbows on the bar. The barkeep set a mug of brew in front of her.

A few more years, and I'll be just like them.

This was not strictly true. Although Kithri had come to Stayman as a homesick adolescent, she would never be anything but an outsider. One day her clear gray eyes might dull under the faint film that never seemed to leave the other miners' eyes and her youthful skin might dry up into a mass of crevices like theirs, but she could never change who she was -- the daughter of a Federation scientist.
#
Comment #1: Much of what makes a situation or a character interesting involves difference. In the first version, the reader had no way of experiencing Kithri's sense of isolation and antagonism toward her world, or her dreams and fears, or why she is special. By slowly moving into this scene, I offer the reader a chance to care about her.
#
Kithri might not belong to Stayman, but Stayman had left its mark on her. The heavy fabric of her overalls could not hide the long curves of her thighs, or shoulders grown muscular from years of chipping Jaydium. She rubbed her nose where it had once been broken and sipped the tepid brew, wishing for the hundredth time that morning there was somewhere else to go, something else to do. She could drag out her outdated astrophysics texts and pretend to study, but what would be the use?

I'm never going to get off this miserable planet! Not to University, not to anywhere!

"Hey, Bloodyluck!"

"Dowdell," she muttered without turning around, "there's nothing you have to say that I want to hear, so stuff it."

"I hear Nash's looking for a whore on his insystem route. Fix you up good, you might do."

Kithri took her mug and stalked over to the farthest, darkest corner. Dowdell's raucous laugh followed her,

". . . 'course we'd all expect free samples . . ."

At the rate she was going, flying singlo, it would take years to save the rest of her passage offplanet. The Federation freighters came too infrequently and too much of her earnings dribbled away just to survive on this desolate hunk of rock. But if she could find someone else trained in duo -- someone besides that dustbug Dowdell -- all it would take would be one, maybe two good runs. She could even make another haul before the freighter took off tonight.

Kithri leaned against the grimy ash-brick wall and closed her eyes, trying to remember Albion's rivers and flowered fields, the clear blue sky, the billowing golden clouds. The images were fragmentary, a child's memories, luminous and blurred. Albion itself was now a radioactive cinder.

Lost in her daydreams, Kithri didn't look up as the door swung open again and a man stood there, silhouetted against the glaring daylight. His off-worlder clothing -- closefit pants, shirt and vest, laced boots -- did little to mask the hard, lean contours of his body. Close behind him came a stunningly beautiful woman in a tailored medic's uniform and a taller man, brassy-haired and smiling. Dowdell let out a long whistle and glanced towards the corner where Kithri sat, her eyes still closed.

The barkeep set three mugs of brew in front of the newcomers. "Hank," he nodded to the tall man. "Been a while."

In her corner, Kithri opened her eyes, slowly focusing on the three newcomers. Her expression hidden by the dense shadows, she got noiselessly to her feet.

The woman looked down at her mug and wrinkled her nose at the dingy, froth-covered liquid. "Is this all there is?"

"Avery, my love, you wouldn't want to try the alternatives," said Hank. "The water's laced with metal salts and the rotgut's only good for a three-day drunk."

The second man lifted his mug to his lips. His vest fell open and revealed a leather shoulder holster carrying a force whip, an exotic weapon for a planet where simple stunguns were the norm. "It's better than aardwolf piss," he commented.

"Such language, Eril!" said the woman. He leaned toward her, laughing, a male version of her beauty -- dark hair, faint epicanthic folds of the eyelids, golden skin. But while she was all silky curves, there was nothing effeminate about him. Instead, he was sleek and taut like a sand-leopard, the kind of predator that relishes trouble.
#
Comment #2: By the time I wrote the final version of Jaydium, I'd learned to make story elements do double- and triple-duty. For example, the field of flowers, the force whip, and Kithri's scientific background all play important roles later in the story, as well as adding detail now.
#
Hank turned away from the bar, unaware of Kithri's silent approach. "Yes, my love, this lowly tavern was the scene of many a youthful adventure of mine. I remember the time this trader took the notion one of the miners'd hyped his stash. Now, I knew Grizz'd done no such thing -- all the man knows is Jaydium and getting drunk, in the reverse order. And besides, the trader's so stoned on bloodroot he can't even remember where he put his own head. He pulls out a knife as long as your forearm --" Hank gestured dramatically, "-- screams like bloody hell and goes ramming for Grizz. Well, what was I to do, let an honest miner get his kidneys chopped? I vault over those three tables there and foot-sweep him. Bam! Down he goes! Then I break a chair over his head, wrestle the knife out of his hands, and --"

"You're nothing but a dustbug liar, Hank Austin!" Kithri slammed her mug down next to his. "In case you've forgotten, it wasn't a chair I smashed over the trader's head, it was a bench. All you did was stick your foot out and pick up the pieces afterwards."

"Kithri! By all the powers of luck and space, what are you still doing here?"

She winced. "It's great to see you, too. C'mon, if we scramble we can make one more duo haul on this run. There's five, almost six hours until lift-off."

"Who is this... person?" asked the petite beauty, slipping her hand through Hank's arm and narrowing her eyes.

Hank straightened up. "Avery my love, meet my old flying partner, Kithri Bloodyluck. Ask me sometime how she got that name. It makes the other story sound like an old ladies' tea party. Kithri, this is my wife."

"Your... wife." In her soaring excitement, Kithri had barely noticed the two strangers. She swallowed hard, her tanned face flushing to an ugly shade of copper. The dim light of the tavern masked it and her voice was steady enough. That was lucky, because she could feel the eyes of the other miners on her, searching her for any hint of weakness. They'd given up any pretense of lack of interest and were staring frankly. After Hank had signed on as a Federation pilot, she'd had her fill of speculation about their having been lovers -- and who would take his place. The thought of another round of Dowdell's jokes was enough to turn her stomach.

"I wanted to show Avery where I used to hang out before I enlisted," Hank said. "Now that the war's over --" He paused, his handsome brow furrowing. "You didn't think I came back here -- just to run Jaydium, did you? I'm not that crazy, and besides, there's my bonus money."

Kithri picked up her mug. The brew tasted flat and bitter. "It's nice one of us doesn't have to work for a living."

"What about you? You're not still running Jaydium, are you?"

"What else should I do on this dustball planet, open a beauty parlor," she jerked her chin toward Dowdell and his cronies, "for the likes of them?"

Hank spread his hands apologetically. "Hey, it's nothing personal."

"The whole thing's too damned personal, if you ask me." Kithri strode out of the bar, leaving the rest of her drink. Dowdell let out another long whistle as the second newcomer slapped his own mug down and hurried after her.

The astute reader will notice that this excerpt ends where the original one begins. But now there is an emotional motivation for Kithri bolting from the tavern, as well as a sense of her complex, impulsive personality. The stranger (Lyu, now renamed Eril) brings his own mystery: why does he go after her? What are his secrets, this man with the sleek menace of a sand leopard, who carries a force whip? That is, the story itself generates a natural interest in what comes next.

Which is, after all, what the beginning of a novel is supposed to do.

The Feathered Edge: A New Meviel Adventure...With Pirates!

2013-03-20T01:00:00.001-07:00

One of the challenges of writing short fiction is how much must be accomplished in how few words. Harry Turtledove once said that novels teach us what to put in a story, but short stories teach us what to take out. Every story element must serve multiple purposes - setting the scene and evoking the larger world beyond it, creating and heightening tension, revealing character -- oh, and moving the plot along. It's a tall order to accomplish in only a few thousand words. Some writers do the world-building part so well in even so short a space that it keeps beckoning them to return. That happened to me with a series of short stories I wrote for Sword and Sorceress (that eventually became a fantasy trilogy, The Seven-Petaled Shield). It also happened to Madeleine E. Robins with her world of "Meviel."

The first I saw of this wonderful place was the story Madeleine wrote for the first anthology I edited, Lace and Blade from Norilana Books. It was called "Virtue and the Archangel" and began thus:

Veillaune meCorse left her virtue in the tumbled sheets of a chamber at the Bronze Manticore. This act, which would have licensed her parents to cut her off from family and fortune, was a grave error; but with her maidenhead, Veilliaune also left the Archangel behind, and that was a calamity.

I guess the world of Meviel was just too enticing for one such tale to suffice, and when I was reading for the next volume, Madeleine queried me whether a second story in the same setting would be of interest. Bring it on, I said, and received the hilarious "Writ of Exception." I'm not going to divulge any of its secrets; you'll have to read it for yourself.

Time passed, as it does, but the years did not dim Meviel's luster, because when I inquired of Madeleine if she would like to do a story for the anthology that would become The Feathered Edge: Tales of Magic, Love, and Daring, she wrote:

I'm working on a Meviel story... No alternate sexuality per se (after the last two stories I sort of wanted to change things up a bit) and no romance particularly: just a girl who reads too much and gets kidnapped by pirates and...

I ask you, what editor could resist that premise? Who knew there were pirates in same world as Veillaune meCorse and the Archangel? True to form, the pirates in "Wreath of Luck" are and are not your usual sort. There's a lovely twist of -- is it magic or superstition or a plucky young heroine creating her own good fortune?

If you love Madeleine's work as much as I do, you'll want to check out her wonderful Regency novels on Book View Café (and the latest "Sarah Tolerance" adventure, The Sleeping Partner, in paper, too). Madeleine's also got a story in Beyond Grimm: Tales Newly Twisted.

Meeting Marion, Part 2

2013-03-18T01:00:00.000-07:00

I frequently am asked how I came to work with Marion and to continue her Darkover series after her death. Toward the end of her life, Marion suffered a series of strokes, which made it difficult for her to concentrate on novel-length stories. One solution to this problem was to work with a younger writer, supervising and editing as well as designing the story arc and characters. Marion tried collaborating with various writers, including Mercedes Lackey, whose own writing schedule proved too demanding for her to continue. I was one of the writers Marion considered because she had watched me develop from a novice to an established professional and knew my work, especially those stories I had written for the Darkover anthologies. She had seen what I could do in "her world," and often cited "The Death of Brendon Ensolare" (a "Lieutenant Kije" story set in the Thendaran City Guards) as one of her favorites.

We began work together as we had begun our relationship, first in correspondence, then in person. We'd settled on a time period and general story arc when I visited her for the last time. When I arrived at her home, she had been resting, on oxygen, but insisted on sitting up to talk. I knew she had been very ill, but seeing her made her condition so much more vivid for me. One of my best memories of her was watching her "come alive" as we discussed character and hatched plot points. Her eyes "glowed as if lit from within," to use one of her favorite descriptions, and energy suffused her whole being. I asked question after question and then sat back as she spun out answers. It was as if she had opened a window into her imagination and invited me to peek inside. Her secretary told me that she talked for days afterwards about the visit and how excited she was about the project.

We never got a second visit. She died a month later.

Marion had been a rock, an anchor, an inspiration, and a guide throughout my literary career. I expected we would have more time to work together, despite how desperately ill she was. I believed in the magic of that last visit.

It was magic. And, although I did not realize it at the time, it was also the passing of the torch.

Jaydium - Epilog

2013-03-15T01:00:00.000-07:00

JAYDIUM

by Deborah J. Ross, writing as Deborah Wheeler

Epilog

The Fifth Federation Star Service personnel lounge on New Paris teemed with men and women waiting to be shuttled up to their cruisers or for boarding permission to smaller ground-based ships. Almost everyone was in uniform--the beiges and greens of officers and pilots, the blues of medics and science, a scattering of diplomatic whites. By the western window, a huge curved sweep of double-glass looking out over the spaceport itself, a man and a woman in the severe black of the Courier Corps watched a stinger undergo its final safety checks. Refitted for prolonged travel for a crew of two, the graceful craft was packed with specialized equipment and the most modern, powerful jaydium drives.

"It still amazes me how beautiful it is," the woman murmured. "And it=s ours."

The man nodded and put one arm around her shoulder. They moved away from the window, talking quietly.

Kithri, sitting at a table in one of the darker corners of the lounge, watched them go. They=d get their clearances soon, and they=d be off to the stars, bound on some secret mission. Everywhere they=d go, people would notice the black uniforms with respect and not a little envy.

She set her juice drink on the table of heavily varnished Terillium oak and watched the pink bubbles spiral upwards. Her claret-colored shirt was loosely cut, gathered at the sleeves and yoke. The fabric was soft and heavy, so different from the crisp, tailored uniforms of the Service. She wore it tucked into her pants and belted with a wide strap of real leather. Only the small round patch on the left collar, a scout ship crossing a stylized "E", indicated it was something other than ordinary civilian clothing. Explorers didn=t wear uniforms.

Eril slid in the bench beside her. "Half an hour, they said." He lay one hand over hers, touching the white-gold ring he=d given her.

"Any last minute problems?"

He shook his head. "No, they approved the flight plan just as we submitted it. According to their charts, it=s just another unexplored sector, so they=re happy to find someone willing to take it on. Then we=ll find out how good my memory of Araf=ex=s star charts is."

And what will we find out there? It won=t be NewHome any longer. Either a ruin, or another jaydium source...Or if it or Tomorrow survived and Raerquel=s people are out there, waiting for us... The light-translator panels were safely hidden in their personal gear.

Either way, it=ll shake the Fed up damned good.

"Raerquel lied to us to make us go with Duvach, you know," she said. "It wasn=t going into any estivation state."

"One way or another, it would be long dead now," Eril said slowly.

Kithri looked out the big window and imagined the slow whirl of galaxies beyond the clouded sky. Space seemed so vast and the dark between the stars so deep.

A planet I might find, but a space ghost who isn=t even there most of the time...

Eril=s fingers tightened on hers. "Len=s still out there," he said, as if reading her thoughts. "And we=ll find him. Somehow."

Somehow... Out of all that glory up there, what do I want, really want?

After a moment Eril cleared his throat. "Once we=re out of here, we won=t have to get one permission after another. As long as our reports sound good, they=ll let us go wherever we want. If we do find jaydium, we can use it to change the face of Stayman, maybe the whole Fed."

"And if we don=t find it?"

"What?" he said, raising his eyebrows. "You want to give up and become the Fed=s errand boys like those two over there?"

"Not on your sweet pitouchee. Then we=ll see how much difference we can really make."

"Is that what you want, really want?"

She met his eyes and smiled. It was not a true question, she knew. It was a promise that wherever they went, whatever they did, they would do it together.

The End

I hope you've enjoyed this adventure through space and time. All the individual chapters are available to read online - Click on Read A Story. Or you can download the whole thing from Book View Cafe (And the files will play nicely with your Nook or Kindle, as well as other devices).

Next week, as a thank-you treat for following along, I'll share how I revised the first opening scene of the book.

The Feathered Edge essays: History and Feathers

2013-03-14T01:00:00.000-07:00

Last year I began this series on "the stories behind the stories" in this anthology of marvelous fantasy stories I was privileged to edit. I got about halfway through when life in the form of writing deadlines intervened. So I'm going to repost them and hopefully finish the series, then put them together in a companion volume. Here goes...

This is the first in a series of blog posts about the stories in my new anthology, The Feathered Edge. Due to a brainflub on my part, it didn't get posted on time. But we're lovers of fantasy and science fiction, so what's a little temporal flip-flop among friends? Here it is!

I love how communities are built and how people are linked. So, in the wonderfully organic network of writers who meet one another across vast distances, I can't talk about "Featherweight" and Kari Sperring without telling the tale of SFWA and its Circulating Book Plan.

The idea is that publishers send review copies to garner Nebula nominations, and boxes of books make their way to participating SFWA members according to an arcane circulating route. Some years ago, this migratory library included a book called Bridge of Dreams by some fellow I'd never heard of, Chaz Brenchley. I try every book that isn't obviously war porn for a few pages, so I opened it...and was lost at the first sentence. It grabbed me, poetry neurons and curiosity and romanticism all in one fell swoop, and didn't let go for 400 pages or however long it was.

Shortly thereafter, I found myself with the delightful prospect of editing my first anthology, Lace and Blade. Because the publisher wanted a Valentine's Day release, she agreed to let me do it by invitation. So I sent Chaz an email. The rest, as they say, was history. I not only received a wonderful story ("In The Night Street Baths," reprinted in Wilde Stories 2009), but made a valued friend.

Through Chaz, I made the online acquaintance of Kari Sperring, a charming and articulate British writer whose first novel, Living With Ghosts, would soon be released (and from my own publisher, making her a fellow DAWthor). Kari's a trained historian and knows about things like ancient Welsh (which I believe she speaks) and Viking history. She's also a fellow cat lover and the owner of an amazing collection of elegant skirts. When I learned that her childhood ambition had been to join the Musketeers, I knew we were kindred spirits. However, friendship is one thing and editorial selection is another.

Living With Ghosts won the Sydney J Bounds Award for a first novel, which is administered by the British Fantasy Society. Her first novel. It's luscious and edgy and romantic and sad. Oh my, can this woman write! So she went on my short list for the next anthology, which by this time would be #3. I had no idea if she wrote short fiction, but I asked her anyway. She sent me "Featherweight." I read,

After the alchemical queen died, she turned into feathers. In life, she had been whipcord and lemons, yet in death she came apart in peace. Her peace--her pieces--floated out into the city she had guarded so long...

One of the deepest pleasures of editing is getting to indulge my own taste, to carefully attend to what strikes such inner chords as to fill me with music. Delightful as it was to read Living With Ghosts, I made my way through "Featherweight" thinking, I asked for this story. She wrote it on my invitation. The feeling is akin to discovering you have acted as midwife to something glorious.

The anthology needed a title and a focus. I thought about romantic, swashbuckling fantasy, and about poetry and heroic quests and the beauty of language, how stories take us beyond ourselves on journeys...where? I kept coming back to this one as a touchstone, the image of feathers drifting through a city and transforming lives. Feathers...dreams...tall tales and myths and bardic chants and sonnets...together they create a very special place in the imagination, neither reality nor dream, but filled with the language of the heart.

The Feathered Edge.