Rebecca Fox on "Where You're Planted " in MASQUES OF DARKOVER

In the spirit of a masqued revel, here is a gala presentation of tales set in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s beloved world of the Bloody Sun. Some of these stories are humorous, others dark, some gritty, and others whimsical or romantic, but all reflect the richness and breadth of adventures to be found on Darkover.

Here I chat with the marvelous authors who have enriched the world of Darkover with their creative vision.

Masques of Darkover was released May 2, 2017 and is now available for at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and Kobo.

Rebecca (“Becky”) started writing stories when she was seven years old and hasn’t stopped since. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky with three parrots, a chestnut mare, and a Jack Russell terrier who is not-so-secretly an evil canine genius, but no flamingos, pink or otherwise. In her other life, she’s a professional biologist with an interest in bird behavior. 

Deborah J. Ross: What was your introduction to Darkover?

Rebecca Fox: I was somewhere around fourteen years old, and away at a science camp

aimed at aspiring astronomers. I was roommates with a girl with whom I’d become pretty much instant friends, and one of the things she’d brought with her was an entire pile of books (see above: nerdy teenagers). She was kind enough to loan me two of them, since I’d been a little short-sighted in the reading material department, and hadn’t brought along any of my own. One of the books was Magic’s Pawn by Mercedes Lackey; the other was Hawkmistress! I devoured both within a couple of days, since I apparently didn’t believe in sleeping at that time in my life. The loan of those two books must have been some sort of omen, because while I didn’t in fact become an astronomer (having been seduced by biology instead), I have since written stories for both Valdemar and Darkover anthologies. 

DJR: What about the world drew you in?

RF: Honestly, I’ve always been a sucker for animal stories and for plucky teenage heroines with a penchant for giving the finger to the established social order. Hawkmistress! was essentially the perfect gateway drug. As a teenager in the early ‘90s, I came for Romilly and her hawks and stayed for the magic (well, matrix sciences; same difference) and adventure. These days, as a professional academic with a taste for Le Carre, I’m in it for the politics, the culture clash between Terra and Darkover, and the tales of peripatetic scholars. Funny how tastes change over the years. Books in the vein of The Bloody Sun, which bored me to tears as a teenager, are now some of my favorites.

DJR: What do you see as the future of Darkover? How has its readership changed over the decades? What book would you recommend for someone new to Darkover?

RF: I think there are still lots of stories to be told about Darkover, since it’s not as though we’ve really dispensed with any of the issues Marion dealt with so eloquently in her novels. We’ve admittedly made progress in some areas, like women’s rights, but these days we humans here on Earth have the ability to make some pretty terrifying changes in the natural world, via techniques like gene drive, that put me rather in mind of some of the weapons from the Ages of Chaos.

As far as readership goes, of course new readers are going to keep finding the series just as my friends and I did as teenagers twenty-odd years ago. I teach at the college level, and I can tell you that despite all the dire talk about smartphones ruining the world, my students still love to read and have an appreciation for actual books. If anything, they’re more sf-mad than my generation was in the ‘90s, thanks to Harry Potter and The Hunger Games and all the Marvel movies.

Robin Wayne Bailey on "The Mountains of Light" in MASQUES OF DARKOVER

In the spirit of a masqued revel, here is a gala presentation of tales set in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s beloved world of the Bloody Sun. Some of these stories are humorous, others dark, some gritty, and others whimsical or romantic, but all reflect the richness and breadth of adventures to be found on Darkover.

Masques of Darkover was released May 2, 2017 and is now available  at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and Kobo. 

Robin Wayne Bailey is the author of numerous novels, including the Dragonkin trilogy and the Frost

series, as well as Shadowdance and the Fritz Leiber-inspired Swords Against the Shadowland. His short fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies with numerous appearances in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword And Sorceress series and Deborah J. Ross's Lace And Blade volumes. Some of his stories have been collected in two volumes, Turn Left to Tomorrow and The Fantastikon, from Yard Dog Books. He's a former two-term president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and a founder of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. He's the co-editor, along with Bryan Thomas Schmidt, of Little Green Men--Attack!

Deborah J. Ross: Tell us about your introduction to Darkover. What about the world drew you in?

Robin Wayne Bailey: I first encountered Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover world when I was a teen and, I think, working in a bookstore. I found a DAW publication of Darkover Landfall, read it and loved it. The idea of a spaceship of humans flying off the known star charts and crash-landing on another world, of surviving and building their own culture excited me. I read the next three or four books as quickly as I could get them. Unfortunately, after the publication of Stormqueen, I drifted away from the series. Yet I never parted with those early Darkover books. Later, when I met Marion, she signed them for me, and they have honored places on my bookshelves to this day.


DJR: What do you see as the future of Darkover?

RWB: I see the future of Darkover as wide-open. Marion wrote the world as dynamic, constantly undergoing conflict and change. Nor was she slavish about continuity. I’m deeply enamored of this new anthology series under Deborah Ross’s editorship, not just because I’m a regular contributor, but because she’s allowed me to fuck with some of the concepts. To me, that’s where the fun and the challenge lies. If Marion was alive and still writing Darkover novels, that world would not look the same now as it looked when she left us. She would have changed it in ways we can’t know. On the surface, it might look similar, but it would be different. That certainty informs my entire approach to writing in her world.

Evey Brett on "Only Men Dance" in MASQUES OF DARKOVER

In the spirit of a masqued revel, here is a gala presentation of tales set in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s beloved world of the Bloody Sun. Some of these stories are humorous, others dark, some gritty, and others whimsical or romantic, but all reflect the richness and breadth of adventures to be found on Darkover.

Masques of Darkover will be released May 2, 2017 and is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and Kobo. The print edition will be on sale on the release date.

While this is her first sale to a Darkover anthology, Evey Brett is no stranger to magic, especially when it comes to horses--just ask her Lipizzan mare, Carrma, who has a habit of arranging the universe to her liking. Carrma not only insisted that Evey move to southern Arizona to coddle her during her retirement, but she was also the inspiration for her books Capriole, Levade, and Passage as well as an anthology featuring supernatural horses. “None of those are based on real life,” she says. “Nope, not one.”

Deborah J. Ross: Tell us about your introduction to Darkover. 

Evey Brett: 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 of 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.  

Leslie Roy & Margaret L. Carter on "Believing" in MASQUES OF DARKOVER

In the spirit of a masqued revel, here is a gala presentation of tales set in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s beloved world of the Bloody Sun. Some of these stories are humorous, others dark, some gritty, and others whimsical or romantic, but all reflect the richness and breadth of adventures to be found on Darkover.

Masques of Darkover will be released May 2, 2017 and is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and Kobo. The print edition will be on sale on the release date.

Margaret L. Carter specializes in vampires, having been marked for life by reading Dracula at the age of twelve. Her Ph.D. dissertation even included a chapter on Dracula. Her vampire novel Dark Changeling won an Eppie Award in the horror category in 2000. Other creatures she writes about include werewolves, dragons, ghosts, and Lovecraftian entities with tentacles. In addition to her horror, fantasy, and paranormal romance fiction, she has had several nonfiction books and articles published on vampires in literature, including Different Blood: The Vampire As Alien. Recent work includes Passion In The Blood (a vampire romance), Sealing The Dark Portal (a paranormal romance with Lovecraftian elements), and “Crossing the Border” (horror erotic romance novella with Lovecraftian elements).

Les and Margaret Carter attended the College of William and Mary together as a married couple and earned their bachelors’ degrees there. Les later received an MS in Electronics Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School. He retired from the U.S. Navy as a Captain after thirty years of service. He and Margaret co-wrote “Carmen’s Flight,” published in one of the early Darkover anthologies. They have also collaborated on a fantasy series, beginning with Wild Sorceress, for which he’s the primary author. Les has over fifty years of experience in search and rescue as a member of the Civil Air Patrol. Les and Margaret have four children, eight grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

India Edghill on "The Price of Stars" in MASQUES OF DARKOVER

In the spirit of a masqued revel, here is a gala presentation of tales set in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s beloved world of the Bloody Sun. Some of these stories are humorous, others dark, some gritty, and others whimsical or romantic, but all reflect the richness and breadth of adventures to be found on Darkover.

Masques of Darkover will be released May 2, 2017 and is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and Kobo. The print edition will be on sale on the release date.

A writer of historical novels (so far, mostly set in Ancient Israel) and fantasy short stories (set everywhen from India to Darkover to Imperial Russia), India Edghill's love of history has resulted in the acquisition of far too many books on far too many subjects. A former resident of the beautiful Mid-Hudson Valley, New York, India and her Cavalier King Charles Spaniels now live in the beautiful Willamette Valley in Oregon.

Deborah J. Ross: Tell us about your introduction to Darkover.  

India Edghill: Oh, heavens, that was so long ago I don't even remember.  I was in my teens and had just discovered science fiction.  Back then it was hard to find and one couldn't just pop off to the Internet to find something you wanted.  If your library didn't own the book, or you didn't spot in at a yard sale, you were out of luck.  Sometimes -- wonder of wonders! -- a science fiction book would show up in the rack of paperbacks at the drugstore, but not often.  And there weren't that many bookstores in suburbia.  Now Amazon, eBay, ABEbooks, and Indiebound have made it so easy to find not only new books, but used ones too, and Project Gutenberg makes thousands of out of print and out of copyright works available free.  The Internet also makes it easy to find a local bookstore no matter where you're going.  But back to Darkover!  Somehow, at some point, I managed to pick up a copy of -- I think it was The Bloody Sun and that did it.  I was hooked.

DJR: What about the world drew you in?

IE: Marion's storytelling, of course!  She created a world of wonders and fascinating people and spun terrific stories about them.  I found Darkover back when a science fiction novel was only about 50,000 words, and boy, could she weave a universe for you in those words.

DJR: What book would you recommend for someone new to Darkover?

IE: Well, there's always The Door Through Space…for those really into Darkovan backstory…  Okay, okay, Door isn't technically a Darkover story.  But it's my favorite, and in a sense it's the ultimate Darkover book.  For anyone who's interested in the Dry Towns, it's required reading.

DJR: What inspired your story in Masques of Darkover?

IE: Queen Elizabeth I's eye color.  Semi-seriously!  To start with, all I had was a vague idea:  "what if the most powerful laran-user ever was a girl born in the Dry Towns?"  The Dry Towns have always interested me, so the setting was a "gimme."  And since I'm totally enamored of Good Queen Bess (in fact, my first sale to Mzb's Fantasy Magazine was "Maiden Phoenix", about the young Elizabeth), I swiped her for the character.  And since no one can agree on Elizabeth's eye color -- sources from her own time describe her eyes as every color from blue to grey to hazel to black -- I blended that in as well.

Shariann Lewitt on "The Wind" In MASQUES OF DARKOVER

In the spirit of a masqued revel, here is a gala presentation of tales set in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s beloved world of the Bloody Sun. Some of these stories are humorous, others dark, some gritty, and others whimsical or romantic, but all reflect the richness and breadth of adventures to be found on Darkover.

Masques of Darkover will be released May 2, 2017 and is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and Kobo. The print edition will be on sale on the release date.

Shariann Lewitt has published seventeen books and over forty short stories, including “Wedding Embroidery” in Stars of Darkover and “Memory” in Gifts of Darkover. When not writing she teaches at MIT, studies flamenco dance, and is accounted reasonably accomplished at embroidery. Her expertise with birds arises in part from being the devoted servant of two parrots.

Deborah J. Ross: Tell us about your introduction to Darkover. What about the world drew you in?

Shariann Lewitt: I started reading Darkover when I was very young and it grabbed me in a special way, because it showed girls and women doing active, great stuff, not just sitting around being passive.  But unlike a lot of other more feminist stories of the era, the girls and women had to struggle to get to powerful positions and often had to make sacrifices (like Keepers having to remain virgin) in order to wield power.  I could relate to these women because this felt real, this felt like the world I lived in.  I hated having to read stories where the only people who got to do anything that meant anything were male, but on the other hand, I found the worlds where full gender equality was taken for granted was just a little too unbelievable.  A little too much like the magic.  I could relate to the struggles of the women and girls on Darkover and that drew me in.  It all felt so REAL.

DJR: Tell us about your story in Masques of Darkover.

SL: I've been *dying* to tell about this! This is my Bernie Sanders story!  Really! 

Meg Mac Donald on "Upon This Rock" in MASQUES OF DARKOVER

In the spirit of a masqued revel, here is a gala presentation of tales set in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s beloved world of the Bloody Sun. Some of these stories are humorous, others dark, some gritty, and others whimsical or romantic, but all reflect the richness and breadth of adventures to be found on Darkover.

Masques of Darkover will be released May 2, 2017 and is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and Kobo. The print edition will be on sale on the release date.

After a number of years away from writing, Meg set pen to page again in 2011. Delightful chaos ensued. She shares her home in Michigan with her husband, children, a Norwegian Elkhound and a clowder of cats (yes, it actually is bigger on the inside). She would like to own horses again, sell a novel (how about a series? Any takers?) and has, sadly, never been to the Moon. Meg's sold stories to two previous Darkover anthologies (when she was very young but no less silly, she says).

Deborah J. Ross: Tell us about your introduction to Darkover.

Meg Mac Donald:  I landed on Darkover as a nerdy teenager who had very little in common with other people aside from being (mostly) human.  I was introduced to the series by a new friend who, in turn, had swiped some books from her older brother.  The John Norman Gor series didn't excite us, but the Darkover books were intriguing.  I'm thinking The Bloody Sun, Planet Wreckers and Sword of Aldones (which was probably the book that grabbed us both).  My friend (still a friend these decades later) was totally geeked about them and the idea that the Darkovans did not use long range weapons.  SF with swords and "magic" that wasn't magic.  Psychic powers.  Laran.  Cool.  I don't think my friend's brother ever got his books back and suspect some of them are still in my possession.  Sorry about that.  :-[

DJR: What about the world drew you in? 

MMD: Two things come immediately to mind.  First, likeable, memorable characters that fascinated me (even if they were a bit tortured).  Lew Alton being at the top of the list.  And Regis Hastur.  Loved Regis.  I remember having such sympathy for him.  I also liked how the world-building unfolded across so many books (sprawling, anyone?), the backgrounds of characters and events, the connections between stories--albeit some of those require more than a bit of mental juggling as the stories were not written in order and clearly Marion's concept of who some of these folks really were and what the world/culture/events were all about changed over time.  I always forgave the contradictions.  Maybe I instinctively recognized that Darkover grew and changed just as the author's world did.  Looking back, it seems very organic.  I certainly relate to that as a writer.  Some of those early books are tough reads now, but what a complicated tapestry the author wove over time.  How rich and intricate.  Family sagas and culture clashes are fertile grounds for story-telling and I was the right age at the right time.

DJR: What do you see as the future of Darkover? How has its readership changed over the decades? What book would you recommend for someone new to Darkover? 

MMD: I sincerely hope that books are kept in print and made available for new generations of readers.  I also hope the anthologies continue.  I believe that would have pleased the author a great deal because sharing Darkover obviously gave her a lot of joy.  Might new novels about new (and old) characters continue to be published?  Why not?  So much to still explore... and perhaps to reexamine. 

I really don't know that there is what you would call a "typical" Darkoever fan. 

Jane Bigelow on "Duvin’s Grand Tour" in MASQUES OF DARKOVER

In the spirit of a masqued revel, here is a gala presentation of tales set in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s beloved world of the Bloody Sun. Some of these stories are humorous, others dark, some gritty, and others whimsical or romantic, but all reflect the richness and breadth of adventures to be found on Darkover.

Masques of Darkover will be released May 2, 2017 and is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and Kobo. The print edition will be on sale on the release date.

Jane M. H. Bigelow had her first professional publication in Free Amazons of

Darkover. Since then, she has published a fantasy novel, Talisman, as well as short stories and short nonfiction on such topics as gardening in Ancient Egypt. Her short story, "The Golden Ruse" appeared in Luxor: Gods, Grit and Glory. She is currently on a mystery set in 17th century France. Jane is a retired reference librarian, a job which encouraged her to go on being curious about everything and exposed her to a rich variety of people. She lives in Denver, CO with her husband and two spoiled cats.

Deborah J. Ross: Tell us about your story in Masques of Darkover.

Jane M. H. Bigelow: “Duvin’s Grand Tour” began with a mental video clip of a well-meaning but clueless young male visitor to Darkover walking through Thendara. He stops where he is when he sees a beautiful young woman walking gracefully through the crowds. Our visitor has been warned to be circumspect in what he says to or about women, and he’s heard the rumors that Darkovan nobility can read thoughts, so he tries really hard not to think anything offensive. He wouldn’t want to offend, anyway; he’s a nice fellow. Womanly, that’s the word he wants to describe her, womanly. She giggles.

Who is this man? What’s he doing on Darkover? And how did a P.G. Wodehouse character get so far from home? Who’s the woman? Why is she amused rather than offended?

I did give Duvin one advantage over the usual Wodehouse protagonist. Although he thinks of himself as not clever, he has a gift for languages.  I wanted him to be able to communicate with people independently, even though it soon became clear to me that he had not come to Darkover as a Terran official, and I didn’t want to use the “visitor discovers unsuspected telepathic abilities” trope for a humorous story.

This is the first story I’ve done where humor was the main focus.  All those people who warned that writing funny is seriously hard were right, but it’s also a great deal of fun. Thank you, Deborah, for encouraging me to write it.

DJR: How do you balance writing in some else’s world and being true to your own creative imagination?”

JMHB: For me, writing Darkover stories is like writing historical fiction or alternate history. There’s a framework of accepted fact, but it certainly doesn’t cover everything. It gives the writer a starting point; the stories branch out from there. For example, I recently had a story published in Luxor: Gods, Grit and Glory, an anthology of Ancient Egyptian historical fiction. Several authors chose similar time periods, but they certainly didn’t do the same story. Darkovan history is also long, and varied. There’s plenty of room for writers to wander.

Marella Sands on "Bone of My Bone" in MASQUES OF DARKOVER

In the spirit of a masqued revel, here is a gala presentation of tales set in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s beloved world of the Bloody Sun. Some of these stories are humorous, others dark, some gritty, and others whimsical or romantic, but all reflect the richness and breadth of adventures to be found on Darkover.

Masques of Darkover will be released May 2, 2017 and is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and Kobo. The print edition will be on sale on the release date.

Marella Sands was born in a greenhouse surrounded by smug hothouse roses, but they made her sneeze so much, she left the greenhouse for different pastures and now lives in a fairy hut by the shores of a beautiful blue lake where she is sung to sleep every night by the song of the tree frogs. Or, at least that's what it says in her bio. Her latest works are a series of novellas about a bartender who must cope with the discovery of a supernatural world just beyond our own that wants her for its own purposes. Through a Keyhole, Darkly, the first of the Tales of the Angels' Share series, was published in September 2016.

Deborah J. Ross: Tell us about your introduction to Darkover. (Funny stories welcome.) 

Marella Sands: I don't have a funny story, sadly. I believe my introduction to Darkover was a second-hand copy of Hawkmistress, which I still have. 

DJR: What about the world drew you in?

MS: I think, at first, it was the adventure aspect (especially with Hawkmistress). I always wanted to see another book about Romilly, after she'd gotten Tower training and had married and was the king's hawkmistress. What other adventures awaited her? What happened when she went back home? As inspiring as she was as a teen character, how much more so would she had been as an adult? 

DJR: What inspired your story in Masques of Darkover? 

Masques of Darkover cover reveal

Here is the cover for Masques of Darkover, to be released May 2017. The design is by Dave Smeds. I'm inordinately pleased with it!

Table of Contents

Jane Bigelow, Duvin’s Grand Tour

Rosemary Edghill, Generations 

Meg Mac Donald, Upon this Rock 

Evey Brett, Only Men Dance

Shariann Lewitt, The Wind 

Ty Nolan, Dark Comfort 

Steven Harper, Sight Unseen 

Robin Wayne Bailey, The Mountains of Light 

Marella Sands, Bone of My Bone 

Rebecca Fox, Where You’re Planted 

Leslie Roy Carter and Margaret L. Carter, Believing 

India Edghill, The Price of Stars