Choose interview questions for webcast!

We interrupt the regularly scheduled "Ratha's Creatures" blogging to make an announcement and invite fans to get involved in a special project.

Steve Sikes-Nova, "Newgrass" webcaster, educator, social worker and all-round neat guy wants to interview me on his show and ask questions about Ratha. Here's more info about what he does.

Station Manager/Webjay ‘Newgrass, Prog & More!’ Web Radio & Music Interviews 2,000 Progressive and Eclectic Listeners Worldwide Since 2003 http://www.live365.com/stations/virginiaprograsser http://www.live365.com/stations/virginiaprograsser/schedule http://www.myspace.com/virginiaprograsser 2006-7

Senior Program Coordinator for theONE.tv (http://theONE.tv) "For Real Music – On Real TV – In Real-time Worldwide!" Studios in London UK http://www.myspace.com/theonetv

http://www.myspace.com/tuxedocatmusic (He does a pretty mean rendition of "Memory" from the Cats musical)

Here are some possible questions. If you don't like these, make up your own. Send the ones you like or your own to me at ratha13@earthlink.net.

Why did you start writing?

Where do you get your ideas?

What other authors inspired you?

Was there any visual art, such as paintings, illustrations, film or video that inspired you?

Music?

A striking feature of this series is that the reader really experiences what it is like to be a big cat. How did you manage to put yourself (and the reader) inside Ratha’s skin and look out through her eyes?

You used various characteristics and behaviors of big cats such as cougars, lions, leopards, and cheetahs. Which ones did you choose and how did you use them?

Did you do a lot of research for the series? How?

Did you have any direct experiences with big cats? (Yes, I met a cheetah!)

What was that like?

Do you have little cats?

Did watching them help develop the idea for the books?

Do you consider them to be “co-authors” of a sort?

When you think of a story or scene, what comes to mind first? Words or pictures?

CS Lewis, when he wrote The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, said that the story started when he began having dreams about lions. What kind of mental picture started Ratha?

Was Ratha’s Creature your first novel?

Was it your first professionally published novel?

How and when did it get published?

Was there a “lost chapter” from the book? Why was it removed?

What personal experiences did you transform into themes or scenes in the first book and the others?

What happened with the original MacMillan hardback editions and the later Dell paperbacks?

Was the series published outside the US? (Britain)

What brought the series back into print?

Why do the Named look like cheetahs on the reprint covers?

After many years away from writing, what made you write the new novel, Ratha’s Courage?

About Ratha’s Creature:

What species are Ratha and her clan?

What is the setting (time and place) for the series?

Did your concept of Ratha change through the years? How?

Why did you choose to base your characters on real fossil species?

How close are your creations to what is known about these creatures?

Many animal stories humanize their characters to the extent of having them walk on two legs, wear clothes, etc. You chose not to. Why?

How did you develop the clan’s herding society and the idea of the herding teacher, Thakur?

How did you come up with names for Ratha, Fessran, Thakur, Bira and the others?

What fossil animals are the dapplebacks based on? The three-horn deer?

What about other creatures, such as the giant bird that almost eats young Ratha and the shambleclaw that she sees?

Where did you get the idea for Ratha’s taming of the Red Tongue and its effects on her and her clan?

What is your favorite scene in the book?

Can you tell us about the Storybreak episode (animated adaptation of the book) that was done in the 1980s.

What did it feel like to see Bob Keeshon (Captain Kangaroo) walk out on the set with your book in his hand, saying your name?

In Clan Ground:

What species are the treelings?

How are the treelings named?

What kind of creature is Orange-Eyes/Shongshar?

What species are the “bristle-manes” that attack the Named herds?

Why does Ratha dream of the “Firecat”?

Why did you have Shongshar create a fire-religion?

How did he “seduce” the Firekeeper leader, Fessran?

In Ratha and Thistle-chaser:

Did you use personal experiences to develop the character of Newt/Thistle-chaser?

Why does Newt have visions of the Dreambiter? Who is the Dreambiter?

Where is the beach where Newt lives?

Is the scene based on a real location that you have visited?

Were the sea-mares based on a fossil species? Which one?

How about the other animals that inhabit Newt’s beach?

In Ratha’s Challenge:

What are the face-tails? Why are the Named trying to tame them?

What inspired the creation of True-of-voice and his people, the “dream-stalking” face-tail hunters?

What does “True-of-voice” mean? Is it a name or a title?

How does True-of-voice communicate “the song” to his people? Telepathy?

Did some readers think that the book got a bit too mystical and psychological?

Are the face-tail hunters the same species as the Named?

Why are they so dangerous to the clan?

Why does Thistle-chaser become the “ambassador” between the Named and the face-tail hunters?

Isn’t it unusual for big cats to make what amounts to a “non-violent” choice, which Ratha does when she decides to rescue True-of-voice? Why did you have her do it?

About the new Ratha’s Courage:

Was it difficult to return to the series after being away from it for 13 years?

What sort of difficulties did you have?

You based the series on real fossil animals. Since you wrote the series, much of the information about these creatures has changed and paleontologists have made new discoveries. Did this cause problems? If so, how did you resolve them?

When you wrote Ratha’s Courage, did you decide to return to the strengths of the earlier books, especially Ratha’s Creature?

You didn’t change the original books, did you? (No, I wouldn’t dare!)

How did the Named change in Ratha’s Courage and why?

What kind of creature is the “striper”?

Is the strange appearance of Night-who-eats-stars based on any living big cat? (Yes!)

Do you think readers will have trouble with the terrible forest fire scene, where Ratha experiences the true destructiveness of “her creature”, the Red Tongue.

What themes in Ratha’s Courage came from your experiences while you were away from writing the series?

Why did you stop writing in the 1990’s?

What did you think when your husband Chuck found out that Ratha was still alive on the Internet, with role-playing sites, fan fiction, used copies on Amazon, reviews on Amazon, etc.

How did you react when Firebird editor Sharyn November contacted you and asked you to write a new Ratha?

About the future:

Do you plan to keep writing the Ratha series? (Yes)

Are there more Ratha stories in the works (Yes)

Do you have any plans for another animal series? (Yes)

Do you think that your other books will be re-released?

Do you think there might be a movie based on the books?

If the books became as popular as Warriors or Harry Potter, what do you think might happen?

If your dreams could come true, what would they be?

Others?

CB

Ratha's Creatures -- Treelings, Part 2

So, to what species do Thakur’s little friend Aree and Ratha’s little companion Ratharee, Thistle-chaser’s Biaree, Bira’s Cherfaree, and other treelings in the clan belong?

Some readers have guessed a squirrel or other type of rodent, perhaps a kangaroo rat. Others have guessed some early member of the raccoon family, Procyon, or a flying squirrel or sugar glider. Still other readers, perhaps more astute, have placed their targets in the primate family; say, an early monkey. The big-eyed tarsiers and bush babies comprised other speculations. Or maybe the author just made up the creature. Authors do, and often get away with it!
Many readers, after studying Aree’s description in Clan Ground and other treelings in Ratha and Thistle-chaser and Ratha’s Challenge, have narrowed their primate choices down to members of the lemur family, the relatively long-snouted (for a primate) long-limbed ring-tailed climbers that bound from tree to tree as if they were flying. Those folks are right. Aree and the others are members of the lemur tribe, probably descendents of the early North American lemur Notharctus. Their appearance is drawn from the ring-tailed lemur of Madagascar, and some of their behavior from the sifaka, also from that island.
How do treeling names work? Well, when Aree had young and members of the clan adopted the little treelings, they were called Ratha’s Aree, Bira’s Aree and so on. These got shortened into Ratharee, Biraree, etc. “Biraree” was hard to say, so Bira turned it into “Biaree”. Thakur just kept the original “Aree” name for his treeling.
(In the early part of Clan Ground, Aree is called “he”, since Thakur doesn’t know that Aree is female until the treeling has babies.)
Other clan members who get treelings will follow the same pattern, so we may get Fessaree, Dranaree, Bundaree, Misharee (from Mishanti, the cub that Thistle rescues and adopts) and so forth.
Hey wait a minute! Why then does Thistle-chaser have Biaree and Bira has Cherfaree?
In Ratha’s Challenge (which will soon be released), Bira gave her treeling to Thistle for a special task. Biaree and Thistle developed a strong bond, so Bira kindly gave the treeling to Thistle. Bira got another from Aree’s next litter. She named this one Cherfaree, after Cherfan, the big herder that she likes and sometimes teases.
I made one goof with the treelings, or maybe I can just attribute it to poetic license. In Clan Ground, I depicted Aree with a prehensile tail, like a New World monkey. I had a scene where Aree carried a lighted torch by curling her tail around the shaft. I might add that Thakur quickly put a stop to that so that the treeling would not burn her back! In fact, today’s lemurs do not have prehensile tails. That scene was why some readers guessed that the treelings were something like squirrel monkeys.
One could argue that in the millions of years that lemur-like primates have existed, from the Eocene to the present, at least one could have evolved a monkey-like prehensile tail. After all, the New World or American monkeys may have evolved from lemur-like primates. Interestingly, many Old World, or African and Asian monkeys do not have the prehensile tail of their New World cousins.
Many creatures, including domestic cats, have a surprising ability to coil their tails around things, including human legs and fingers. My little silver kitty Athena, moves her tail with amazing sinuosity and grace so that it almost looks prehensile. But I never have, and probably never will, find her hanging from her tail on the shower curtain rod when I come home.
Perhaps, if cats survive and/or succeed humans as masters of this planet (as in Andre Norton’s wonderful novel Breed to Come), evolution will grace them with a prehensile tail to serve instead of hands. Or, they might just domesticate the remaining lemurs or other primates as Ratha and the clan do in the books. Who knows; maybe the Named will live in the future as well as the past.

CB
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