Deborah J. Ross's Blog, page 67

Auntie Deborah’s Advice Column for Aspiring Writers

Dear Auntie Deborah: How can I find a real publisher for my YA novel, instead of one of the many vanity or scam presses?
-- Tearful Wannabee
Dear Tearful: Do your research about publishers. Find out which accept unagented submissions. Check them out on Writer Beware or Predators & Editors!!Get an agent. Again, do your research on which agents are legitimate and represent your genre. (See above resources.) A decent agent will do the submissions for you, using their professional contacts, plus access to publishers that require an agent (which, today, is most of them).Hang out online with other YA authors and pick their brains, see who publishes them, so you can hear about newer publishers and agents who might be open to your type of material.Get support. Hobnob with other writers, particularly those at or a little beyond your career stage. Writing is such a lonely business at best, and we need to glomp together — even seasoned pros with decades of sales — for mutual encouragement. And gossip.Good luck!


Dear Auntie Deborah: I don’t think my book will ever be published. Was it all a waste of time?-- Loves2Write
Dear Loves2Write:
Dear Auntie Deborah: I keep wanting to revise as I write my first draft. I’ve been told this a terrible thing to do. I keep second-guessing myself when I do, and I’m afraid I’ll end up creatively paralyzed. Help! -- Second Thoughts
Dear Second, I think you’re halfway there in understanding why many find it important to plough through that draft so you can look at the whole thing when it’s time to revise. It’s tempting but (for many of us) deadly to halt forward progress and nitpick. Here are a few strategies that have worked for me:·         Beginning each session with reading the last page or so but not making any changes to it.·         Reminding myself that the only draft that counts is the one on my editor’s desk. And that what looks like an error may point me in the direction of a deeper, richer story, so I need to preserve all that drek the first time through.·         Reminding myself about author B, whose work I greatly admire, who told me that no one, not even her most trusted reader, sees anything before her third draft.·         Giving myself permission to be really, really awful.·         Falling in love with the revision process. I can hardly wait to get that first draft down so I have something to play with.·         Writing when I’m tired. Believe it or not, this helps because it’s all I can do then to keep putting down one word after another.All that said, sometimes editing is the right thing, like when it feels as if I’m pushing the story in a direction it doesn’t want to go, or I’ve written myself into a hole I can’t dig out of. Usually that means I’ve made a misstep earlier, not thought carefully about where I want to go. Or whatever I thought the story was about, I was wrong, and the true story keeps wanting to emerge. How do I tell when this is the case? Mostly experience, plus willingness to rip it all to shreds and start over.

Dear Auntie Deborah: How can I prevent myself from making all my characters versions of myself?-- Mirror Image
Dear Mirror: Do your work in creative well-rounded, idiosyncratic characters. Give them warts, particularly those you really, really don’t want to have, yourself.Don’t worry about it. You will always put something of yourself into your characters, even if it’s your imagination.

Dear Auntie Deborah: I’ve been told to introduce the conflict in my novel on the first page. Should I?-- Slowly Developing
Dear Slowly: Like so much in fiction, it all depends. Some stories call for context before external conflict. For sure, your opening has to do two things: tell the reader what kind of story this is (cozy mystery, obscure literary, dark fantasy, etc.); and arouse the reader’s curiosity (the “hook”). That doesn’t have to be the central conflict, but it does have to create momentum.

Dear Auntie Deborah: What do you do with deleted scenes and unused ideas?-- Holdsonto Everything
Dear Holdsonto: I stick them in an idea file. Sometimes they build stories-that-fit around themselves, like a grain of sand creating a pearl in an oyster. Other times, I chalk the time and energy as another %^&* learning experience. Sometimes it seems that just the fact I wrote it, that I put those words together, is enough.After 30 years as a pro writer, I truly believe that nothing creative is ever wasted.

Dear Auntie Deborah: I’m pretty good at writing dialog, but my narrative skills are terrible. What should I do?-- Script Writer
Dear Script: I’d bet you are not so much terrible at narration as unpracticed. Dialog comes more easily to some of us because (a) it’s what we speak in; (b) we compose scenes as scripts, as characters talking.When I was a young writer, I overused dialog, often to the utter bafflement of my readers. One critiquer suggested I eliminate dialog and tell the entire story in narrative. The first scene was agony. The next one was worse, but then it gradually got easier. The exercise forced me to see what dialog was good for and when it was a lazy way out. I also learned — by necessity of practice — how to write serviceable narrative.That’s my third point. You may be setting the bar too high on a skill you’re still clumsy at. Forget gorgeous language and brilliance. Aim for simple, translucent prose. Keep your sentences uncomplicated, your verbs direct and unfussy, and your modifiers and qualifiers to a minimum. If you don’t know what those are, take a step back and learn about the basic tools of language.And take every opportunity to read the finest prose you can lay your hands on.

Today's Kittens

Freya and Sonja hanging out on the cat shelf overlooking the garden.

Short Book Reviews: D B Jackson Ventures into Time-Traveling Fantasy

Time's Children, by D B Jackson (Angry Robot)
I loved D B Jackson’s “Thieftaker” Chronicles, set in pre-Revolutionary Boston, with an appealingly flawed hero and a system of magic that extorts a dreadful toll. The plots moved right along, part police procedural, part magical battle, part romance. My interest never wavered, and at the end, I counted many of the characters as friends or at least recognizable enemies I must never trust. So I dove happily into this fantasy with its intriguing premise of magic wielders who can not only cross distances but time itself. I assumed the setting would be vivid, the characters compelling, and the magic itself carefully thought through and integral to the world and the plot.
The description was promising: Fifteen year-old Tobias Doljan, a Walker trained to travel through time, is called to serve at the court of Daerjen. The sovereign, Mearlan IV, wants him to Walk back fourteen years, to prevent a devastating war which will destroy all of Islevale. Even though the journey will double Tobias' age, he agrees. But he arrives to discover Mearlan has already been assassinated, and his court destroyed. The only survivor is the infant princess, Sofya. Still a boy inside his newly adult body, Tobias must find a way to protect the princess from assassins, and build himself a future... in the past.
As I read, I found my expectations were not amiss: the world was complex and interesting, and the characters, particularly the demons, got me curious. I loved the system of magic. An auspicious beginning, I thought. But as page after page went by, each one piling up more secondary characters that seemed to serve no purpose but to be left behind in an unending prequel to the plot promised by the description, I found myself looking around for something else to read. Add to that, the descriptions went on and on…and on, Robert Jordan style. As I’m not a fan of Jordan except as a cure for insomnia, this didn’t work for me.
Don’t get me wrong, D B Jackson is a marvelous writer. The “Thieftaker” books showcase his ability to depict settings with wonderful characters caught up in nonstop action on many different levels, with internal angst as well as external dangers. The prose in Time’s Children is just fine, and often even better than fine. But beautiful writing alone could not, for me, overcome the overlong static passages and the repeated bits of action, interaction, and minor plot threads that seemed to go nowhere.
In the end, I gave up. I’ll wait for the next “Thieftaker” novel or give Jackson’s next a chance…so long as it is not this particular series.
All this said, this is only my own experience and opinion. It’s not that I’m opposed to long novels with leisurely descriptions. I love Tolkien’s writing and re-read The Lord of the Rings at regular intervals. There’s a travelogue in the form of a novel if ever there was one. But the conception of the world and the way it’s imbued with enchantment makes Middle Earth itself the focus for much of the trilogy. That wasn’t my experience with Time’s Children. Perhaps other Tolkien fans – or Jordan fans – will love this series. I wish them joy of it, and D B Jackson himself success with his work.

[personal rant] Why I Am Adamant About Vaccination

I remember a time when there was no question about vaccination. It was a modern miracle, a triumph of science over disease. I grew up reading Paul de Kruif’s Microbe Hunters, thrilling to the discoveries first of microbes, then of the microbial causes of contagious diseases, and most importantly, the development of vaccines that used the body’s natural immune systems to confer resistance. Terrible diseases like smallpox and polio would soon become a thing of the past, museum relics.
In the years of my childhood, everyone expected kids to get round after round of communicable diseases, most of them viral. This happened to me, too. Before I hit adolescence, I’d had measles, mumps, chickenpox, and rubella (German measles – more about that below). I have vivid memories of losing weeks of school but also of my mother nursing me through each round. I never got diphtheria or pertussis (whooping cough), although the kids down the street got it, or polio. I did know kids who got polio, and everyone knew someone who knew someone who’d died of it. So when the Salk (injected/inactivated) vaccine came along, I got it, and then later the Sabin (oral/live). I was in high school when the Sabin vaccine was made widely available, and my service club helped to administer it on sugar cubes.
I’m diligent about tetanus (TDap, with diphtheria) boosters, and received the shingles and pneumonia vaccines on schedule. I also get a yearly flu vaccine, although the one year I didn’t try hard enough in the face of limited supply for my age group, I came down with it: a month-long bout of H1N1 was no fun at all. So in terms of understanding how vaccination contributes to my personal health, I practice what I preach.
But there’s more to the story than just whether I as an individual am protecting myself. Those who scoff at the value of herd immunity receive its benefits while opening the door to exposing not just themselves but those who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons (babies too young, people of any age who are immunocompromised, etc.) One of the consequences is that when adults contract “childhood” diseases, they are often much sicker and at much greater risk of complications. I saw this when my first husband came down with measles at age 24. His fever spiked above 105o F, leaving him delirious. I spent a night coaxing him into and out of a lukewarm bath, which effectively brought down his temperature to a safer level, over and over again. He was much, much sicker than I’d been at age 10 with the same illness. It took him weeks to fully recover, and thankfully he did not suffer pneumonia or encephalitis, which are more likely in adults over 20 (and children under 5), according to the CDC.
During my first pregnancy, an antibody titer that revealed I’d had rubella as a child. A series of conversations with my mother and sister put together the pieces of my own family tragedy due to contagious disease. In most cases, rubella is a mild infection, except when a woman is pregnant. Contracted in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, babies have an 85% chance of Congenital Rubella Syndrome , including deafness, cataracts, heart defects, neurological issues, and other significant problems. The risk goes down as pregnancy progresses.
This is what happened to my baby sister.
My mother had been mildly ill, and I had been, as well. My sister Madeleine was born blind and with heart defects. She lived only 6 months.
At the time (1950) there was no vaccine, but there is now. Today this loss would have been completely preventable by vaccination, not just for the mother but for all the people around her. This is a public health issue that involves us all.
So when I hear the anti-scientific justifications for refusing to vaccinate children, I think of the baby that could have lived and the grief that haunted my mother the rest of her life. I don’t care about personal choice or fears of governmental conspiracies. None of them count in my mind against the lives of my baby sister, and everyone’s sisters and brothers.
Recently I posted a story on social media:

A federal judge, citing an “unprecedented measles outbreak” in suburban Rockland County, New York, has denied a request to let 44 unvaccinated children return to school. My comment: Vaccination wars: Wackos 0, Science 44.

A person posted this reply:  

Feeling sad to see you or anyone use the “wacko” label. It alienates you from anyone with another opinion and it undermines the strength and value of the rationale presented with an ad hominem attack. I have actual reasons for my position and I’m now completely demotivated from sharing them with you.

I honestly do not care what their reasons are. This is not a “tomaytoe, tomahtoe” discussion where understanding through respectful dialog is the goal. This is about whether we as human beings are capable of acting for our common good (which in this case includes protecting our most vulnerable from preventable severe disability and death itself), at the cost of a much smaller risk and a little inconvenience. Do not ever try to convince me that this area of public health is an infringement on civil liberties, or is a plot on the part of Big Pharma. My sister’s life is more valuable than your conspiracy theories.
If you have very young children, aged parents, loved ones with organ transplants or who are otherwise immunocompromised, I will do my utmost to keep you and those you love safe. I will not be the means by which those who cannot be vaccinated fall ill, not if I can help it.

Short Book Reviews: Rescuing a Vampire on a Transatlantic Voyage

Prisoner of Midnight, by Barbara Hambly (Severn House)
I fell in love with Don Simon Ysidro, Spanish Renaissance vampire, and James and Lydia Asher, sometimes friends and allies, consummate vampire hunters, with their first encounter in Those Who Hunt the Night, one of the best vampire stories ever. Hambly’s vampires are not nice. They are not sparkly. They are very definitely not safe. But they are compelling, and when, in 1917 and the heat of the first World War, Dr. Lydia Asher receives a coded distress call from Don Simon, she does not turn away. Theirs is a long and complicated history, and more is at stake than their friendship. If Don Simon has been taken captive by an agent of one of the Great Powers, his terrible powers could turn the tide of the war.
The story unfolds aboard a ship crossing the Atlantic, complete with revolutionaries riding belowdecks, an insanely ambitious American industrialist, Jewish refugees, and the unexpected inclusion of Lydia’s young daughter, whom she believed safe at home in the custody of one of her aunts. Oh yes, there are German submarines in these waters, and no ship is safe from their torpedoes.
One mysterious death after another stokes superstitious fears of a vampire aboard – and where is Don Simon? What hold does the industrialist, Cochrane, have over him, and how can Lydia break it? And what will Lydia have to do to prevent the introduction of a vampire to the fertile feeding grounds of America?
I finished the story, with its breathless climax, wanting to go back and read all the adventures back-to-back.
The usual disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book but no one bribed me -- quite unnecessarily -- to praise it.

Today's Kittens

For some reason, Today's Moment of Art didn't load properly, so here are three of our four cats, peacefully enjoying their view of the garden.

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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.
DJR: Were there any pivotal moments in your literary journey?BC: Several. But the one that sticks out is losing my husband in 2004. I'd just finished my first novel, and was working on my second at the time. We'd sold a short story together -- the only one completed during his lifetime. Everything looked so promising. We both wrote, we understood each other, we even figured out how to make our disparate styles work for us in a collaboration...and then, he was gone.I can't overestimate how devastating his loss was.For a time, after he died, I wasn't able to do much. (And this was a long time. Not just a year, or two years. We're talking five, six, seven years. Easily.) It took a bit of doing, but I finally was able to start writing again, and sold some short stories in 2011 and 2012. Then finally sold my first novel, An Elfy on the Loose, in 2012 (though it came out in 2014).Without my husband in my life, I don't think I'd have felt confident enough to do what I needed to do. Writing is a tough and sometimes lonely business. And I was trained not as a writer; I was trained as a performing, concert musician. (I am a saxophonist, clarinetist, and was originally an oboist.) I knew I needed to write, and to tell stories, and to do what I could to make them look, feel, sound and behave as if they were living and breathing constructs...but it was really my husband who told me, "Yes, you have talent, and yes, I can help you." (He did this long before we ever got together, too. He did this for a lot of writers, back in the day.)
DJR: What inspired your story in Citadels of Darkover?BC: I had read of an avalanche sometime last year. A successful rescue of a person who's been buried alive is extremely difficult on its face, but what happens to the person who has been rescued? How does she live her life after? And how does she face her fear so she can keep going, especially if she's a mountain guide?This is part of what inspired my story, "The Citadel of Fear." And it didn't hurt that I was able to figure out how to get a small banshee into the mix, either! (No, I'm not telling you more. And yes, I know I'm mean. Sometimes.)
DJR: What have you written recently?BC: I've been working on several novellas, actually. None have yet been published, but one I have a lot of hope in mixes romance and near-future America after a semi-apocalyptic event with military matters...because I write both military SF and romantic fantasy, it seems like a good compromise. I also hope to write another story or two in my late husband's Atlantean Union (far future SF universe). And, finally, I'm working on a funny fantasy about Heaven...and the people who go there who don't get quite what they expect. (We'll see if I can bring that one off. But it's a lot of fun to write, and I'm not giving up on it.)As far as novels go, my latest is Changing Faces, a romantic LGBT-friendly fantasy with quixotic angels and two lovers, both clarinetists, in graduate school. One is gender-fluid, the other is heterosexual...and then there is a car accident where both end up in each other's bodies. (I hope I did justice to this premise.) And the second novel in the Elfyverse, A Little Elfy In Big Trouble, was published in 2015And yes, I do plan on more stories in my Elfyverse...it just takes time to get it right, that's all.
DJR: What lies ahead?BC: I am hopeful that 2019 will be an extremely productive year, and I do plan on getting out at least one of the novellas in progress along with one novel...that is, if I don't get sidetracked again by Real Life™Otherwise, there are talks between me and indie author extraordinaire Chris Nuttall to perhaps write something in one of his fantasy universes. Chris is incredibly prolific, and I'm not; still, he enjoys my editing (I've worked with him quite a bit in the past), likes my writing, and thinks something like that would be beneficial. If that comes off down the line, I'll be trumpeting that from the rooftops, let me tell you...
DJR: Anything else you'd like to add?BC: I've enjoyed writing in the Darkover universe quite a bit. Doing so was a dream come true; I wish my husband Michael had lived to see it. I'm sure he'd have had a story or two to tell, on his own, too!


Barb Caffrey has written three novels, An Elfy On The Loose (2014), A Little Elfy in Big Trouble (2015), and Changing Faces (forthcoming), 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).



Links:

Barb Caffrey's Elfyverse https://elfyverse.wordpress.comBarb Caffrey's Amazon page: https://www.amazon.com/Barb-Caffrey/e/B00H8EROC8/Barb's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/barb.caffrey.1Barb's Twitter (rarely used, but you never know): https://twitter.com/BarbCaffrey

Book Reviews: Of Alchemy, and Ethos, and Siblings

Middlegame, by Seanan McGuire (Tor)
I’ve enjoyed Seanan McGuire’s books since I discovered Rosemary and Rue and the “Incryptid” series. Her sense of dramatic flow, finely-handled narrative pacing, and just plain nifty stuff made each successive adventure more enjoyable. I quickly learned that when I picked up one of her books, I was in for a good time. Sometimes I wondered how she was able to maintain the quality of her work, given how productive she was. Not only did she consistently deliver one good story after another, but her recent releases have leapt from “good” to memorable.Her novella, Every Heart a Doorway, was stunning, a journey of the heart as well as a series of dramatic events, richly deserving both the Nebula and Hugo Awards. I loved her “Sparrow Road” ghost stories, too. Now I can add Middlegame, an alchemy/Frankenstein/time-traveling/sibling-story to that list.
The outer frame of the story involves a precocious and wildly talented alchemist who devises a way to remake the world through the human incarnations of the Doctrine of Ethos.

“In the ancient world the Greeks believed music had a magical power to speak directly to human emotion. In what has come to be known as the doctrine of ethos, the Greeks believed that the right kind of music had the power to heal the sick and shape personal character in a positive way. The Greek philosopher Aristotle believed that when music was designed to imitate a certain emotion, a person listening to the music would have that emotion.” – From Music and the Doctrine of Ethos, classicaltyro.com.

McGuire uses a somewhat different sense of this doctrine, albeit still in the sense of possessing transformative powers. The alchemist, Asphodel Baker, and her disciples set about creating pairs of twins whose natural talents (language and mathematics, for example, or order and chaos) complement and complete one another. Adopted out and separated as infants, when mature they will be drawn together to fully manifest the Doctrine and grant the one who controls them power over the universe. Or so goes the plan.
The inner story involves one pair of twins, Roger and Dodger, and their early ability to communicate telepathically and experience the world through one another’s talents and senses. Dodger helps Roger with his math homework, and he guides her through learning to talk to people and develop relationships. But they have made contact too soon for Asphodel’s heir (and Frankenstein creation), the sinister autocrat James Reed, who then takes measures to divide them until he determines the time is right.All of this is done up in prose that ranges from really good to luscious:

“For your safety,” says Dr. Barrow, in a voice like butter and cyanide.….Roger knows the words – shock, surprise, epiphany – but he doesn’t know how to put them in an order his sister (his sister, he has a sister, not just a weird quantum entanglement with a girl on the other side of the country, but a sister, someone whose blood knows his almost as well as his heart does) will be able to hear and understand. He supposes he’s stunned. The impulse to close his eyes and retreat into the space that exists between them is strong. He forces it aside. This is a real thing; this needs to be a real thing. He didn’t realize until this moment how badly he needs it to be a real thing, something spoken in the open air, something honest and concrete that he can put down between them, look at from all the angles, and know for the truth. Real things are too important to entrust to quantum entanglements.

I stayed up way too late on a number of nights, following Roger and Dodger on their quest for one another and for a life truly, humanly lived. I heartily recommend this book and expect it to be a contender for major awards in speculative fiction.

Passover 5779: My Favorite Charoseth Recipe

Passover is my very favorite holiday, Jewish or secular. I love the warmth, the connection with tribal history, and so many of the phrases that remind me everyone is welcome at this table, and that until all of us are free, none of us can be. Of course, all the stories about Passovers past, like the one in college when, after all 4 obligatory glasses of wine, V called his parents in Chicago to wish them Happy Passover, so I did (mine were in California), and the L called hers -- good Southern Baptists... It was that same seder when, at the moment when we fling open the door to invite Elijah into our homes and our hearts, B stopped by, hoping to scrounge dinner. And so forth.

Then there are the foods, glorious foods! Most Ashkenazi Jews make charoseth (which represents the mortar the Hebrew slaves used to build the pyramids) from finely chopped apples, walnuts, sweet Passover wine, and a little matzoh meal (from the special kind of matzoh kosher for Passover, that has been carefully monitored to make sure there is no leavening). This concoction always set my teeth on edge. I dreaded it...until I discovered this recipe for Yemenite charoseth. It's so sweet, I can eat only a little at a time, but bursting with flavor.

Yemenite Charoseth -- about 12 servings

1 cup pitted, chopped dates (I use Medjool when I can find them)
1/2 cup chopped dried figs
1/3 cup sweet Passover wine (or fruit juice)
3 Tablespoons sesame seeds
1 tsp - 1 T ginger, either powdered dry or fresh, according to your taste
Dash - 1/2 tsp ground coriander
Dash cayenne -- optional
2 Tablespoons matzoh meal (I use brown rice or sorghum flour as it needs to be GF)

Combine the fruit and wine. Add sesame, spices, and matzoh meal until thoroughly mixed. Roll into 1" balls or serve in a mound.

L'chaim!

The image is the first Nuremberg Haggadah, circa 1449 C.E.

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/4XRR0NKindle 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.
DJR: Tell us about your introduction to Darkover.LC: Way back when I was in middle school, some of the first books I ever ordered from the now-defunct Science Fiction Book Club were The Shattered Chain and Thendara House. Sword & sorcery, telepathy, court intrigue, and space travel all in one fictional world! It was like opening a box of chocolate truffles and discovering all my favorite flavors.
DJR: What about the world drew you in? LC: The Free Amazons grabbed my imagination. Rejecting the usual women's roles in favor of their own independence made even more sense compared to the Drylanders' custom of putting their women in literal chains. Darkover female characters were so much more complex and sympathetic than other women in the other genres I read then. Miss Marple remains one of my favorite characters thanks to traits she shares with the Free Amazons. She lives her life on her terms and she's nobody's fool.
DJR: What inspired your story in Citadels of Darkover?LC: I knew one way to really upset the men of Darkover would be to make my main character a woman with a sword. I'm fond of Japanese history and culture, so it seemed quite natural to create Nakatomi Madoka, a female mercenary from a long line of samurai. The villain of the story who hires her has no idea he's about to grab a tiger by the tail.
DJR: How did you balance writing in someone else’s world and being true to your own creative imagination?LC: There were elements of Darkover that I knew I wanted to include in the story. The Free Amazons, a big matrix crystal, a swordfight, and the Crystal Chamber itself. I laid out Madoka's wants and needs alongside these elements, then thought hard about solid story structure. Bringing all of these together into one story has been one of my most satisfying writing experiences.
DJR: Is there another Darkover story you would particularly like to write?LC: I would love to write about Madoka's next adventure on Darkover, especially if it involves Keepers and matrix technology. Given how Madoka was raised by a father steeped in samurai culture, she gets the feudal hierarchy of Darkover, yet she also respects the Free Amazons and their lifestyle. Darkover has so much going on, it's quite exciting.
DJR: What have you written recently? LC: The Badger Epidemic, the latest short story in my Kyoto Steampunk series.On the novel front, I'm editing the first book in The Flower Maiden Saga, an historical romance series set in Japan of the late 1860s.
DJR: What is your favorite of your published works and why?LC: The Wheel of Misfortune, which appears in Some Time Later , the third Clockwork Alchemy anthology, and is forthcoming in The Best Indie Speculative Fiction of 2017.
DJR: What lies ahead for you? (Feel free to expound on your recent and forthcoming books and provide links to covers.)LC: I've just had a number of short stories come out in various anthologies:The Power Behind the Throne -- Fantasy for the Throne, Fantastic BooksRighteous Spirits -- Alternate Theologies, B-Cubed PressDark Water -- Dies Infaustus, A Murder of Storytellers, Inc.Storm Warning -- forthcoming in Digital Fantasy Fiction, Digital Fiction Publishing


Ms. Csernica has published over forty short stories in such markets as Weird Tales, Fantastic Stories, and Killing It Softly 1 and 2. Her nonfiction how-to titles include The Writer's Spellbook and The Fright Factory. Born in San Diego, Ms. Csernica is a genuine California native. History is her passion, jewelry making her hobby, and glass blowing the next item on her Bucket List. She currently resides in the Santa Cruz mountains with her her husband, two sons, and three cats.  Visit her at lillian888.wordpress.com.