First I must thank my Muse for her great generosity in allowing me the time to write,
even though that often interferes with my primary function as a cat servant.
My Muse (Mews?) was born on the day of the Loma Prieta earthquake. Her kitten name was Charcoal.
Her earned name is Princess after Leslie Fish's song "Feline American Princess."
She is pictured here sitting on the monitor of my old computer. I am not allowed to use any
computer without providing a proper place from which she can supervise.
I began the creation of Tamar as a child when, after reading Robert E. Howard's King Kull stories, I wondered why the snake folk had to be all evil. I rather like snakes. So I started to plan a world with snake folk who could change to human form, but were no more, or less, evil than mankind. After a time, however, as they had limbs in human form, it was easier to give them limbs all the time, so they became the lizard folk.
I was introduced to Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" in high school. Of course, my world became highly Tolkienized for a time. In the years that followed, however, I got a little tired of Tolkien imitations and very tired of worlds based on Manichean philosophy, where good and evil are equal powers in a constant state of struggle. So I deTolkienized my world to a large extent. I kept the language I'd begun and the eslarin, the high people, who were originally modeled after elves, but even they mutated.
Ilkarionin, the Living Crystals, were inspired by a combination of computer chips and the
matrix crystals from Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels. I also liked Darkover's long
and complex history.
As for other influences, I want to thank Poul and Karen Anderson. At a party I once attended I heard them giving advice to another writer. I don't remember the exact words, but the gist was, "If you're going to create a world, do a thorough job of it." I tried to keep that in mind when working on Tamar.
As you may have gathered from the above, I have been a science fiction and fantasy fan for most of my life. My reading was greatly assisted by the fact that both my parents collected. In fact, their interest in speculative fiction was one of the factors that brought them together. I continued that tradition by finding the man I was married to for over thirty five years at a World Science Fiction Convention, Baycon, in 1968.
Still, I might never have actually put my world into novel form without the assistance of a friend, Geraldine Duncann, who wanted some help with editing a book of her own. In the process of helping her, I solidified Tamar into specific characters and plots and the Chronicles of the Karionin were born.
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