Sword and Sorceress 33 Author Interview: Marella Sands

Enter a wondrous universe…the latest volume of Sword and Sorceress, featuring stories from new and seasoned authors. Herein you will find tales of fantasy with strong female characters, with some version of either martial skill or magic. Not all the protagonists will be human, and sometimes the magic will take highly original forms, but the emotional satisfaction in each story and in the anthology as a whole, remains true to the original vision. The release date will be November 2, 2018.
ePub: https://www.books2read.com/u/b62gG6Kindle: https://amzn.to/2NitlHH


Marella has a multitude of pets who are slowing destroying her carpeting but are too cute to be angry with. When she is not feeding the furry bottomless pits or taking them to the vet, she is more-or-less methodically making her way through her Netflix watchlist. Currently, she is watching The Great Interior Design Challenge, which has proven to her that she has absolutely no ambition to become an interior designer. This is her second story in Sword and Sorceress; the previous story, “Tortoise Weeps,” was in Sword and Sorceress XIII.
Deborah J. Ross: What have you written recently?
Marella Sands: I'm finishing up revisions on an alternate history novel with a tangled real-life backstory. I belong to a writers group called the Alternate Historians, none of whom write alternate history. The name was chosen in the early days of the group, and the people who voted for the name left soon after, so the group name has never matched what anyone in the group actually writes. Another member (Mark Sumner) and I decided to change that around 1994, because Mark wanted to produce a cable-access show that would be a fantasy/alternate history. We wrote a script, but by the time we finished it, the cable-access idea had faded, and we tried to market it through our agent instead. That didn't work out, so the script was mothballed. Then, in 2017, I was asked if I'd like to submit an alternate history novel to a small press, and so the idea was un-mothballed. Mark wasn't interested in pursuing the project, but gave me his blessing, so I've been working on that. A few more scene changes and it should be ready to go. Hopefully, it will be what the editor is looking for!

DJR: What lies ahead?
MS: Like many writers, I have too many projects that I want to get to. I want to take another

look at a novel I wrote ten years ago that got glowing rejections. There are more short stories that want to get told, and I am still trying to get back to my series of novellas about a bartender caught up in a war between fallen angels. I wanted to have six or seven of those done by now, but short stories like the one in this anthology, and the alternate history novel, have meant I am only on the third at this point.