Interview: Deborah and Northlight

Blogger "Cookie's Mom" interviewed me about Northlight here. She asked questions no one had ever posed before, and I had a great time talking about the characters and the history of the book.

Here's what I said about Kardith, who's got to be one of my all-time favorite characters:

I'd written a bunch of strong, competent women in my stories for Sword & Sorceress (ed. Marion Zimmer Bradley) and I'd spent a fair amount of time hanging around with other women martial artists. In the '80s and '90s, there was this amazing network of women writers who also practiced martial arts. I didn't base Kardith on any one person, but I did learn about how women make their way in a man's world (the dojo, the physics laboratory, etc.). But characters who are always strong get boring quickly, and from the first, I realized there must be something really dark in Kardith's past life to make her so unafraid of physical risk. What's the opposite of physical risk? Emotional risk. And why would she be so terrified of it... ?

Enjoy!