Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Leslie Fish on “Old Purity” in REALMS OF DARKOVER

Realms of Darkover®, the newest Darkover anthology, will be released in May 2016. You can pre-order it at Amazon (and it will be available at other outlets soon). Here’s a contributor interview to whet your appetite!
Marion Zimmer Bradley’s beloved world of Darkover encompasses many realms, from glacier-shrouded mountains to arid wastelands, from ancient kingdoms to space-faring empires. Now this all-new anthology welcomes old friends and new fans to explore these landscapes of time and place, history and imagination.


Leslie Fish says she learned to sing and to read at a very young age, playing guitar at sixteen, and writing the first of hundreds of songs shortly thereafter, including settings of Rudyard Kipling's poetry and the “all-time most notorious” Star Trek filksong ever written: “Banned From Argo”. She’s recorded a number of albums and composed songs, both alone and collaborative, on albums from every major filk label. She was elected to the Filk Hall Of Fame as one of the first inductees. In college, she majored in English and minoring in psychology, protest and politics, joined the Industrial Workers of the World, and did psychology counseling for veterans. Her other jobs included railroad yard clerk, go-go dancer, and social worker. She currently lives in Arizona with her husband Rasty and a variable number of cats, which she breeds for intelligence.

Deborah J. Ross: When and why did you begin writing?
Leslie Fish: As soon as I learned to write, I started writing stories, jokes, songs, poems, anything I could put on paper. I'd always loved storytelling, and writing was a way of preserving a story, plain and simple.

DJR: Tell us about your introduction to Darkover.
LF: I was poking through a local bookstore and came across The Sword of Aldones in paperback -- and I was hooked.

DJR: What about the world or its inhabitants drew you in?
LF: I was fascinated with the idea of a society of psychics, complete with a technology of psionics.  And of course there were all the other fascinating intelligent beings on the planet.

DJR: What do you see as the future of Darkover?
LF: Expanding!  My latest story is about one of the native non-human(?) species plotting and politicking to survive and succeed in the aftermath of the Terran Empire.  I can imagine countless tales about the human and non-human Darkovans dealing with that future.



DJR: Is there another story you would particularly like to write?
LF: Oh yes, and I'm outlining it right now.

DJR: What inspired your story in Realms of Darkover?
LF: Would you believe, its roots are in the very first Darkover novel I ever read?  Even with the Terran authority gone, Darkover isn't an isolated world; it has neighbors, and used to have trade with them.  Any consideration of Darkover's future would have to deal with them.

DJR: What have you written recently? What lies ahead?
LF: I have a novella -- "Revocare" -- out at Smashwords, and soon to be elsewhere too.  After that, I'm looking forward to the reissue -- and better marketing, I hope -- of my fantasy novel, Of Elven Blood.  And of course I'm working on another Darkover story.

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