On a wondrous planet of telepaths and swordsmen, nonhumans and ancient mysteries, a
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 Thrones
in-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.
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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.
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