The idea for Novels of the Systems came from a piece
of poetry I wrote when I was a wee lass:
Brave and bold
Stern and cold
The knight came to the
sorceress' lair.
And the ice around his heart
Melted when he saw her,
And having seen he could not leave
The witch with every-changing eyes
And midnight hair.
The poem went on to tell of how the knight took the
witch back to his castle. But once there he had doubts: what would his people and contemporaries think of having a practitioner
of the dark arts among them? What would they think of him for bringing her there? He asked her to hide her abilities
and not practise her arts and to please him she obeyed. For a time. But the pretense went against her nature and eventually
she revealed her true self.
Years later when I became fascinated with science
fiction, the poem morphed into a tale of travelers returning to a star system their ancestors fled centuries past. On the
way there Griffon saDance met the alien Dahle metamorph, Dani, which took on the appearance of a human woman.
He fell in love with her/it and then discovered the truth. Still, he took her back to his ship anyway and, like the knight,
made her hide her awesome abilities. For a time. But they were only two characters among many who filled the pages of
this story, characters who had many adventures, faced danger, incurred loss, were emotionally challenged - boy, did I
have fun with that. It was my first novel and the precursor of the Systems books.
That was the beginning. Alas, that novel never saw
the light of publishing but the characters and events therein are still relevant to those that followed. You'll find parts
of it as flashbacks in Metamorphosis (part one of Heroes and Heroines.) You'll find mention of the epic journey back
to the Systems in Mindbender. One of the characters plays a small but very important part in Galen's Gate.
I hope to get Heroes and Heroines part one: Metamorphosis
out soon, followed by Heroes and Heroines part two: The Final Hand. I did kind of put them out back to front as
Heroes and Heroines (H&H) should have come first. I'm sure you'll forgive me as although there is a strong connection
to H&H, Mindbender and Galen's Gate can be read as stand-alone books.
I don't know about other authors but I have a really hard time NOT describing
the plot(s) in great detail. I want to tell you everything that happened, and why. But I won't do that here. I'll leave it
to you, dear reader, to discover the Novels of the Systems for yourself.
