Deborah J. Ross's Blog, page 120

Baycon Schedule

I'll be a guest at Baycon in San Jose May 22-25. So far, I'm scheduled only for Friday and Saturday. If you attend, please come up and say hello...or stay for a panel or reading!

Inspiring the Next Generation of Science Fiction Writers on Friday at 12:00 PM (with Juliette Wade, Colin Fisk, The Winner Twins) If hard science fiction is literature about the future, what is the future of hard science fiction? Where will the next generation of hard SF writers come from, if what young people are reading now is stories about wizards, vampires, and mutant superpowers? How do we entice and encourage them to think seriously about life in the future, and to write about what they imagine?

Transgender Issues in SF&F on Friday at 1:30 PM (with Jacob Fisk, Jean Batt) LGBT speculative fiction stories almost always focus on just the "L" and the "G", ignoring the many other gender identities. Some people even consider "LGBT" to be too limiting, and use "QUILTBAG" instead (for Queer/Questioning, Undecided, Intersex, Lesbian, Transgender/Transsexual, Bisexual, Allied/Asexual, Gay/Genderqueer). What issues do people who identify as transgender, transsexual, or intersex face in real life? Can representations of these identities in SF/F literature and media, such as in the movie "Predestination" (based on Heinlein's "--All You Zombies--") help them be accepted by mainstream society?

Pink Hockey Sticks: Raising a gender neutral child in a highly gendered world on Friday at 4:30 PM (with Susie Rodriguez, Jean Batt, Kay Tracy, Alison Stern) How do you roll with it when your long awaited and imagined little princess wants to wear Batman shoes with her tiara and thinks ballet class is a good place to practice her hockey skills? How to raising a tiny Woman of Wonder and the challenges of doing it in our society and in general.

Themed Reading: Mythical Creatures on Saturday at 11:30 AM (with Marie Brennan, Cassie Alexander, Sinead Toolis) Dragons. Unicorns. Centaurs. All different, yet all are creatures from the genus Mythical. Hear authors give their spin on tales about mythical creatures (also known as "cryptids").

Constructing Fictional Cultures: Sex Without Shame on Saturday at 1:00 PM (with Boston Blake, Diana L. Paxson, Lance Moore) A fundamental aspect of any culture is its attitude towards sex. An unspoken but common attitude present in many people in modern-day culture is that sex is shameful. This is shown through common behaviors such as married people who don't talk with their spouses about their sexual desires or sexual dissatisfaction, women who don't report having been raped because of the shame that they feel, and women who don't carry condoms because they are afraid of slut-shaming from their sex partners. How would a society that felt no shame about sex be different from ours? What would be the advantages and disadvantages? Would a modern-day reader with a traditional upbringing find it too difficult to relate to fictional characters that lived in such a culture?

[personal silliness] On The Size of Ears

Some people agonize over the size and shape of their ears. Babies don't care, but kids who have
unusually shaped ears or ears that stick out can (and are!) made to feel self-conscious about them. People even have surgery to flatten ears against the skull, or I assume their parents do. I never thought about ears -- my own or those of my friends -- when I was a kid.

So it came as a surprise to me when I was an adult that my mother was self-conscious about the size of her ears. The outer ear is mostly cartilage, which continues to grow -- albeit slowly -- throughout your life. Older folks generally have bigger ears than youngsters. I suppose the self-consciousness came from "my ears show my age," but I never asked her. I just observed the lengths she went to in styling her hair in order to cover part of her ears.

It also came as surprise to me as I achieved senior citizen status myself that my own ears were not as I remembered them. They looked like my mother's ears. They're neither pretty nor ugly. They're bigger than when I was a child (I think -- I'm relying on old photos here) and somewhat longer top to bottom. There's a funny crease in the skin of the lobes that I assume is due to decades of wearing pierced earrings. But maybe not. It might have done that, anyway.

Mostly I think it's cool that my ears look like my mother's when she was my age. Sometimes it's puzzling that a body part up and changes itself, but that seems to be happening to more than my ears. Every once in a while, though, it bothers me. I have discovered a solution:

I don't look in the mirror.

From the inside, my ears feel just fine. And then I think of the images of the Buddha with long, long ears. And I giggle.

Thunderlord snippet - Duty

Please remember that this is a work in progress and drafts have a habit of changing drastically from inception to finished book.


From Thunderlord Chapter 18
When Alayna arrived back at her chambers, every detail of the sitting room had been made perfect, from the perfectly laid, brightly burning fires to the bouquet of dried strawflowers in an exquisite vase of polished green stone. The chair pillows had been plumped and precisely placed. Dimitra herself stood waiting, hands loosely clasped before her. She inclined her head and curtsied, as a servant to her mistress, as she had not done before. Her eyelids still looked puffy, but her hair had been tidied and her expression revealed nothing of what she had just endured. She waited for Alayna to speak.
We can never be friends after this, Alayna thought. But then, we never were.
She began to compliment Dimitra on how pleasant the room was, but then held her tongue. It was Dimitra’s responsibility to ensure that these rooms, and clothes and meals and anything else Alayna might fancy, were all provided. After all, no one thanked a manfor fulfilling his duty.

The Tajji Diaries: Pet Insurance

TajjiWhen we adopted Tajji, she was just under 10 years old. The life expectancy for her breed, German Shepherd Dog, is 9 to 12 years, although we’ve known dogs that made it to 13 or 14. Fifteen would be a far outlier. Our last GSD, Oka, made it to 12 ½, the last half year under treatment for lymphoma. We agonized over that treatment, since he was otherwise healthy and there was a good chance it would buy him another year of life. He tolerated the chemo well, as dogs often do, and until about 48 hours before he died (from leukemia, which lymphoma sometimes turns into), he was romping with his favorite blue horse ball. The thing is, we didn’t have pet insurance for him, and of course once he’d been diagnosed with lymphoma, that made it a pre-existing condition, which made it impossible. Our budget, already shaky, took a major hit.
Fast forward now to Tajji. Healthy, strongly built…but geriatric. Could we even get insurance for her and if we could, would it break the bank? After some looking we found a company* that allowed us to choose the deductible and percentage covered. I think there was an extra package that covered maintenance care, vaccinations, and the like, but what we wanted was catastrophic coverage. We’d gone the route of hoping for the best and then having to deal with a financial as well as a medical emergency. Now we made the assumption that in the few years we’d have Tajji something would go wrong.
This happened sooner than we imagined.
Tajji’s blood work and ultrasound were within normal limits, Based on the pathologist’s report, the vet described her condition as immune-mediated. Now came the issue of what to do about it. Dogs, like other animals, don’t show pain and can’t tell us when it hurts, but now that we knew what to look for, the condition of her tongue concerned us. The vet researched different treatment options, including prednisone, cheap but full of nasty side effects, including constant hunger, thirst, and wasting of the jaw muscles (particularly in German Shepherd Dogs). Because the insurance would pick up most of the tab, we were able to select a medicine with far fewer side effects — in other words, to base our decision on what was best for the dog.
I’d be happy if we never needed to use the pet insurance, just as I’m thrilled when a year passes in which I see a doctor only for preventive care. I wish pets never got sick or injured and that their only cost was food and flea prevention, but just about every one I’ve owned has needed veterinary care at one time or another. When I was younger, I often thought of insurance as a gimmick to separate hard-working folks from their money (which then finds some excuse not to honor a claim). But as my husband and I age and we face fewer income-producing years ahead than there are behind us, I notice we’re more conservative than we used to be in terms of risk. This time, our caution paid off.

*Trupanion

What Color Are Sunsets on Mars?

Blue!

Wonder how many science fiction novels got that one wrong?



"The colors come from the fact that the very fine dust is the right size so that blue light penetrates the atmosphere slightly more efficiently," said Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, College Station, the Curiosity science-team member who planned the observations. "When the blue light scatters off the dust, it stays closer to the direction of the sun than light of other colors does. The rest of the sky is yellow to orange, as yellow and red light scatter all over the sky instead of being absorbed or staying close to the sun."
You can read the whole article on the JPL site or here for a cool animation.

Ty Nolan on "Climbing to the Moons" in GIFTS OF DARKOVER

On a wondrous planet of telepaths and swordsmen, nonhumans and ancient mysteries, a technologically advanced, star-faring civilization comes into inevitable conflict with one that has pursued psychic gifts and turned away from weapons of mass destruction. Darkover offers many gifts, asked for and unexpected. Those who come here, ignorant of what they will find, discover gifts outside themselves and within themselves. The door to magic swings both ways, however, and many a visitor leaves the people he encounters equally transformed.

I asked Ty Nolan to talk about his story, writing, and the future of Darkover.



Deborah: Tell us about your introduction to Darkover.
Ty: From the time I learned to read I always had my nose in a book on science fiction or fantasy. One of my prize possessions was a postcard from Issac Asimov. While everyone knew him as a science-fiction writer (and the creator of the Laws of Robotics), he also used to do a monthly column in a magazine and I was in awe of his brilliance.  His ability to knock out a well-written and researched essay was amazing. I wrote to him (I was 10 years old) and told him one day I wanted to be an author and asked him how did he know so much about everything. He wrote back he was not an expert in everything, but he just managed to sound like one.
Then one day I discovered Stormqueen! Which had one of the best covers I had seen at that time. That’s what got me hooked on Darkover. I want to also say Marion Zimmer Bradley (I had the honor of meeting her more than once—my first professional sales were to her) also impressed me with a work completely different from the Darkover or Avalon universes—The Catch Trap. It was the first “gay novel” I had found, and even though I haven’t read it in years, there are still scenes I vividly remember. It’s set in the post WWII era, when love between men was illegal. MZB details the societal pressures they had to deal with on a daily basis. They work together as trapeze artists in a circus.

What about the world drew you in?
I’m an American Indian and my family has always been very connected to our culture. The concept that in the future, Colony Ships would sail through space and that many were intended to maintain their cultural heritage was quite striking to me. In the Star Trek Voyager series, there’s a similar idea of Native American colonists, rather than the Celtic influence of Darkover. I grew up hearing our traditional legends and stories. I often felt a strong connection with pre-Christian Celtic culture, which has a lot of parallels to Native American cultures and even some of the legends seem very familiar. That made Darkover even more fun to explore. I’ve also been curious about gender issues, and have taught courses on the subject when I used to be a University Professor. Just so, MZB’s depiction of the Chieri  was so interesting to me I introduced one into my own contribution to Gifts of Darkover, and had my female Main Character aware of her own Chieri heritage.
My first Darkover story—“A Legend of the Hellers,” appears in the second of MZB’s Sword and Sorceress anthologies: Sword of Chaos. I have been intrigued in the more “ancient” history of Darkover, before they are “re-discovered” and before the society had become as organized as it eventually did. “Climbing to the Moons,” my story that’s in Gifts of Darkover is set in more “modern” times because I wanted to have an “outsider” who had served in the military on other planets be challenged by the lack of technical support he would be accustomed to using, but that would be unavailable on Darkover. I also wanted a very strong heroine and researched the history to find a family that would be more likely to allow a woman in a major leadership role. This tied in to her hiring the main male character because in looking at his record, he had served under female superior officers, so he wouldn’t confront her, based on her gender.
Of course, one of my favorite parts of getting to play in the Darkover Universe is getting to invent some totally new concepts. As I mentioned, I was always curious about what life was like in the “really old days” when it was always a sort of Game of Thronesin-fighting between petty chiefdoms. If you don’t have particularly useful technology, how do you construct a decent war machine? Then I remembered Hannibal crossing the Alps with elephants and thought---“Wow—imagine being under attack by an extremely intelligent herd of elephants—and to make them even more scary—what if I make them ominvores so they can bite the heads off an enemy?” I did a lot of research on elephants and explained they had been genetically bred with a now-extinct animal that was the largest mammal on the planet, so I didn’t have to worry about a poor African elephant freezing to death on Darkover.
My story also let me look into the “culture wars” of Darkover of those that want to embrace what the Terrans can offer and those that would prefer to blow up the Space Port and sprinkle the ashes with bonedust. That conflict fuels the drama in my story as my heroine’s enemies are trying to stop her on many levels, even to the point of breaking The Compact with the use of bombs they’ve gotten from the equivalent of a Darkover terrorist.

What have you written recently?
Oh, I had a fine time under my pen name of Skye Eagleday, contributing to an anthology—Highland Shifters. Under Skye Eagleday, I write a lot of paranormal romance and a number of my werewolves are gay. I think I’m one of the only people I know who can honestly say “gay werewolves pay my rent.” We launched Highland Shifters to tie into the TV series The Outlander, based on a bestselling novel about a World War II nurse who “falls through time” and ends up in a Scotland two centuries ago and encounters her husband’s ancestors. Highland Shifters hit the USA Today Bestsellers List.
The premise of the anthology was—obviously—about shapeshifters in the Scottish Highlands. Since I’ve written so much about werewolves, I wanted to do something different and decided to use an Irish Pooka as a main character. Shakespeare called his Pooka “Puck” in Midsummer Night’s Dream. According to Shakespeare, a Pooka can literally turn into anything, and can perfectly mimic the voices of humans.  My hero is a Scottish-American named McKay and I knew I wanted him to retrace the steps his beloved Grandfather took when he arrived from Scotland. I felt I needed to introduce McKay to the Supernatural World before he gets to Scotland, so I wrote a prequel, where he ends up dating a Metis artist who turns out to be a Loup-Garou, the word the Metis use for a werewolf. I’ve set it on “perma-free” status—the title is McKay’s Werewolf Ways. I’m happy to report it was published last August and it’s remained in Amazon’s Top 100 Bestsellers for its category—usually in the top ten. I just checked and it’s #2 under Gay Action and Adventure.
Just so, when McKay does fly into Scotland in my story Roots & Fangs, he’s already up to speed when he encounters the Scottish Fae and the male Fae’s current lover—the Irish Pooka. I had great fun because I figured if the Pooka can take any shape, then gender shifting would be a breeze. In the story, in one of the first chapters, the Pooka seduces the male Fae while in her female form, and then laughs and reveals her own supernatural side and shifts into a series of different animals and then into the Pooka’s male form. It turns out the male Fae actually enjoys other males as well, so they have sex again, as two men. Later on when he leaves the Pooka for McKay, she resumes her female form and has revenge sex with a lesbian. Let’s say that takes a very flexible character!

I’m actually working on the sequel to Roots & Fangs to have it ready for when the Outlander Series starts up again for its second season. So—it’s sort of been a circle for me, of writing about the Scottish culture of Darkover and then getting to revisit it by writing about the Highland Shifters and the Fae. And trust me—there is a lot of overlap between the magical abilities of the Fae and the amazing Laran powers possessed by some of the Darkover locals.
---------- Trained as a traditional Native American Storyteller, Ty Nolan had his first short story published by MZB in Sword of Chaos. His book, Coyote Still Going: Native American Legends and Contemporary Stories, received the 2014 BP Readers Choice Award for Short Story Collections and Anthologies. He is a New York Times and USA Today Best Selling Author. He currently splits his time between Arizona and Washington State.

Thunderlord snippet - Considering Letter-writing and Reputation

Please remember that this is a work in progress and drafts have a habit of changing drastically from inception to finished book.


From Thunderlord Chapter 17
As soon as Dimitra took her leave and closed the outer door behind her, Alayna began rummaging through the entire suite for paper and pen. She pulled out drawers and opened boxes, pushed aside hanging garments and lifted up piles of folded shawls and underthings. She found a couple of books, expensive ones on vellum, bound in fine leather, but nothing to write with, even if she had been able to remove a corner scrap.
Nothing, nothing, nothing! Was this a deliberate attempt to prevent communication, or didn’t fine ladies need to write letters?
Apparently not.
Despite her growing frustration, she forced herself to search methodically. It was all too easy to conclude that Dimitra had removed any writing materials for the purpose of making sure Alayna never communicated with anyone except under supervision,.
Alayna completed her search and then went through the rooms again. She considered and discarded the notion of tearing off a strip of sheet and marking it with a charred bit of wood, except she’d need a knife to make a slit in the hem so the fabric could be ripped, and any bits of half-burned wood had been neatly removed, leaving only a bed of fine ash.
Just as Alayna finished tidying up the evidence of her search, Sadhi tapped on the door and entered, once more carrying a tray. Smiling, the maid set the tray down on the hearthside table.
“Domna Dimitra thought you might care for a bit of midafternoon refreshment. And a fire?”
Alayna glanced at the pitcher – sure to be jaco again, for apparently the entire castle lived on the stuff – and a plate of exquisite little nut and honey rolls. Lord Scathfell had done very well in his pastry chef.
“This looks lovely. Thank you so much, Sadhi. And thank Domna Dimitra for her thoughtfulness.” Alayna seated herself while Sadhi poured a cup of jaco. “I wonder – I don’t seem to have paper and pen here.”
“Who would you write to, miss?”
Who, indeed. How much did Sadhi know? And would she report Alayna’s words and actions to Dimitra?
Alayna set the cup down. “I understand why you ask that, but I am not entirely without acquaintance here.“
“I’m sure that’s true, miss. It’s just that a lady in your situation must be careful of her reputation.”

Today's moment of galactic glory

Some time in the far future, some 4 billion years from now, the Andromeda Galaxy will merge with our own Milky Way. How will that change the night sky, assuming there are any sentient beings on Earth to view it?

NASA scientists wondered, too:



I find this evocative, glorious, and sad all at once. Not sure why the sadness. But as a writer and lover of science fiction, I'm all fired up to put it in a story.

Read the whole article on our Milky Way here.

Barb Caffrey on "A Problem of Punishment" in GIFTS OF DARKOVER

On a wondrous planet of telepaths and swordsmen, nonhumans and ancient mysteries, a
technologically advanced, star-faring civilization comes into inevitable conflict with one that has pursued psychic gifts and turned away from weapons of mass destruction. Darkover offers many gifts, asked for and unexpected. Those who come here, ignorant of what they will find, discover gifts outside themselves and within themselves. The door to magic swings both ways, however, and many a visitor leaves the people he encounters equally transformed.

Gifts of Darkover will be released May 5, 2015, and is now available for pre-order.
Here Barb Caffrey talks about her story, "A Problem of Punishment."
My introduction to Darkover was due to two books I picked up at the same time: The Shattered Chain, and Sharra's Exile. After that, I wanted to read as much about Darkover as I could, because the heroines and heroes appealed to me. They were flawed people doing the best they could amidst immense challenges, but had the additional benefits laran offered, too. I was a bit too young to understand things like the multiple marriages Kennard Alton alluded to or truly understand things like Magdalen/Margali Lorne's bisexuality, but that didn't matter; all that mattered was story.
Over time, though, I have grown to appreciate these other things, because they're a hallmark of what society is all about. (Well, maybe not the multiple marriages quite so much, even though we have a basis for that in many parts of human history. I prefer my relationships to be a bit more one-on-one than that.)
As for the future of Darkover, I believe it remains bright. There are new facets to Darkover being discovered all the time -- especially because of the novels of Deborah J. Ross, which have added much to the discussion. I'm glad to add my small part to that conversation.
I hope to write more about my character Fiona n'ha Gorsali's childhood with her father and mother (Fiona was a very minor player in The Shattered Chain, and I first wrote about her in Stars Of Darkover). I think there's a wealth of information there, and I'm quite interested to figure it out. (The education of the first female judge on Darkover is a story well worth telling!)
What inspired my story in Gifts Of Darkover was this: how did Fiona's parents meet? What was her father Dominic, who I already knew had been a judge before her, really like? And what had made Gorsali fall in love with him, and he with her? A romantic story of a smart man and an accomplished woman against the background of the Hellers appealed to me, especially since they fell in love prior to the Terranan returning to Darkover and didn't have many role models that would've helped them out.
Now, as to why I felt Dominic, a judge, could fall in love with a Renunciate? Dominic has seen it all in his courtroom, and knows how to size up people quickly. Because of that, he has fewer prejudices in certain respects than others, and he has far more respect for the charter of the Renunciates than do most other men because he has far more respect for the legal system. Because of that, I felt he could see her as an equal partner in time...and that way, love could potentially grow (or at least a strong attraction).
Most recently I wrote a story for the shared-world anthology First Contact Cafe, and finished my novels A Little Elfy In Big Trouble and Changing Faces. Both novels should be out later in 2015; my best guess right now for the former is May, and my best guess for the latter is October.
As for what lies ahead? I hope to write some more stories in my Elfyverse, I have a novella plotted featuring psychic and baseball fan Arletta James and her werewolf husband Fergus centered around the All-Star game, and I'm working on a dystopian story of uncertain length whenever I can find a little time.

Barb Caffrey is the writer of “A Problem of Punishment.” She's also written three novels, An Elfy On The Loose, A Little Elfy in Big Trouble (May 2015), and Changing Faces (also 2015), and is the co-writer of the Adventures of Joey Maverick series (with late husband Michael B. Caffrey) Previous stories and poems have appeared in Stars Of Darkover, First Contact Café, How Beer Saved The World, Bearing North, And Bedlam's Edge (with Michael B. Caffrey). Find her at Elfyversefor discussions of all and sundry, or at Shiny Book Review. (She promises she won't bite. Much.)

Thunderlord snippet - Unwanted Attentions

Please remember that this is a work in progress and drafts have a habit of changing drastically from inception to finished book.



It's getting more challenging to find snippets that don't give away too much of the plot, but here's one I hope will tantalize.
From Thunderlord Chapter 16
After a few days of giving Shayla knitting lessons, much to her mother’s relief, Alayna began attending the women’s musical gatherings. They were fewer, for winter was fast approaching, and those who had come to Castle Scathfell for the lord’s wedding must hurry to arrive home before snows closed the passes. Much of the time, the gathering consisted of Alayna, Marianna, and Shayla.  Jerana sat in a corner with her eyes closed, one hand over her chest, but did not sing or play. Dimitra played the flute and rryl, although she claimed to have no voice for song.
Shayla begged Alayna to teach them new songs. At first, Alayna had not the heart to sing, or to sing anything but the saddest laments, but after several requests, she made an effort for the sake of her new friend. They sang rounds, and “A Summer’s Lass” and several versions of “Fra’ Domenic’s Pockets,” which had them all laughing uproariously. Alayna wiped her eyes and realized how long it had been since she’d laughed.
“Very good! So charming!” Dom Nevin applauded from where he stood inside the opened door. He strode to Alayna, took up her hand, and brought it to his lips. “My dear, I had no idea you were such a songbird.”
Alayna pulled her hand away in a manner that was, if not outright rude, decidedly unencouraging. What ailed the man, to intrude upon a women’s gathering without invitation. Or had someone asked him? She glanced in Dimitra’s direction and caught the glimmer of a smile.
She told him I was feeling better. She encouraged him!
“Pardon me for speaking frankly, but this is not a public performance. We sing for one another here, for our own amusement, nothing more.” The thought crossed her mind to demand that he offer a song in penance for having eavesdropped, but he might take that as a flirtation. “I beg you to leave us so that we may continue.”
“Oh!” He made a careless gesture. “It was never my intention to embarrass anyone, if that’s what you mean. Although I hardly know why you are so modest about your singing. It was a delight to hear your song.”
It was not meant for you! With an effort, Alayna held her tongue.
“Why, your voice would grace any gathering, even that of Lord Scathfell, if I do say so myself. Whatever man marries you will have no cause to hire a singing-woman when his own wife is far superior.”
Alayna’s cheeks grew hot, for her own kinswoman, Aliciane Rockraven, had first gone to Aldaran as singing-woman and later became that lord’s barrangana, even while his wife was alive.
I will hurl myself over the castle walls before I become yoursinging-woman!