Citadels of Darkover - Print Edition!

Citadels of Darkover has been officially released, which means the print edition is available here.

Reviews most welcome.

Citadels of Darkover Author Interview: Barb Caffrey

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 Barb Caffrey:

Deborah J. Ross: How did you become a writer?

Barb Caffrey: When I was very young, I started writing. I don't remember exactly when, either; I do remember that my first try at a really elaborate story was when I was eleven years old. I wrote about the first ball girl at Milwaukee County Stadium (then the home of the Milwaukee Brewers); at the time, there were no ball girls, just ball boys, and that annoyed me. But because I felt, even at eleven, that the boys wouldn't like it if the girls got to play along with 'em, my female character pretended to be a young boy. And was found out...but another of the boys liked her, and kept her secrets.

I wish I still had that story...ahem.

Anyway, I also wrote poetry, a few SF stories, and some Star Trek pastiches when I was in high school. I enjoyed it, but at the time my focus was on music; I never thought this would end up my career, and the music a sidelight, but life is what it is. (And I'd not have it any other way.)

DJR: What authors inspired you?

BC: There were so many, growing up. Probably the first writer I read a lot from was Poul Anderson; our junior high library had a lot of his books, and I found them amusing. (I did not take Dominic Flandry seriously, but I enjoyed his adventures. Had I been a bit older, I might've been alarmed by Flandry's misogyny, or at least by his cynicism. But I've always had a soft spot for him.) Then I read Andre Norton, and was so pleased to find out Andre was a woman...then, when I was in high school, I remember reading several of Marion Zimmer Bradley's books, mostly the juveniles (we'd definitely now call 'em YA), including the romance between Andrew Carr and his eventual wife, Callista.

I returned to Darkover again and again, because I found it to be such an interesting world. 

Then I found The Shattered Chain, and I was riveted. The structure. The style. The story!

Best of all, I got to meet three strong women in Lady Rohana, Terran Magda Lorne, and Jaelle n'ha Melora. And I loved 'em all, and could see at least a little of myself reflected in all...no matter what choices they made, they knew they had to make them consciously, as best they could. And the idea of conscious choice was new to me, so I wanted to know more.

Anyway, more contemporary writers who've definitely made an impact include Rosemary Edghill, Katharine Eliska Kimbriel, and of course my late husband, writer Michael B. Caffrey. Without all three of them, I would not be the writer I am today.

Citadels of Darkover Author Interviews: Lillian Csernica

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.

Here I chat with contributor Lillian Csernica:

Pre-order it at:

ePub https://books2read.com/u/4XRR0N

Kindle https://amzn.to/2TmBBW0

Deborah J. Ross: How did you become a writer?

Lillian Csernica: As far back as I can remember, I've always loved stories. I still have the copy of the Little Golden Book of Fairy Tales my mother gave me when I was in kindergarten. In elementary school we made our own books. Like many writers, I spent a lot of my childhood at the library. Stories have always been important to me, both for the reading and the writing.

DJR: What authors inspired you?

LC: Ray Bradbury, Tanith Lee, Harlan Ellison, and Agatha Christie, among others.

DJR: Were there any pivotal moments in your literary journey?

LC: My first short story sale, Fallen Idol, made it into DAW's The Year's Best Horror Stories XX. The sale of my pirate romance, Ship of Dreams, was a major career milestone. The Treehouse Writers Group, the folks behind the Clockwork Alchemy steampunk convention, invited me to contribute to their convention anthologies. We're currently in production on the fourth anthology in the series. Writing steampunk has opened my eyes to the wonders of combining science and fantasy.

Citadels of Darkover Author Interview: Robin Rowland

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 Robin Rowland:

Deborah J. Ross: How did you become a writer?

Robin Rowland: When I was in Grade 2, our teacher told us one day to write a two foolscap page short story.  I wrote a sequel to a Tarzan comic I had been reading.  After class the teacher told me it was one of the best in the class and that I should be a writer. I took her advice.

DJR: What authors inspired you?

RR: Fiction authors who have inspired me are Rosemary Sutcliff, Andre Norton, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Robert A. Heinlein.   In narrative non-fiction the authors who inspired me are Barbara Tuchman, Mark Bowden and Catherine Drinker Bowen.

DJR: What about the world drew you in?

RR:  I grew up  in the mountainous coast of British Columbia in a small town called Kitimat.  In a local First Nations (Native Canadian) language Kitimat means “people of the snow.” The valley is at the end of an 80 kilometer fjord  from the Pacific Ocean that has a unique micro climate. Four times we’ve had a record one day snowfall for all of Canada. The weather can change to warm to wet in a half hour.  Winters can see snow up to the roof of a two story ranch style house or  sometimes so little snow I only use a half jug of snow melter. Summers can either be dreary, overcast and wet or warm to sunny and very hot with the occasional drought.   So for me, that unique micro climate of  the Kitimat valley is perhaps the closest thing on Terra to Darkover. 

DJR: Tell us about your introduction to Darkover.

RR: My family moved to Toronto when I was fifteen.  As my only income at the time was an allowance, I haunted a huge used book store in downtown Toronto called “Old Favourites”  which had a large science fiction section.  I bought Star of Danger, the boys were my own age and the description of Darkover made the planet sound like the home town I had just left.  I kept buying Darkover books, first used and then when I got after school jobs, new releases from a variety store near my home which always stocked with a lot of science fiction in the late 1960s.  What convinced me that I loved the planet was Darkover Landfall, which again, reminded me of Kitimat.

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.

Citadels of Darkover Author Interview: Leslie Fish

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 Leslie Fish:

Deborah J. Ross: How did you become a writer?

Leslie Fish: I've always been an avid reader and storyteller, famous in summer camp for my long list of memorized "ghost stories".  The next step was inventing my own stories, and then writing them down.  

DJR: What authors inspired you?

LF: Wow, where do I start?  H. P. Lovecraft, Robert Bloch, the Sci-Fi greats: Bradbury, Bradley, Brackett, Asimov, Heinlein, Sturgeon, Ellison, and too many more to count. 

DJR: Were there any pivotal moments in your literary journey?

LF: My first professionally published story, a crime-tale with a twist, published in a short-lived pulp crime magazine.  Once I knew I could actually publish my stories, there was no stopping me.  And then there was the great assist I got from C. J. Cherryh, who invited me to write in her "Merovingian Nights" series.  And of course my invitation to come romp in the "Darkover" universe.  I treasure them all.  

DJR: Tell us about your introduction to Darkover.

LF: While I was in college I spent my time studying, protesting, attending folkmusic concerts, and reading Science Fiction books, which I mostly found at the corner bookstore down the street from my dorm.  One day I went in to search the paper-back book kiosk and came across a new one: an Ace Double with "The Planet Savers" on one side and "The Sword of Aldones" on the other.  One read, and I was hooked forevermore.

Citadels of Darkover Author Interview: Steven Harper

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 Steven Harper:

Deborah J. Ross: How did you become a writer?
Steven Harper: I started writing when I was nine years old because the library didn't have any of the kinds of books I wanted to read.  I set out to write them myself.  That's still how I operate!

DJR: Were there any pivotal moments in your literary journey?
SH: I made my first pro sale when I was thirteen.  That was pretty pivotal!  I wrote a letter to the editor of The Mother Earth News, which was a major international magazine at the time.  I included my age with my signature, and the editor wrote back to say he could see that I could write and that I could type.  Apparently both were equally important.  If I wanted, I could query him about writing an actual article.  I was raising rabbits at the time, so I wrote a query letter on that topic.  When he wrote back to say he'd like to see the entire article, I was ecstatic--jumping and shouting all the way back from the mailbox.  It took me a month to write the article, and the editor finally sent an acceptance letter.  I remember finding it in the mailbox and reading it with a, "Well, that's nice" frame of mind, and I didn't understand why my parents were so thrilled.  I had somehow gotten the idea that the go-ahead on the query was the actual sale.  I didn't know back then that the getting the go-ahead on a query was actually the easy part.  Selling the piece is the hard part!

DJR: Tell us about your introduction to Darkover.
SH: I didn't come to Darkover through the novels, believe it or not.  I came to it through the anthologies.  I read maybe two or three of the anthologies before I got around to looking up the original books.  As a result, Darkover in my mind is always a place for short stories.  It may be why I come with story-length ideas for the place.

DJR: What about the world drew you in?
SH: I've always been drawn to men with red hair.  Make of that what you like.  So a world ruled by redheaded men sounds pretty awesome to me!

Citadels of Darkover Author Interview: Evey Brett

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 Evey Brett:

Deborah J. Ross: How did you become a writer?

Evey Brett: I was a music major in college, and toward the end I got to a point where I couldn’t play a whole note without freaking out and needed a creative outlet, one that wasn’t noisy. I’d always liked writing stories and had written several as a kid and teen, so writing stories as an adult came easily enough. I started with some fan fiction and realized I could never sell it, so I started going to the library and picking up books on writing so I could learn to write in an original world. I took some classes at a community college, got accepted into the Clarion writer’s workshop, and my career picked up from there.

DJR: Were there any pivotal moments in your literary journey?

EB: There are a few. I went to a very good writer’s program at a community college in San Diego, and was a little stunned when one of the teachers told me my story was good. That gave me the confidence to keep writing. There was going to Clarion, of course, and I believe it was the next summer when WesterCon came to San Diego and I met Deborah J. Ross, and we bonded over Darkover, and I’m so glad I was able to write three stories in a world that meant so much to me.

DJR: Tell us about your introduction to Darkover.

EB: Back in 2002 when I was just out of college, I got a job working retail at a now-extinct Foley's department store in a mall. There was a Waldenbooks right across from the store, so I'd often go get a book and settle down in a comfy chair somewhere in the mall to eat my lunch and read. One day I was looking for a new book and picked up The Fall of Neskaya, and I was hooked. Fortunately for me (and the bookstore) they had several other Darkover novels as well.

DJR: What about the world drew you in?

EB: I'm a sucker for stories with telepaths and damaged characters. I'd gone through a number of Mercedes Lackey's books, so finding Darkover gave me a whole new world with a sizeable canon to explore. Having just read the back of The Fall of Neskaya, I'd still pick it up to read because it's got everything I want--telepaths, power, gifts, a tormented character with a secret he can't reveal.

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