Cover - The Seven-Petaled Shield

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

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.

The Feathered Edge: Desire and Demons in Renaissance Florence

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. to The Feathered Edge.



Italy has some of the most romantic and mysterious cities in the world, and I was delighted when Jay Lake and Shannon Page sent me a story set in the Renaissance Florence.

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.

Deborah Discovers Darkover

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.

SPECIAL: Jaydium - Revising a False Start

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:

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

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. to The Feathered Edge.

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.

Meeting Marion, Part 2

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. 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.

Jaydium - Epilog

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.

The Feathered Edge essays: History and Feathers

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.

Meeting Marion. Part 1

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. Senior author-junior author dual-bylines are not unusual these days, but each partnership has its own story. In this case, the answer centers around our long-established professional relationship. That in itself would be insufficient to produce a smooth collaboration, but it was how she knew my natural literary voice would match hers and why she trusted my understanding and love for her special world. In addition, I had respectable publication credentials in my own right, both novels and short fiction, and was not using the collaboration to establish my career; I was already a working professional writer.

To begin with, I met Marion by writing her a letter. This was back in 1980 and I had no idea fandom existed, but I felt so moved by her work that I wanted to let her know. Having been on the receiving end of such letters, I now appreciate what a thrill they are for an author. We hurl our creations into the void, send our literary children forth without any clue as to where they will end up; to learn that we have touched the hearts of our readers or helped them through a difficult time is wonderful beyond words.

Marion wrote back, three pages of single-spaced typewriting. At the time, she was on the Grievance Committee of SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America, as it was then) and used the official stationery. I now appreciate the prudence of that step, knowing the volume of fan mail she received over the years and her sad experiences of theft and exploitation by people she reached out to. We began a cautious correspondence, although I must confess to a certain giddiness that my favorite author had taken the care to write to me.

Jaydium - Chapter 36

JAYDIUM

by Deborah J. Ross, writing as Deborah Wheeler

Chapter 36

Duvach left them at the entrance to the laboratory. Kithri followed the two men into the eerily shadowed room, blinking as her eyes adapted to the light. Chunks of jagged underlying rock punctuated the splintered walls and therine instruments lay jumbled everywhere. It reminded her of Brianna=s laboratory after the pirates ransacked it. Brushwacker sat in an undamaged area by the far corner. Sealed incisions crossed its hull like ridges of scar tissue.

Kithri pushed Eril aside and darted for the scrubjet, leaping piles of debris. Heart pounding, she yanked the cockpit door open. The duoapparatus looked intact, the headsets stored in their holders as neatly as if she=d done it herself. Eril=s force whip lay on a stack of folded clothing. She recognized her own overalls, Lennart=s space suit and Brianna=s jumpsuit. Four pairs of boots sat in a tidy row.

Eril and Lennart came up beside her, but Kithri couldn=t move. She stared at the force whip. Less than a week ago, they=d speculated whether it could jar open the hidden door to their quarters. Brianna had protested using her precious recording films to help locate the crystal fractures, as if anyone would ever read them.

Brianna... 

Kithri took a step backwards, suddenly revolted by the scrubjet. It was nothing but a piece of metalloceramic alloy and circuitry, its surface pitted like a gnat-bitten fruit. Yet she had once abandoned three people to the space pirates in order to keep the damned thing for herself. And Brianna, who she hadn=t liked but had come to respect, Brianna had suffered the most for it. There was nothing she could do for Brianna now to make it right, nothing she would ever be able to say...

The Feathered Edge: Editing Tanith Lee, With Sword and Chameleon

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. to The Feathered Edge.

What is there to say about editing a Tanith Lee story? You sit there, holding the typewritten manuscript that she sent you, and something in your brain turns itself into total fan-girl jelly. But you already knew that.

To begin with, the first Tanith Lee story I worked on was for Lace and Blade (Norilana Books, 2008). She'd agreed to submit a story in the very early planning stages of the project, before I came onboard as editor. And it was my first gig as editor. Over the years, I'd worked with a bunch of different editors, and had ideas about what worked for me, what didn't, and how I wanted to interact with writers "from the other side of the desk." Marion Zimmer Bradley had been a role model and inspiration about how to encourage new writers. After years of participating in writer's workshops and teaching adult education classes in writing, I was all set to instruct and guide.

None of this prepared me for the experience of holding in my hands an original typewritten Tanith Lee manuscript.

The first, and most important thing, I had to do was to take off my fangirl hat and my fellow-writer hat and affix my editor hat firmly to my head. This involved an excruciating change of gears. I made mistakes. Of course, I made mistakes. (And learned how to clean them up.) I wasn't born knowing how to edit, let alone how to edit iconic authors in whose shadows I have long stood. Tanith herself encouraged me.

She wrote to me, "On editing though - like writing, I feel strongly one must do what one feels is right. In me, of course, you run into an old war-horse, 40 years in the field, covered in armour and neighing like a trumpet." Which was a most gracious way of acknowledging that the relationship between an author and an editor is an organic process, when at its best rooted in clear communication, deep listening, and respect. Not intimidation (in either direction), but a partnership in which both people have the same goal -- to make the story the best representation of the author's vision.

Writing The Children of Kings

The next Darkover book, The Children of Kings, will be released on Tuesday, March 5, from DAW Books. In answer to questions asked by many readers, I'd like to share some background on the book. In the following weeks, I'll also talk about how I met Marion, how we came to work together, and a few thoughts on "playing in her sandbox."

Marion's original concept for Darkover centered on the clash of cultures, so for this next book, I wanted to bring the Terran Federation back into the picture, but not in a nice sedate and friendly way, but in an OMG-terrible-crisis-about-to-descend-upon-us way. I also have long had a secret longing to run away to live with the chieri, and Kierestelli (Regis and Linnea's daughter, from Hastur Lord) kindly offered to take me.

Writing in the Darkover universe is very much like writing historical fiction. Marion explored so much of this world and its history that I can't "make it all up as I go along." One of the frustrating and yet exhilarating aspects of tackling a Darkover story is that Marion never let things like geography interfere with telling a good story. Although a number of fans produced maps of Darkover, she refused to endorse them, saying that she never knew when she might need to move things around. She also appreciated that Darkover had evolved as she herself had matured as a writer. In the Note From The Author for Sharra's Exile, she says,

One result of writing novels as they occurred to me, instead of following strict chronological order, was that I began with an attempt to solve the final problems of the society; each novel then suggested one laid in an earlier time, in an attempt to explain how the society had reached that point. Unfortunately, that meant that relatively mature novels, early in the chronology of Darkover, were followed by books written when I was much younger and relatively less skilled at storytelling.

Jaydium - Chapter 35

JAYDIUM

by Deborah J. Ross, writing as Deborah Wheeler

Chapter 35

The domed foyer lead to a spacious chamber, equally deserted and lined with therine. The air was cold but surprisingly fresh. The colorless light reminded Eril of times during the war when he=d gone without sleep for days, running on stimulants and adrenalin. His mouth tasted stale and metallic.

They followed the rail westward as it disappeared down a narrowing tunnel. Their footsteps, muffled by the tube socks, made faint, rustling echoes. After a short distance, Raerquel paused to run its sturdy lower tentacles along the therine-coated walls.

"What are you looking for?" Eril asked.

"Transport vehicle," the gastropoid replied. "Even shielded from above, we are not going to crawl all the way to Mountains-of-Darkness."

An oval door, truncated at floor level, slid open under Raerquel=s manipulations. A long, narrow platform glided out on to the rail. Unlike the flat transport they had used before, this one was walled on three sides and had a bullet-nosed front and a gently arching roof. 

At Raerquel=s urging, the humans climbed on board, crouching under the roof. The platform was too narrow for them to sit side by side, so they nestled in a row like spoons. It took a few minutes for everyone to get settled, first the two women, then Lennart behind them.

Eril started to climb in back, but Kithri pulled him down between her and Brianna. He lowered himself into place, his slightly bent legs on either side of hers. Her damp curls smelled of the sea. He realized he was cradling her between his knees as a co-pilot would. The dark, curving tunnel loomed in front of them.