Today's Moment of Art

The Glen, by Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966)

Autumn 2018 Newsletter

Deborah's Autumn 2018 Newsletter (from the redwoods) (to view or subscribe, go here: It’s a beautiful autumn here in the redwoods, a time of reflection and appreciation for the richness of life. (This is a longish letter, so look for the three dots on the lower left that mean [More].)

Publishing News I’ve begun the process of bringing out print editions of my short fiction collections, previously available only as ebooks. With my usual trepidation, I set up an account, carefully noted the code for the discount, and uploaded the files. To my dismay, I got a series of error messages in red letters. The result was overwhelming paralysis. It was hard enough to get this far and make all these check-the-box decisions, but then to be told the this or the that didn’t meet their requirements and the results would be dreadful, was more than I could cope with. I saved the draft, signed off, and binge-watched Grey’s Anatomy for the evening. The next day I returned to the fray, determined to “do science” and investigate just what they meant by “inferior results.” I ordered a proof copy.   The proof arrived promptly. All the aspects the website got so upset about turned out just as polished and crisp as anything out of a traditional publisher. The interior in particular is elegant and easy to read. With the matte cover finish, the book has an exquisite “hand feel.” Plus…I did it myself. Well, with a lot of help from my friends, which is why you’ll see the BVC logo on cover and interior. Plus…you can order it through your favorite bookstore as well as online vendors. Or here, through the BVC links. Isn’t that nifty? Over the next months, moving at the speed of volunteers, I plan to release print editions of my other collections. I have some exciting brand-new projects in the works, too, and those will come out in print and electronic editions simultaneously. Read more about my adventure here.

A Few Thoughts on Technology and Transitions In my personal life, my younger daughter graduated from medical school in May, which occasioned a cross-country trip for the rest of the family to celebrate with her. She’s begun her residency in Family Medicine at a (more or less) local hospital but has warned me that I likely won’t see her for the next 3 years. It’s always amazing and heartening how much inspiration we can draw from the next generation, whether they are our own children or someone else’s. My daughter dragged me, kicking and screaming, into the world of social media, into getting my first stupidphone, and into video chatting (during her medical school years). Now these technologies are part of my everyday and work life. I think it’s good to keep learning new things, to use our minds and bodies in different ways. One of the challenges of these new computer-based technologies is that they require us to use different methods of thought. The transition, for example, from keyboard-based word processing programs (like WordStar for DOS, the one I first used) to graphics-based (Windows) programs entailed a different logic and hand coordination. And both of them are a far cry from the old typewriter.

Sword and Sorceress 33 Author Interviews: Pauline J. Alama

Enter a wondrous universe…the latest volume of Sword and Sorceress, featuring stories from new and seasoned authors. Herein you will find tales of fantasy with strong female characters, with some version of either martial skill or magic. Not all the protagonists will be human, and sometimes the magic will take highly original forms, but the emotional satisfaction in each story and in the anthology as a whole, remains true to the original vision. The release date will be November 2, 2018.

ePub: https://www.books2read.com/u/b62gG6

Kindle: https://amzn.to/2NitlHH

Deborah J. Ross: Tell us a little about yourself.  How did you come to be a writer?

Pauline J. Alama: I had great teachers.  My second-grade teacher, Mrs. Dorothy Mutch, assigned a lot of creative writing, which led me to the life-changing discovery that writing stories was like playing pretend, except better, because I got to keep my pretend game, show it to other people, sometimes even see it light them up the way it lit me up to create it. What could be better than that?

DJR: What inspired your story in Sword and Sorceress 33?

PJA: I love the ocean, so I decided that was where my sword-and-sorcery buddies Ursula and Isabeau should go next. I think I also had in mind a poem by James Joyce that I sort of vaguely remembered, “I Hear an Army,” with images of riders coming up out of the sea. Now I look back at the poem and I think I may have misunderstood it as well as misremembering it, but that’s all right: I gathered what I needed from it, like a bee from a flower. Sometimes only half-remembering a source is best for creativity. The landscape of the story is partly Rhode Island, where I spent some time musing over different forms of seaweed, and partly Normandy, where I visited Arromanches, one of the D-Day beaches, walking barefoot in the sand beside my history teacher husband, listening to him talk about a very different sort of army coming out of the sea.

CITADELS OF DARKOVER Table of Contents

I've completed the lineup for the next Darkover anthology, Citadels of Darkover, and here it is, a banquet of delicious stories featuring fortresses of the heart as well as those constructed of stone. Release date is next May, but I'll be posting author interviews and the cover reveal as we go along.

DANCING LESSONS

By Evey Brett

SACRIFICE

By Steven Harper

BANSHEE CRY

By Marella Sands

THE KATANA MATRIX

By Lillian Csernica

SIEGE

By Diana L. Paxson

SEA-CASTLE

By Leslie Fish

FIRE STORM

By Jane M. H. Bigelow

THE DRAGON HUNTER

By Robin Rowland

FISH NOR FOWL

By Rebecca Fox

DARK AS DAWN

By Robin Wayne Bailey

CITADEL OF FEAR

By Barb Caffrey

THE JUDGMENT OF WIDOWS

By Shariann Lewitt

Today's Moment of Art

Une Fenêtre, by Jacquelyn Bishak

Herpes, PTSD, Organ Transplant Rejection, and Stars: Short Science Articles

How to make organ transplants last: New approaches try to train the body to welcome the replacement parts

A discussion of various strategies to prevent rejection in transplanted organs: 

Because transplanted skin has a high likelihood of provoking an immune attack, researchers were skeptical that faces or extremities could be transplanted, Cameron says. But people who have gotten face and hand transplants have needed surprisingly few drugs to minimize rejection. A recipient gets a bit of a donor’s immune system, in the form of blood-producing bone marrow stem cells within the donor’s jaw, hand or arm bones.

No one knows which, if any, of these approaches will free transplant recipients to live without fear of rejection. None of the techniques has been vetted enough yet, and none has worked for everyone, Luo points out. Each patient may need a different strategy or a combination of rejection-soothing therapies. Researchers need to push ahead on all fronts and not be afraid to explore other strategies, she says: At this stage of research, “we just cannot be … fixated on one idea.”

The Cat's Eye Nebula

Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Planetary nebulae have long been appreciated as a final phase in the life of a sun-like star. But only more recently have some planetaries been found to have halos like this one, likely formed of material shrugged off during earlier active episodes in the star's evolution. While the planetary nebula phase is thought to last for around 10,000 years, astronomers estimate the outer filamentary portions of this halo to be 50,000 to 90,000 years old.

Sword and Sorceress 33 Author Interviews: Margaret L. Carter

Enter a wondrous universe…the latest volume of Sword and Sorceress, featuring stories from new and seasoned authors. Herein you will find tales of fantasy with strong female characters, with some version of either martial skill or magic. Not all the protagonists will be human, and sometimes the magic will take highly original forms, but the emotional satisfaction in each story and in the anthology as a whole, remains true to the original vision. The release date will be November 2, 2018.

ePub: https://www.books2read.com/u/b62gG6

Kindle: https://amzn.to/2NitlHH

Deborah J. Ross: Tell us a little about yourself.  How did you come to be a writer?

Margaret L. Carter: Reading Dracula at the age of twelve lured me into classic horror, then fantasy and “soft” science fiction. Especially in the horror genre, I read everything I could find, mainly in the public library, because I didn’t have much money for books at that age. I started writing to get more of the kinds of stories I wanted to read. I particularly wanted fiction sympathetic to or from the viewpoint of the “monster.” Those stories were hard to find in the 1960s, so I created my own. My first publications, in my early twenties, were a pair of horror anthologies I edited, Curse of the Undead and Demon Lovers and Strange Seductions (which go to show how much easier it was to break into mass market paperback at that time than it is now). Soon afterward, I wrote a book on vampirism in literature, which was released by an obscure small press, the first non-subsidy publisher I could find to accept it, not a good experience overall. My first professional fiction sale was a story in a Marion Zimmer Bradley anthology, Free Amazons of Darkover!

No Book Review Today, So Here Are Some Stars...

Globular star clusters are collections of stars arranged in a roughly spherical shape because they're so tightly bound by gravity. They're some of the oldest astronomical objects known.

The dense globular cluster M15 is one of about 170 globular star clusters that still roam the halo of the Milky Way and is about 13 billion years old. Hubble-based measurements of the increasing velocities of M15's central stars are evidence that a massive black hole resides at the center of dense globular cluster M15.

Image Credit & Copyright: Bernhard Hubl (CEDIC)

Today's Moment of Art

Winter Sunrise, by Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966)

Auntie Deborah on Fanfic and Creativity

A young writer asks, "Will writing fanfic ruin my creativity? Is it a good place to start my writing career?"

Auntie Deborah answers:

Your question reminds me of a panel I was on some years ago, all of us pro writers with significant trad pub cred, and all of us appreciating the role of fanfic (both the fanfic we wrote, read, and was about our own work). I think fanfic is neither here nor there in terms of being a career path on its own. I would never instruct an aspiring writer to write fanfic instead of original work. At the same time, I would never tell a young writer to not write fanfic if that is what they really want to do. (Just don’t try to sell it or you will run afoul of the copyright holder’s attorneys!)

At its best, fanfic is the equivalent a love letter to the creators of the world and characters. It arises from the joy you feel in that particular world. But more than that, it’s a way to begin writing, to get in touch with that inner wellspring of words and scenes and characters. The important thing is to write and write and write until you find your own stories. That may mean following the fanfic plot lines as they morph into something quite different from the original (be sure to file all the serial numbers off) or setting aside fanfic in favor of something that’s original from the onset.

As for ruining creativity, I think that’s nonsense. No one really understands what that is, anyway. Most stories are riffs on others, perhaps dreams based on childhood bedtime stories, bits of visual imagery, ways other works have stayed with us and become mushed up in different combinations in our minds. I think the most important way to cultivate creativity is to let your imagination follow what delights you. Follow your passion, as Joseph Campbell advised. If that’s into the world of Star Trek or Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings, just notice what parts are the most wonderful to you. Pay attention to what’s the coolest thing that might happen next — that’s where your creativity will be most nourished and where you will discover your authentic voice.

Thanks to Nina Kiriki Hoffman for the photo.

Sword and Sorceress 33 Author Interviews: Evey Brett

Enter a wondrous universe…the latest volume of Sword and Sorceress featuring stories from new and seasoned authors. Herein you will find tales of fantasy with strong female characters, with some version of either martial skill or magic. Not all the protagonists will be human, and sometimes the magic will take highly original forms, but the emotional satisfaction in each story and in the anthology as a whole, remains true to the original vision. The release date will be November 2, 2018.

ePub: https://www.books2read.com/u/b62gG6

Kindle: https://amzn.to/2NitlHH

Deborah J. Ross: Tell us a little about yourself.  How did you come to be a writer?

Evey Brett: I wrote stories when I was a kid and through high school, then I went to music school and stopped reading or writing anything that wasn’t college-related. Toward the end of my degree, I was having a hard time with music and needed a different creative outlet, so I started writing a bit of fan fiction. My first trunk novel started as a Star Trek TNG/DS9 crossover. I soon realized that would never sell, so I transposed the plot into a fantasy world and went to the library for writing books so I could learn how to write better. I took some community college classes with some very good writing teachers, and got into Clarion, and eventually started selling stories.

DJR: What inspired your story in Sword and Sorceress 33?

EB: I actually wrote this story for a different editor who asked for something from me but eventually turned it down. Since then it’s been through a couple overhauls and I’m glad it found a home.

Author Interview: Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff on The Antiquities Hunter

From New York Times bestselling author Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, a new private detective series featuring Gina “Tinkerbell” Miyoko, who goes undercover in the Mexican jungle to hunt down a ring of thieves responsible for looting pre-Columbian archaeology sites. Here I chat with Maya about her latest book.

Deborah J. Ross: How did you come up with Gina S. Miyoko?

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff: I honestly don’t remember except that she arose from a dream I had, the plot of which (yes, my dreams often have plots) I don’t remember. I knew I wanted to write her as the protagonist of a mystery novel, and I knew I wanted her to be different from the female P.I.s I’d read. I love mystery and crime fiction but I noticed that all the female protagonists were alienated and broken and party to dysfunctional relationships. I wanted Gina to be flawed and have enough pain in her life to be relatable, but I also wanted her to be part of a very functional, if quirky family and support network. Among the Japanese names I was considering, Gina Suzu Miyoko meant, “Silver Bell Temple;” Tinkerbell became an inevitable nickname. And her personality just grew out of that.

DR: And Russian Orthodox witches?

MKB: Around the time I was developing Gina and the characters that would surround her, I was reading a book entitled THE BATHHOUSE AT MIDNIGHT: An Historical Survey of Magic and Divination in Russia (WF Ryan). I was reading it because the novel I was working on at the time (MAGIC TIME: ANGELFIRE, from Harper-Voyager) had a Russian ex-pat as one of the central characters. Okay, and also I’m Russian-Polish on my father’s side and have been fascinated with the folklore and history of Slavic culture since I was a child. Probably more so because my grandmother was so adamant that I not be taught anything about the Old Country but be brought up thoroughly American. In any event, the book sparked the idea that I wanted Gina’s mother to be Russian and fascinated by arcana. She was originally going to be a psychologist, but by the time I started writing the book that became THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER, she had morphed into a cultural anthropologist and folklorist.

As tends to happen with these things, as I began to write the characters, they essentially told me who they were.  I’m sure you know the feeling—as if the character is inside your head whispering sweet somethings to your Muse.

Sword and Sorceress 33 Author Interviews: Lorie Calkins

Enter a wondrous universe…the latest volume of Sword and Sorceress, featuring stories from new and seasoned authors. Herein you will find tales of fantasy with strong female characters, with some version of either martial skill or magic. Not all the protagonists will be human, and sometimes the magic will take highly original forms, but the emotional satisfaction in each story and in the anthology as a whole, remains true to the original vision. The release date will be November 2, 2018.

ePub: https://www.books2read.com/u/b62gG6

Kindle: https://amzn.to/2NitlHH

Deborah J. Ross: Tell us a little about yourself. How did you come to be a writer?

Lorie Calkins: I’ve been writing since I was about three. I would scribble in a blank notebook, trying to make lines that looked like my parents’ handwriting.Then I’d “read” it back and tell my stuffed animals what the “story” said. Sure wish I had recorded those tales in a more reproducible manner. My stuffed animals thought they were Really Good.

The writing comes pretty easily for me, actually. The two things that are absolute hell for me are determining whether the stuff I wrote is worth showing to anyone,and trying to sell it.

 DJR: What inspired your story in Sword and Sorceress 33?

 LC: I like to turn things inside out and see what color the lining is. You never know what you’ll find. Fairy tales are fun like that, because everyone already thinks they know how the story goes.

Short Book Reviews: Imagination as a Super Power

More wonderful Middle Grade reading...

The Marvelous Adventures of Gwendolyn Gray, by B. A. Williamson (Jolly Fish) 

This delightful adventure crosses worlds of imagination with a singularly creative young heroine. At times the settings reminded me of A Wrinkle in Time, Kidnapped, Peter Pan, and The Never-Ending Story, to name a few. Humor tempers the seriously creepy villains, and the dramatic story moves right along with more than its share of twists and turns. Gwendolyn Gray is not only a resourceful and sympathetic heroine, but someone I would have loved to play with as a child. My only reservation about the book concerns the audience, since Gwendolyn is adolescent, but the length of the book and the complexity of the world place it more in the YA/teen niche. Regardless, I look forward to more imagination-fueled adventures.

Today's Moment of Art

 Mountain and Falls, California, by Albertus Del Orient Browere (1814 – 1887)

NORTHLIGHT on sale, this week only!

 October 2-8, 2018, Nortlight in multi-format ebook edition from Book View Cafe for only $1.50.

She’s a Ranger, a wild and savvy knife-fighter, determined to get help in finding her partner who’s lost on the treacherous northern border. He’s a scholar who sees visions, eager to escape the confines of city life and the shadow of his charismatic mother. With the assassination of a beloved leader and the city in turmoil, the two have only each other to turn to. What begins as a rescue mission turns deadly as together they unravel the secret that lies beneath Laurea’s idyllic surface.

REVIEWS

“A beautifully constructed fantasy with characters who grow and mature before the reader’s eyes and who are engagingly human while being fantastically heroic. Her writing flows and the point of view switches are interesting and exciting. This book is a keeper.” — Rickey Mallory, Affair de Coeur

“A style and manner reminiscent of McCaffrey’s Crystal Singer series.” — The Bookwatch

“An unusual saga that starts slowly but builds to a startling climax.” — Sherry S. Hoy, Kliatt

“Solid characters and a well-designed world make for good reading.” — Philadelphia Press

“The plot moves briskly from crisis in Laureal to capture by the Norther barbarians to discovery of the true meaning of the Northlight of the title, with ample foreshadowing from the mysterious spooky something in the air of the frontier. And the culmination quite satisfactorily evokes the sense of wonder.” –Tom Easton, Analog

Sword and Sorceress 33 Author Interviews: Jessie Eaker

Enter a wondrous universe…the latest volume of Sword and Sorceress, featuring stories from new and seasoned authors. Herein you will find tales of fantasy with strong female characters, with some version of either martial skill or magic. Not all the protagonists will be human, and sometimes the magic will take highly original forms, but the emotional satisfaction in each story and in the anthology as a whole, remains true to the original vision. The release date will be November 2, 2018.

ePub: https://www.books2read.com/u/b62gG6

Kindle: https://amzn.to/2NitlHH

Deborah J. Ross: Tell us a little about yourself.  How did you come to be a writer?

Jessie Eaker: When I was in elementary school, I would painstakingly write out my thoughts and stories, along with accompanying illustrations, and keep them in a special binder which I fantasized about publishing.  I loved making up stories about rockets, robots and dragons.  (I didn't much care for unicorns--they were too hard to draw.)  When I hit middle school and on into high school, I entered what I now consider my great input phase--I read everything I could get my hands on.  And out of that I began to craft my first stories.  But as fate would have it, one of my high school English teachers gave a very harsh criticism of one of my works.   I was devastated--my fantasy of being published evaporating in a moment.  But then I got angry.  My story couldn't be that bad.  I resolved right then and there that I was going to prove to that I could be a published author.   Of course, it took me another fifteen years to actually develop enough to pull it off.

DJR: What inspired your story in Sword and Sorceress 33?

JE: "All In a Name" was inspired by my youngest daughter's pregnancy and their search for a suitable name for the baby.While they offered us hints as to what it might be, she and her husband had decided they would keep the name secret until the baby was born.  It nearly drove us crazy not knowing and we feared it would be some off-the-wall name that would permanently scar the child.