Hadley Rille Books Indiegogo Campaign

I wanted to take a moment to let you know about Hadley Rille Books Indiegogo Campaign, which started on June 15 and will run through the end of July.

Those of you who have followed my blog know how very attached I've become to this small press. HRB is a wonderful family of publishing professionals committed to providing readers with quality fantasy, science fiction, and historical fiction titles.  The press was founded in 2005 by Eric T. Reynolds, and since then has given a home to many authors and titles, with a clear emphasis on facilitating a greater representation of women in fantasy fiction.

If you enjoyed Eolyn and High Maga and would like to see more novels feature True Heroines, now is your chance to make a difference. Hadley Rille Books has hit some hard times this year, most notably with the massive stroke suffered by our founder and editor-in-chief last January.  The press is in need of additional funds to continue operations under these new circumstances, and also to expand its activities so that our stories are made available to as wide an audience as possible.

I invite you to watch Rose Reynolds' presentation about the press and its campaign below, and to visit Hadley Rille Books Indiegogo Page to learn how you can help.  Every donation, no matter how small, will be greatly appreciated and make a positive difference in HRB's efforts to bring a universe of adventure to its readers.  Please spread the word to your friends and family as well. Everyone who is committed to promoting alternative voices in speculative fiction has a stake in this campaign. Together, we can make it happen.

Thank you in advance for your support!

The Bridges We Build

La Selva, Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui, Costa Rica

Notebook:

Today we saw

Peccaries        Bullet ants

Iguanas            Stingless bees

Motmots           Poison dart frogs

Howler monkeys

Strangler figs

Cycads and palms

Pipers and Melastomes

The Kapok (also called Ceiba) tree with its pale towering trunk

Inch worms

Millipedes

Crazy fruits

Roots that smell like pepper

Leaves that climb trees

Cement paths over nascent swamps

Fish the color of mud

Butterflies with a flash of sky on their wings

Tonight it rains water upon water upon water

Frogs chirp and crickets croak.

~*~

Reflection:

The Stone Bridge brings the visitor across the
Sarapiqui River and into La Selva's forest.

Today I gave an introductory lecture to the NAPIRE group about the forging of Central America.

This is a story I like to tell, one that I’ve shared with many different audiences in just as many different ways: How this mass of stone and fire tumbled upward from the ocean floor, laying a bridge between two worlds that had been separated nearly 140 million years.

The landscape of Central America, a crucible of perpetual struggle for control over the Panama strait and the San Juan River, was fixed at least a million years before the first individuals of the genus Homo walked the plains of Africa.

Fate determined by geography, or perhaps better stated, fate determined by the interaction between geography and human ambition.

Was there something in the creative impulse behind Central America that “reached” toward this role in the history of the planet?  Islands rose, sank, and rose again. Land masses moved north and east to make room for other contenders, fingers lengthened their reach toward the two continental land masses, until at last the gap was closed and the Great American Faunal Exchange ignited.

What was the Great American Faunal Exchange? An explosion of movement by animals, 3-5 million years ago, that marked the reunion of North and South America, and laid the foundation for a rich mosaic of ecosystems that characterizes Costa Rica today.

We’ve had countless bridges built across our history: physical, emotional, economic, psychological. Often these bridges have brought opportunity, exchange, new horizons and a brighter world.

Some of the animals that participated in the
Great American Faunal Exchange.

Yet on too many occasions, we have built bridges of destruction, unleashing forces that erode biological diversity, cultural diversity, linguistic diversity, and the rich heritage built by the deep and dramatic history of our planet.

Today I ask myself, “What kind of bridge do I want to be?”

I don’t want to be a Christopher Columbus bridge or a Captain Cook bridge. I don’t want to build bridges that conquer, homogenize, trample, or reduce.

I want to be a Costa Rica bridge; to tumble upward and stretch my spirit between worlds, to build new landscape for an extraordinary future; to lay down fertile soils that support verdant forests, to establish a place where diverse peoples find a common home.

This is my wish for the future. It’s a wish that seems within reach as NAPIRE 2014 gets underway, because in La Selva I'm not the only one who seeks to build this kind of bridge.

EOLYN in Audiobook

At last!  The audio edition of Eolyn is now available through Audible and iTunes.

If you've already read Eolyn, this is a wonderful way to rediscover the power of the Magas.

If you haven't yet read Eolyn, now is your chance to join the adventure.

The audio edition of Eolyn is read by the incomparable Darla Middlebrook. Darla's tag line, bringing out the soul of the book, is realized in every moment of the story.  As I've said elsewhere, I couldn't be more thrilled with her interpretation of the characters and events of Eolyn. And I'm especially thrilled now that I get to share this with all of you!

As today's special treat, here's a preview of the audio book: Darla's reading from Chapter 3, 'The House of Sweetbread'.  In this scene young Eolyn, starved and exhausted after days of wandering lost in the forest, meets her mentor Ghemena for the first time.

Vote for HIGH MAGA in the June Cover Wars

Express your support for Thomas Vandenberg's stunning portrayal of Eolyn facing down a Naether Demon: Vote for the cover of High Maga in the Masquerade Crew's June Cover Wars.

The artwork for High Maga was inspired by one of the early scenes in the book, the first struggle in which Eolyn uses the enchanted Galian sword Kel'Barú. 

Eolyn's journey with the sword is not an easy one. She is averse to weapons of war and the violence they represent. Throughout book one of the series, she avoids learning sword play and relies almost entirely on her magic in open conflicts.

Yet Kel'Barú comes to her as a special gift, and she is the only one among her people who understands its strange metallic song.

In High Maga, Eolyn begins training with Kel'Barú under Akmael's insistence. Though she is a reluctant student, Eolyn soon discovers this weapon may hold the key to her people's salvation. It is the only weapon that appears effective against the Naether Demons, monsters released from centuries of darkness by blood sacrifice and sorcery.

Detail of Eolyn from the cover art.

For me, Tom achieved more than just an illustration when he interpreted Eolyn in this scene. He crafted an iconic image of the woman protagonist in fantasy fiction. Tom captures Eolyn's indomitable strength, her aura of sheer determination against an insatiable enemy. This is no sword-wielding sex kitten, but a true woman of extraordinary power and great beauty.

You can vote for High Maga every day this month.  There are many amazing covers in the competition, and you have up to 10 votes per day, so if you see something else you love, vote for that one too!

Want to know more about the scene that inspired this story? Visit my January 17th post.

NAPIRE 2014

Me and one of my old friends at Las Cruces.

The semester at Avila has ended, and all of the sudden I find myself in Costa Rica preparing for my next NAPIRE summer.

Those of you who follow my blog may remember that every other year I return to Las Cruces Biological Station in southern Costa Rica to participate in the Native American and Pacific Islander Research Experience (NAPIRE) Program. 

Funded by NSF and LSAMP, this 8-week adventure brings together Native American and Pacific Islander undergraduate students, who conduct independent research under the guidance of experienced field ecologists. Students identify questions and hypotheses, design and implement their own experiment, and analyze, interpret, and present the results. All of this in the context of the magnificent mid-elevation tropical forest that characterizes the mountains of southern Costa Rica. 

I helped set up NAPIRE back in 2006, when I was still working full time for Duke University and the Organization for Tropical Studies. After accepting my current position at Avila University, I’ve returned every other year to participate in NAPIRE as a research mentor. This year I’ve taken on a new and somewhat daunting challenge: I will be co-coordinating the program with Barbara Dugelby. Our team includes two teaching assistants, Lelemia Irvine, a kukupu o ka aina of Hawaii, and Nicole Kenote, a member of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin. 

NAPIRE Best Practices workshop in January 2014.
Diverse cultures, diverse minds, diverse forests.
Photo courtesy of Lelemia Irvine.

When the 2014 NAPIRE community is complete, it will consist of 20 students from various Native American Tribes and Pacific Islander Peoples, as well as 10 mentors from around the world. In addition, we will be welcoming mentors from our students’ home institutions as well as a tribal elder, Dr. Don Pepion, and a cultural practitioner, Ku'umeaaloha Gomes.


I have long had an instinctive love for NAPIRE. From the first time I heard about the program, I understood that this is one of those rare initiatives that could truly transform the world. Not from one day to the next, of course, but by planting seeds of change capable of germinating and flourishing long after the 8-week experience has concluded. This because NAPIRE not only teaches students science, it seeks to bridge the gap between scientific and indigenous knowledge systems — a gap that all too often seems insurmountable, abyssal in its depths, ready to swallow anyone who attempts to cross it.


As part of my personal preparation for this summer’s program, I have begun reading Grandmothers Counsel the World, a book by Carol Schaefer that consolidates the experience and wisdom of 13 women elders from different indigenous tribes.


In the foreword, Winona LaDuke makes a compelling argument that the current paradigm, driven in part by a Western approach to science, cannot show us the way out of the planetary crisis, because it is precisely this paradigm that created the problem the first place.


This is a difficult argument for an ecologist to read, even more difficult when the words sting with the weight of truth.


And so the question sticks in my mind:


Can science solve the problems science has created?


I have a feeling I will be mulling over this one for some time, perhaps the entire summer and beyond.


On the one hand, scientific advancement has allowed us to exploit the planet in a way never before seen in history.


At the same time, science has illuminated the extent of the damage we have done, and continue to do. Data gathered by scientists has often urged us into decisive action, as for example with the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Montreal Protocol (1987).


Science is extraordinarily powerful when it comes to deciphering the inner workings of the natural world, yet science offers little in terms of guidance regarding what to do with that information.

Where, then, can we turn for such sorely needed guidance?


Schaefer and LaDuke point to the Grandmothers and their collective wisdom, a rich reservoir of knowledge that spans hundreds, even thousands, of years. Indigenous knowledge systems, they argue, are not simply a place to start. They should occupy a central role in our collective effort to ensure a better, more sustainable future for all of humanity.


All of this brings me back to NAPIRE, a relatively modest effort to create a playing field on which scientific and indigenous knowledge systems interact on equal terms. Every summer I’ve joined NAPIRE has been a new adventure, each iteration distinct in many important ways from the last. Yet no matter the particular experiences of a given summer, I always come away with a deeper appreciation of NAPIRE students and the many cultures they represent. I know the much of the future rests in their hands, and that thought gives me a lot of hope.


This is one of many reasons why I am so excited that the door to NAPIRE 2014 is about to open, allowing me to participate in the many challenges and unique gifts this opportunity has to offer. I invite you to join me as a virtual companion when I step through that door, as the NAPIRE experience will be the focus of many posts from now through early August.

This is one adventure you do not want to miss. 

If you would like to know more about the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, please visit their webpage. 

Events and Signings

Busy week for science fiction and fantasy lovers in KCMO!

I will be at the brand new INKLINGS BOOKS & COFFEE SHOP this Thursday, May 22, starting at 6pm. Join us for an evening of pure imagination with fellow author M.C. Chambers and musician Rich Tuttle, singing songs inspired by Tolkien. Copies of Eolyn and High Maga will be available for purchase and signing.

Then, starting Friday, it's CONQUEST 44!  I am so excited for this year's con. Lots of  interesting panels, and great people on them. The main event will be at the Kansas City Marriott downtown.  Here's my schedule:

Friday
2:00pm Tough Women: Heroes and Villains (Lester Young A)
3:00pm Are there too many strong women? (Lester Young B)
6:00pm Readings from High Maga (Big Joe Turner A)

Saturday
11:00am Women of Ancient and Medieval Times (Julia Lee A/B)
4:00pm   Hadley Rille Books: Small Press, Big Plans (Lester Young A)

Sunday
1:00pm   Self-Publishing: Taking the Leap! (Mary Lou Williams A/B)



I've got a lot to prepare, so that's it for my post this week.  I do hope to see you in the coming days though, whether at Inklings or ConQuesT or both. Let's welcome the summer in style!

Rediscovering EOLYN

I have had the greatest pleasure these past few weeks of listening to the new audio edition of EOLYN.

Read by the incomparable Darla Middlebrook, this interpretation made me laugh, and then cry, in all the right moments. It filled me with joy and fear, love and heartbreak, warmth, humor, friendship and loss in ways that surprised me, given how intimately I already knew the story.

To hear Eolyn's world revealed by a professional reader was just such an extraordinary experience. I felt as if I were discovering my own story all over again, as if I hadn't heard of these characters and their world before, even though I'd written it all myself.

Among my favorite voices: Tzeremond, Drostan, Rishona, and Tahmir. I can't say that in every case Darla used the voice that I would have chosen, but in the end, the whole was so much greater than the sum of its parts. I couldn't be more thrilled with the final product, and I cannot wait to share it with the world.

Terri-Lynne DeFino, acting editor-in-chief of Hadley Rille Books, has given her go ahead on acx to move forward with the release. We are waiting on Darla's final approval, which I imagine will be forthcoming.

Once everyone has given the thumbs up, I'm not really sure how long it will take for the system to put the audiobook on the market. After all, I've never done anything like this before. But I can't imagine it will be long; I expect EOLYN will be available for your listening enjoyment by the end of this month.

Of course, as soon as it's released, I will post the purchase links here as well as on Facebook and Twitter, so please check back through the usual channels for more news in coming days and weeks.  If you haven't read the novel, this will be a great way to immerse yourself in Eolyn's world. If you have read the novel, I suspect that you, like me, will find immense pleasure in listening to this new interpretation. Any way you cut it, the release of Eolyn in audio is going to be a great summer treat for everyone.

Many, many thanks to Darla Middlebrook for the long hours she spent in putting together this fantastic recording. With any luck, we'll be able to snag her for an audio edition of High Maga as well. . .