Citadels of Darkover Author Interview: Marella Sands

Coming in May 2019

Strongholds of rock . . . fortresses of the spirit . . . a planet set apart . . .

Citadels can be psychic, emotional, and cultural as well as military, and the wonderfully imaginative contributors to this volume have taken the basic idea and spun out stories in different and often unexpected directions.

Pre-order it at:
ePub https://books2read.com/u/4XRR0N
Kindle https://amzn.to/2TmBBW0

Here I chat with contributor Marella Sands:

Deborah J. Ross: Were there any pivotal moments in your literary journey?

Marella Sands: I think finding my writers group was the biggest single thing that happened that changed everything. I had no idea how to edit myself or how to write decent description before I found other writers willing to train me up. My first three novels got the same reaction from the group: the first one hundred pages are boring! Oops! I rewrote a lot of beginnings back then. I took the critiques, rewrote and rewrote and rewrote, and made myself better. My first sale happened within eight months of joining the group. That was in 1991. Yes, we still are together and I'm still a member.

DJR: What inspired your story in Citadels of Darkover?

MS: This story grew out of a desire to feature banshees, horses, and arranged marriages in the same tale, partly because I have always been intrigued by the banshees of Darkover. 

I think the idea of arranged marriages intrigues a lot of people since they're not normally a part of our everyday lives. Also, I've always been interested in the banshees. They're blind, have glow-in-the-dark beaks...and are apparently really, really scary. I wanted to see them up close.

 The first book I read was Hawkmistress, and I was blown away by the world and, of course, Romilly. Subsequently, it has seemed like I can't get over/around a love for the Ages of Chaos/Hundred Kingdoms eras, so my stories tend to be set then. For my Citadels story, I wanted to set a story at Falconsward in a time just maybe a hundred years or so earlier than Hawkmistress. Maybe that's close as I (and my characters) will come to meeting my Darkover hero.

DJR: Is there another Darkover story you would particularly like to write?

MS: I'm fascinated with the Ages of Chaos. There are so many stories that could be told about those times! Because...chaos, right? Clingfire, bone dust, genetic experimentation and breeding programs. The development of the Towers and horrific uses of psionics. There's so much to tap into. I still want to get to a story set in one of the Towers. There's a line in, I think, Two to Conquer (not sure at this point), about the ancient tower keepers creating monsters back in the early days.

DJR: What have you written recently? What is your favorite of your published works and why?

MS: I think I am most proud of my anthology Restless Bones because I tried to stretch myself in ways I hadn't before.

DJR: What lies ahead for you?

MS: I sold a book to Ring of Fire Press and it should be out in late 2018. It's

called Perdition, and it's an alternate history about a United States that broke into pieces during the Civil War and never got put back together. It's from an idea Mark Sumner and I had twenty years ago. Back then, we developed the idea into a screenplay that was briefly considered by Turner Pictures before they decided not to buy. Now, it's a novel.

I'm currently working on a sequel to my book Perdition, which was published by Ring of Fire Press in November 2018. 

The books take place in an alternate US where the country split into several countries after the Civil War. Fellow author Mark Sumner and I created the world 25 years ago but I'm not getting a good chance to play it in until now. One of Mark's original ideas was to show how no one really "won" the war when everything broke down after the McClellan-Davis Accord of 1865. For instance, the Union (or what's left of it) seems quite technologically superior and everyone is (ideally) equal but it's run as a security state where people are encouraged to turn in "collaborators." The niftiest tech is in the hands of the government and is used to spy on its own citizens. In the southeast, security's not such an overpowering issue, slavery was done away with in the 19th century, and there are lots of economic ties with places like Europe. But minorities have been marginalized into their own neighborhoods and can't vote in state or federal elections (and only got the right to vote in local elections fairly recently). So, there's a lot to work with in terms of looking at social issues from different points of view.

Currently, Marella Sands is at work rewriting a novel that is straight fiction with no fantastical elements. She is ready to schedule a yellow fever vaccination so that she can travel to Ghana, and is working on developing a moderate command of Twi so that she can talk to the locals in Accra in something besides English. Her new cat is named in Twi: Afia is the name given to females born (or, in this case, adopted) on a Friday. Marella's Twi name would be Akosua, as she was born on a Sunday.