Here's my latest newsletter. Please subscribe here! Newsletter: April #StayHomeAndRead Goodies Stories Help Us Through Tough Times Whether you are an essential worker, coping with added stress but determined to play your part, a student taking classes remotely, a retired person whose income may be secure but who is at high risk, an unemployed or furloughed worker, or a small business owner forced to close up shop, the pandemic takes a toll on all of us. I wish from the bottom of my heart that I could wave a magic author's wand and keep you and your loved ones safe in all senses of the word. Alas, not even on Darkover is that possible. Nevertheless, I hope the items in this newsletter help to brighten your day. #StayHomeAndRead I've reduced the prices of my indie ebooks to make them more available to my readers. A Heat Wave in the Hellers, and Other Tales of Darkover and Other Worlds: Early Novels are $2.99, and everything else* is $0.99. You can find them at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other vendors. (This doesn't apply to my traditionally published books, as the publisher sets the price, but the anthologies I've edited for the Marion Zimmer Bradley Trust -- Lace and Blade, and the Darkover anthologies, for example, are reduced in price, too.) *Jaydium, Northlight, Azkhantian Tales, Transfusion and Other Tales of Hope, Pearls of Fire, Dreams of Steel, and Ink Dance: Essays on the Writing Life. Collaborators has a release date, October 1, 2020, in both ebook and print. It's now available for pre-order from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and other ebook vendors.  (The print edition from Amazon won't go live until then, but B & N allows pre-order for both editions.) Your local bookstore can also order print copies from Ingram. It will be available through Overdrive, so you may be able to borrow it from your public library, as well. If you enjoyed it, please post a review! Radio Interview! On April 21, 2020, I was interviewed on the British radio station, Chat and Spin. Here's the link to the program. My interview begins 1 hour 37 minutes into the program. I've been invited back for June, so stay tuned!

Deborah Hangs Out - Summary and Video!

I had a lot of fun on Juliette Wade's "Dive Into WorldBuilding" hangout. It was great to have a chance to talk about The Seven-Petaled Shield...and a bit strange to see myself on video. Here I am!

We were very fortunate to be joined by author Deborah J. Ross, who came to talk to us about her wonderful trilogy, The Seven-Petaled Shield. She told us that it was inspired by an exhibit of Scythian art that she saw, and was a way for her to branch out beyond the tired tropes of pseudo-Celtic and Western European fantasy.

The Scythians were nomadic horse-riders in the central Asian steppe. They had shamans called enarees who, among other duties, would be asked to test the truthfulness of any charges brought against someone in their community. Enarees were men who wore woman's clothing and occupied a cultural niche in between the men's world and the women's world. One fascinating thing about them was that they kept the Romans at bay for hundreds of years.

Deborah began by writing four short stories set in a fantasy version of the Scythian world, known as Azkhantia. She wanted to write a novel, and found the right additional axis of tension when she realized she's referred to a place called Meklavar as "where witches dwell." She then expanded Meklavar into a society based on very ancient Judea. The Meklavarans have a very old written scripture, and literacy is very important to them, as is the knowledge of languages. Any given Meklavaran will typically know 3 or 4 modern languages and 2 extinct ones. Their magic is based in the scriptural stories.

Twitterview tomorrow!

Monday, November 7th, at 10 am PST, I'll be interviewed on Twitter. Just follow the hashtag #twitterview and join in!

Book Promotion Rehabilitation

Sherwood Smith offered some thoughts here on the obnoxiousness of authors tooting their own horns unrelentingly in interviews:

Too many read as if the person was interviewing themself, examining why I'm the greatest, and my novel is the greatest, from every angle in the mirror. The interviews don't look outward, talking about other things.

This brings to mind a panel topic at Westercon, "How To Promote Yourself As A Writer Without Being Obnoxious." That we even need to discuss the social etiquette of career building is significant in itself. We aren't born knowing how to communicate our enthusiasm for our creative efforts. In the world of science fiction and fantasy, like any other genre, there's a wide variation in social skills. Aforementioned skills are not necessary to write brilliantly, although an ability to observe them in others is useful. I've known writers who were so painfully shy, they'd rather undergo a root canal without anesthetic than go up to a stranger and try to convince him to buy their book, and other writers who do just that, over and over again.

Interview: Deborah and Northlight

Blogger "Cookie's Mom" interviewed me about Northlight here. She asked questions no one had ever posed before, and I had a great time talking about the characters and the history of the book.

Here's what I said about Kardith, who's got to be one of my all-time favorite characters:

I'd written a bunch of strong, competent women in my stories for Sword & Sorceress (ed. Marion Zimmer Bradley) and I'd spent a fair amount of time hanging around with other women martial artists. In the '80s and '90s, there was this amazing network of women writers who also practiced martial arts. I didn't base Kardith on any one person, but I did learn about how women make their way in a man's world (the dojo, the physics laboratory, etc.). But characters who are always strong get boring quickly, and from the first, I realized there must be something really dark in Kardith's past life to make her so unafraid of physical risk. What's the opposite of physical risk? Emotional risk. And why would she be so terrified of it... ?

Enjoy!