The Scratching Log

Another Song for Iranian Protesters

2009-06-22T13:24:00.000-07:00

Song for the Iran protest:

Freedom now is sailing
On a Sea of Green
Voices from the rooftops
Rising up to a scream
Shriek in the song
Of a swift-flying bird
Voices of freedom
Demand to be heard

The sniper on the rooftop
Cannot hide from the world
The bullet from his rifle
destroyed the life of a girl
Neda's spirit became
The new symbol of peace
The struggle for freedom
that never will cease

Freedom now is launching
On a Sea of Green
Images of slaughter
Show on millions of screens
Tyrants, thugs, and liars
You are right to fear
The wrath of the world
Now that truth is made clear.

CB 06/22/2009

Ratha's Island Archive

2009-03-10T10:50:00.000-07:00

Updated 4/16/2009 CB

This is an archive page for the Twitter novelette, Ratha's Island. All the #rathafic Twitter posts will be archived here as well as on the Ratha Series Forum.

Ratha's Island will start on Twitter March 14 at 12:00 noon, marked by the hashtag #rathafic. The hashtag will be removed in this archive for readability. Comments and discussions about the story are encouraged.

Ratha's Island, a Twitter novelette by Clare Bell, author of the Ratha or Named series.

Prepared for Twitter by Sheila Ruth and Clare Bell. Inspiration by Sheila Ruth. Copyright 2009

The Twitter search tag or hashtag for the story posts is #rathafic

Story archive pages are #1 The Scratching Log

Presently the story installments are posting at 12noon and 6 PM Pacific Time. My Twitter username is @rathacat or http://twitter.com/rathacat

And #2 The Ratha Series Forum

Archive pages will have text links to photos and blog posts about creatures in the story. You can also leave comments.

#rathafic Ratha, female leader of the Named cat clan, paused on the meadow trail, one forefoot raised.

To one side, the small three-toed horses that the Named called dapplebacks, huddled nervously.

On the other, the three-horned deer stamped and shook their heads.

The deer stabbed up with their forked nose-horns, as if at an invisible enemy only they could see.

Even the sky, choked with low clouds, seemed a threat. Ratha lifted her head, narrowing her eyes.

Just below the clouds two shapes circled.

Yes, they were birds, probably eagles, but she had never seen eagles this large.

Ratha knew the hawks and eagles that often sailed over clan ground, but she hadn't seen these birds before.

They seemed to fly much faster, making her even more uneasy.

Her ears flattened, their tips lifted, showing anger rather than fear.

Often her ears showed her emotions before they really surfaced in her thoughts. At that idea, they twitched.

At a safe distance from the three-horns, Ratha saw Thakur, the clan's herding teacher.

He was showing the younger cubs how to circle and drive a three-horn fawn.

His head lifted; she knew he had seen the white spots on the backs of her ears.

He raised a paw toward the young herder Ashon, who was helping him with the cubs.

The clouds gave a gray cast to Thakur's usually bright copper coat and the wind blew the feathering around his legs.

He hadn't yet lost all of his winter fur. Neither had Ratha; Fessran had teased her about being shaggy.

He bounded to her through the grass and nose-touched with her. He too, looked up at the sky, where the birds circled.

"They look big enough to carry off a dappleback or a young three-horn," he said. He lifted his muzzle, following her gaze.

Thakur wrinkled his nose, worry crumpling the black tear-lines that ran down his cheek.

"I've never seen birds like those before," Ratha said, only allowing herself to only briefly enjoy...

... the feel and scent of him standing against her. She had chosen him as her mate, and more.

"What are those birds?" Ratha asked Thakur.

"Condor-eagles. Bring the herdbeasts under the trees, so the birds can't swoop and grab one."

"Alert the herders," she said, feeling her voice sharpen with command.

"I see Fessran over there," she added. "Get her to summon the torch-bearers."

"Do birds fear fire as ground creatures do?" Thakur asked.

"Feathers burn as well as fur." Ratha said harshly, knowing the backs of her ears were showing again.

She glanced up. The circling forms were lower. She could now see they had feathered eagle-heads.

The birds had eagle-beaks as well, heavy and hooked. They were hunters rather than scavengers.

The realization lifted more fur along Ratha's back. "Hurry!" she growled, but Thakur had already sprung away.

Herders and Firekeepers assembled, then divided into groups as Ratha told them what to do.

The first group went out to bring in the stripers, larger, heavier horses than the dapplebacks.

They were faster and more dangerous, so Ratha wanted to get them out of the meadow and into the surrounding forest.

There the trees would keep the stripers together and prevent them from stampeding.

Next came the dapplebacks. They were easy to move, since they tended to follow the stripers.

Ratha watched while the herders moved the little horses under the sheltering branches.

Now all the herders had to do was get the three-horns into the trees, Ratha thought.

And those huge circling condor-eagles wouldn't be able to snatch away any of the herdbeasts.

The Firekeepers scrambled to light more guard-fires to help discourage the birds from attacking.

Fire was Ratha's creature. She had brought it to the clan and named it The Red Tongue.

Ratha scrambled up onto the sunning rock to get a better overview. She saw something she had missed from below.

Beyond the main mass of three-horn deer that the herders were driving to cover, she spied a group of cubs.

They were near a low bluff that rose out of the meadow.

From a distance Ratha recognized the little female. She was one of the best of Thakur's cub students.

Her boldness and dedication reminded Ratha of herself, when she had trained under Thakur.

Boldness, however, wasn't the best idea right now. "Leave the creature!" Ratha yowled. "Follow Ashon!"

The cub, however, was too focused on the three-horn fawn. Ratha knew that instinct had locked the youngster on her quarry.

Nothing would make the cub break away unless someone knocked her down. The really good Named herders had that one vulnerability.

Then Ratha heard a chilling cry and the rush of wings above.

Even before her mind realized that the huge condor-eagle was swooping down toward the cub...

...Ratha's rear legs shot out straight, hurtling her off the sunning rock.

Ratha flew straight toward the cub, but the condor-eagle dived faster.

The cub had reached the top of the bluff, where she was even more vulnerable.

The enemy struck the cub with its talons, bowling the youngster over, but the bird was flying too fast and missed the catch.

The cub tumbled, shedding a spray of red. Ratha landed, coiled, launched again, tail flared.

The enemy wheeled and dropped to where its prey had just stopped rolling.

Rage added to Ratha's speed as she flashed across the grass. Now she too, was locked in on her prey.

She had seen other, smaller, soaring birds before.

Sometimes they had trouble launching from the ground, and she could attack it while it was trying to lift.

The marauding bird hopped onto the cub, who squalled and began struggling.

A sudden hope added strength to Ratha's legs. The bird's first strike hadn't killed the youngster.

The condor-eagle's talons tightened around the cub's body. The huge wings opened and lifted.

Holding the cub in one taloned foot, the huge condor-eagle hopped to the edge of the bluff, facing into the strengthening wind.

One jump off the bluff, one strong downward flap, and the attacker would be away into the sky with its victim.

Ratha snapped her teeth together, swung her rear legs as far forward as they would go, then kicked off as hard as she could.

The bird snaked its eagle-head, crest-feathers rising; the head of a swift and deadly hunter, the large eyes cold and intent.

She aimed for the bird's chest with both forelegs rigid, claws out.

The beak opened, showing the narrow tongue and a maw large enough to swallow a clan cub whole.

Now Ratha realized how big her opponent really was.

The huge wings opened to a spread that seemed many times her own length, but the icy sting of fear didn't stop her.

She punched the condor-eagle backwards in an explosion of breast feathers and a tearing shriek.

Then, from the corner of her eye, she saw a silver gray streak as Ashon dived in and grabbed the youngster's scruff.

She saw an an instant of hesitation in his stride and cried out, "Save the cub first!” "

She heard the grass crashing behind him and knew he had obeyed. Jerking her head around, she sought her enemy, but didn't find it.

The surge of triumph she felt at driving off the attacker ended when something struck her off her feet.

Ratha felt talons stab through her fur into her skin. The condor-eagle had recovered and used the wind to lift itself again.

The talons drove deeper. The wings spread above her head, catching the strong wind.

The bird hadn't given up. It had seized new prey. And she was already off the ground...

She went into a wild flurry with teeth and claws, but the bird's beak clamped down on her neck.

Choking and flailing, she felt and heard the wing-beats quicken.

Her pulse pounded in her head and jaws. She could barely force breath in and out of her clenched throat.

Now Ratha heard yowls and cries below her. "No!", she heard Thakur howl, then she and her captor jerked in the air.

Thakur had leaped and struck, but not hard enough to bring the condor-eagle down.

With dimming vision, Ratha saw him fall back into the crowd of herders that had gathered beneath.

His tear-lines were distorted with desperation. Agony filled his eyes. Beside him, her friend Fessran screeched in rage.

The bird wheeled into a turn, spiraling higher as it passed over the Named below.

Other clan members jumped, lashing up at the bird, but Ratha knew it rose too far above the Named for any to reach it.

With a triumphant scream, her captor yanked her up close to its underside and flapped higher.

She felt her head loll as the condor-eagle released her neck, but she was already slipping into blackness.

She only dimly heard the cries of her stricken clan below, mixed into the rush of wind past the great wings.

Ratha had thought that she would never wake again, but the moment came when her eyes cracked open.

Below her everything was blue-green, with curling white wave-tops.

Ratha's stomach jumped. Her eyes shut. Had her captor already carried her over the coast and out to sea?

She felt the burn of the condor-eagle's talons digging into her skin and wished she hadn't woken.

Each heavy wing-stroke bounced Ratha slowly up and down. She rocked from side to side as the bird balanced itself in the air.

Ratha found that if she stayed limp, the burning subsided into numbness, though...

...she could still feel the trickle of blood through her fur.

The seepage of blood wasn't enough to weaken Ratha. Not yet. But it it went on...

If Ratha fought back at her captor, she would have to attack soon.

Although if she did wound the bird enough to force it down, they would both land in the ocean.

Why was the condor-eagle bearing her so far from the coast, she wondered.

The Named knew little about the sea, but even those who had climbed the highest peaks said they could see no indication of land.

But this was a land-bird. Why would it fly to its death in the sea? Unless birds could catch the maddening foaming sickness.

Or because Ratha's captor knew something that she and the Named didn't. Maybe an island lay ahead in the expanse.

Rocky, cold, wave-beaten. A place for sea-birds, not condor-eagles.

Ratha knew about islands. She had fought with Thistle-chaser on an island and nearly died there.

As she would die out here, warned the slow but unrelenting trickle of blood from beneath the skin pierced by the raptor's claws.

Either she would become a piece of carrion in the bird's talons, or she would force it to cast her free, only to plunge and drown.

Her whiskers twitched at the thought. Not a suitable end for the proud leader of the Named.

Of course, no death ever was. She felt an ear-flick that reminded her of her own arrogance

Be still, she told herself. Let it think I'm dead.

She closed her eyes to think, but something made her want to open them again. None of the Named had ever been out here.

She couldn't turn her head without alerting her captor, and she couldn't shift her gaze without doing so.

Such was the cat-nature of her kind, and she had never thought much about it.

Instead, she let the slow swing and bounce of her body in the bird's grip move her gaze so that she could see more.

The view of sky and sea was at first disorienting, for Ratha had never before been so far aloft.

Previously she had only caught a ragged glimpse of the ocean before retreating away inside herself.

The wind rushing into her face woke a strange mixture of terror and excitement.

A wild beauty lay in the sky around her, with sun, sky, clouds and incredible distances.

No one of her kind had ever experienced this before. She opened her eyes wider; risked moving her head.

She might feel the clamp and smother of that terrible beak again, but she had to feed a new hunger that was rising inside her.

Ratha suddenly not only envied her captor its wings, but felt strangely grateful to it for sweeping her up in flight.

She told herself that she was crazy; that the thrill she felt was horror in disguise, or the dementia of approaching death.

Yet, somehow she was alive in a way that she had never been. To chase down the wind, to prowl the open sky... what a dream!

She could live as none of her species had ever done, if only for a short time.

Many wing-beats later, the waves looked tiny below. The condor-eagle rose higher through streams of cloud, still holding Ratha.

With each wing-beat she felt a growing determination born of mixed fear and wonder.

The wind dashing in her face and the soaring feeling of being so far aloft rekindled her will to fight for life.

Like the Red Tongue, Ratha's creature of fire, her renewed will seared through the frozen immobility of fear and horror.

She knew that there was land ahead and that she could reach it. Why else had the bird flown this way?

It was flying home, and home was on land.

First, though, she would have to plan carefully. Ratha knew she needed to strike the condor-eagle hard enough to twist out of its grip.

At the same time, she couldn't kill or severely disable the bird or it might throw her down or crash into the sea...

..and if it got her by the neck again...

She became aware that she was not only swaying from side to side, but front to back as well.

Sometimes the condor-eagle's grip shifted, moving her from one foot to the other, or turning her so that she faced backward.

She waited, wondering how deep her claws would hook into the feathers and the skin beneath.

Ratha felt the wind strengthen, lifting the bird and tipping it backwards. She swung toward the tail.

At the same time, the bird started to transfer her from one foot to the other.

Using the momentum of the swing to help, she whipped a paw up to strike and tear into the bird's side behind and below the wing.

The sharp dewclaw on the inside of her forepaw hooked and held. The condor-eagle jolted in the air, in a heart-sinking drop.

Ratha's second forepaw found a hold in the flesh of the bird's upper thigh beneath the feathers.

She felt the muscle quiver as her dewclaw sank deep. The bird shrieked in rage, but loosened its grasp.

Ratha twisted her hips free of the talons and kicked at the scaly shaft of the leg to give herself an additional boost.

She jumped her hindquarters up to fasten her rear claws in the bird's belly behind the legs.

Ratha felt the condor-eagle tumble to one side and she clung tightly. The beating of the huge wings slapped at her ears.

The bird's belly muscles contracted beneath her claws.

It curled downward in the air, the huge eagle-head and fierce eyes seeking her.

She whipped her tail away from the snapping beak. Ratha lunged upward, choosing her move when the wings were extending.

Another paw-whip and claw-sink, again with the long and sharp dewclaw.

The feathers here were coarser and stiffer beneath her pads. She had managed a hold on the raptor's back above the tail.

She felt the condor-eagle flap madly, tipping backward under her weight, and used the bird's confusion to pull herself up onto it.

With her rear legs straddling the bird's rump, feet turned inward for a claw-hold, Ratha sank her fore-claws into the back.

Now she had all her claws into her enemy. She wished she had more.

The condor-eagle bucked and twisted in the air, making beak-stabs backwards over its wing-shoulders, trying to slash Ratha's face.

It rolled and tipped, trying to get her off, but she clung fiercely through the crazy swooping and dipping.

A hot exhilaration surged up in her. She had done it! She was free of the talons, and beyond reach of the beak.

Nearly beyond, she amended, turtling her head back between her shoulders. That last snap had nearly caught her whiskers.

She realized how large the bird really was and that its size had helped her.

A smaller flier might have stalled and fallen out of the sky when she made her lunge, or gone over on its back, dumping her off.

Yet for all its size, it was fairly light and her weight unbalanced it, giving her a badly needed advantage.

Beneath her belly, the feathered ribs rose and fell and she could hear the bird's hissing pant.

It only seemed to be using one of its legs. The other dangled below.

She felt fierce joy when she realized she had probably broken that leg with her hind-paw kick.

As huge as this enemy might be, it wasn't invulnerable. If it were like the little birds she caught, it might be fairly fragile.

In a last angry spasm, the bird tried to dislodge Ratha by clapping its wings together above its back.

The wing-bones bruised and squeezed her, but she ripped out enough wing-feathers to discourage the condor-eagle from trying again.

She couldn't rip out too many wing-feathers, however, or the creature wouldn't be able to stay aloft.

“Stop struggling and fly,” Ratha snarled, as if the bird could understand her. “Just fly.”

It took many jarring moments before the condor-eagle apparently decided that it couldn't be rid of her.

She heard a hiss that sounded a bit like a sigh as it straightened its head, spread its wings and once more flew straight ahead.

Ratha's face fur flattened and her whiskers blew back in the strong headwind.

It stung her eyes and pulled at her jowls, chilling her teeth.

The condor-eagle flew much faster than she thought a bird could. She could hear the roar of wind through the flight feathers.

Some of those feathers looked as long as she was, even including part of her tail.

Though weary and wounded from the struggle, Ratha forced herself to stay alert, keeping her claws fixed in the bird's flesh.

Even though the condor-eagle appeared resigned to carrying her, she didn't trust it.

One moment of inattention or slackened grip, and it could roll or loop, knocking her off.

To ease the cramps in her limbs, she shifted her weight slightly...

...and discovered that doing so gave her some control over the condor-eagle's flight.

She decided to experiment, but first noted the sun's position in the sky ahead so that she could regain her course if she lost it.

When Ratha shifted to one side, she made made the condor-eagle dip one wing, and put the bird into a shallow banking turn.

She decided that she could risk loosening one paw to experiment, and pushed down on the wing.

This increased bird's bank and sharpened the turn.

Annoyed, the condor-eagle tried to resist, but the struggle had weakened the bird, and it soon gave in.

She tried this on the other wing, making sure she maintained her grip with her three other paws.

By shifting her weight forward or backward, she could tip the bird down or up, forcing it to climb or descend.

It protested with squawks and skreels, but didn't try to fight.

Elation rushed over Ratha when she understood that she could actually steer the creature.

Ratha looked up from her crouch on the condor-eagle's back. The blue sky overhead seemed to beckon.

She shifted her rear feet backwards toward the bird's tail and crouched again, making the creature climb.

Intoxicated by the experience, she kept the condor-eagle rising towards the high clouds. They looked like little dappleback tails.

Ratha no longer knew how long they had been climbing. They passed rags of cloud that sparkled with ice crystals.

The air grew chilly, then biting.

The intense penetrating cold and thinning air made Ratha gasp and shiver, yet she kept climbing higher.

The intense penetrating cold and thinning air made Ratha gasp and shiver, yet she kept climbing higher.

Suddenly she became aware that rime ice was forming on the bird's feathers and her own fur.

A wave of dizziness swept over her and she began panting hard.

Her mount's labored breathing expanded and contracted the rib cage under her paws. The great wings slowed their beat.

Above Ratha saw a blinding brilliance that gave everything a new clarity.

The icy edge of this incredible experience made life on the ground seem dull.

She snarled up at the sky, at the cold, the air that made her pant; everything that kept her from what she wanted.

It seemed so unfair to be tempted like this and then held away. Everything in her begged to go higher.

The condor-eagle's breath hissed in its throat and her own stabbed her chest. She felt the bird begin to falter.

Quickly, though reluctantly, she shifted her weight forward, sending the condor-eagle into a dive that steepened alarmingly.

Ratha moved back and the dive leveled out. She kept the condor-eagle in a slow, downward spiral.

She could feel the bird recovering strength and breath as they descended into thicker, warmer air.

The stabbing in her own chest eased and the dizziness faded. She looked up, still tempted and terrified.

She knew that she would risk death again in an attempt to climb the sky. The thought frightened her deeply.

Ratha swatted the fear away, concentrating on steering the bird back to its original path, and hoping that land lay ahead.

However, she knew that she would never forget the experience, nor be free of its temptation.

Again the condor-eagle increased speed until it was soaring faster than before. The wind-roar through its wings deafened Ratha.

The hunger for food that had been eclipsed and overwhelmed by excitement began to burn in her throat and ache in her belly.

Weakness brought paroxysms of shaking. Her mind threatened to drift and her claw-hold to loosen.

Her head fell and her nose brushed the bird's feathers near one forepaw. Blood welling from beneath her claws stained them.

Hunger seized Ratha with a talon-grip. She licked frantically at the feathers and the skin beneath.

Her rough tongue began to tear away fragments of skin.

Her mouth flooded, her belly cramped and she bared her teeth to sink into the bird's back...

...but a wave of repugnance stopped Ratha. Despite her hunger, she couldn't eat a creature that was still alive.

Bristlemanes and night-howlers might tear into the the belly of their prey while it was still standing.

The Named struck to kill and waited until death stilled struggle and suffering.

Only then would they eat, and would do so with respect for the life that had fled.

Hunger also warred with Ratha's sense of survival.

Trying to eat the bird while it was still flying might bring it down before they reached land.

The pain could send the creature into a convulsive struggle that could break her weakening hold.

With difficulty, she limited herself to licking the blood on the feathers only. She grimaced at the strong taste of feather-oil.

She would take only what the creature was losing anyway, barely enough to keep her alive and awake enough to cling on.

Fighting a growing exhaustion, Ratha's mind drifted back to her flight into the crystal sky above.

She forged the experience into her memory, not only so that she could tell her clan, but so that she could hold and treasure it.

Ratha started to lose herself in the thought, her grip relaxing.

With a start, she awoke from a near-doze and immediately tightened her claws.

She looked ahead into a sunset and felt her ears and whiskers droop.

The condor-eagle tilted its wings into shallow turn that she hadn't commanded. As it wheeled, she sighted a cloud mass below.

Forcing her bleary eyes to focus, she made out masses of black and green thrusting up though the cloud-bank. Her hopes leaped up.

For an instant she thought it was an illusion. She had now flown over many such clouds.

As Ratha's hope sagged again, she felt the condor-eagle fall into a downward glide. It too, had sensed land.

A wind blowing from the landmass ahead brought her strange scents of lush plants, rich soils, and tantalizing exotic animals.

The wind slowed and hindered the bird's approach. Again the condor-eagle labored, breath hissing.
T
The great wings could scarcely rise for each flap and the flesh beneath Ratha's claws shuddered.

Silently, desperately the bird beat on against the wind.

When Ratha could muster enough strength, she caught glimpses of a high mountain chain.

At the foot of the range lay high plains, visible through the clouds below.

This was no dot of island in a vast sea, but a whole new land, stretching north and south along the horizon.

Despite the wind that cut into her eyes, making them water, Ratha peered down.

The highlands did not slope down to beaches, but ended abruptly in cliffs, beaten by the sea.

The highest and blackest peaks belched plumes the color of the Red Tongue.

Craters spewed glowing globs that arced through smoke as they plunged down the mountainsides.

The sun fell behind the mountain range, turning it to silhouette, then sank abruptly with a flash of green...

...leaving behind a glow and the brilliance of the erupting plumes.

Ratha knew that she and the condor-eagle were exhausting their last reserves. The bird had sunk below the level of the cliff-tops.

It flew so low now that sea-spray wet its underside, and Ratha's rear feet. “So close, “ Ratha whispered.

“So close, but we can't reach it.“

Ratha felt her weight driving the bird down into the crashing sea. So long a struggle, and it would end here.

She thought about jumping off, but with no beaches and the rocky cliff base below, she had no chance.

Was she becoming delirious? From the darkness above, in the wind rushing overhead, she heard high-pitched whistles and chirps.

The trilling wavered up and down, running so high that it went beyond her hearing. She seemed to hear only the ghost of it.

Her claw-hold slackened and she couldn't regain it. Everything slipped in and out of focus.

The darkness outside was joined by an inner dark that crept up and attacked her awareness, as she would take down a herdbeast.

Other sounds came from above.

Now chirps and whistles mixed with wing-beats that were faster than her condor-eagle's heavy flaps.

To Ratha's ears,the wing-beats had a different quality than the whoosh of feathers.

The sounds were hard and flat, reminding her of a dappleback-hide flapping in a high wind.

No, she had to be seeing and hearing things. That often happened...at the end.

Ratha felt herself sliding from the condor-eagle's back, her eyes closing, her awareness draining.

Dimly she felt a touch on one side, then the other, which strengthened into a hold and then a clasp.

The unknown wings beat hard with a cracking sound that deafened her, yet she could still hear the piercing calls.

There were two sets of whistling trills; one very close, one distant.

Had another bird caught her, she wondered, her exhaustion-fogged mind barely able to think.

No. She felt the clutch of long bony forelegs, not scaled feet with talons. Did the legs have....fur?

Ratha's unknown helper tightened its grip, drawing her off the faltering condor-eagle and lifting her away.

She hung limply, accepting the unexpected rescue, too spent to wonder who, what, or why.

The condor-eagle fell away from beneath her.

For a groggy instant she thought it had plunged into the sea...

...but she caught a last glimpse of the bird stroking upward, freed from her weight.

She felt a strange empathy with her former captor and silently wished that it, too, would find refuge.

The condor-eagle had suffered in the struggle, yet the bird had battled its way to the island.

Her consciousness fled in the hard flap of her unknown savior's wings, bearing her up and away from the sea.

Ratha woke with the trickle of water in her ears, the lush green of foliage in her nose and the softness of moss under her paws.

She lay and listened to the queer noises around her. There was no trace of her rescuer.

Ratha felt grateful for the warm sun and still air. She'd had enough of wind.

Catching the scent of water, she turned her head towards a nearby stream, shaded by huge ferns.

Still too tired to walk, she crawled on her belly to reach the bank, dipping her head to drink.

The water was deliciously cold and fresh, with a stony flavor, as if it had emerged from a spring.

It gave her enough strength to gain her legs and stagger downstream to a sun-dappled pool.

Here, as she hoped, she found fish. The languid swimmers were large, lazy and surprisingly easy to swat out of the water.

Her daughter Thistle-chaser, and her mate, Thakur, might be better at fishing than she, but her skill served well enough.

She caught and ate several. Once sated, though, she noticed something odd about the fish.

At first Ratha thought the fish were trout, with the familiar trout head and eyes.

However, the body was longer, throwing itself into eel-like curves.

Trout also had two pairs of fins. These fish had three or four. The sight of these eel-trout made her uneasy; her stomach rolled.

However, they tasted like the fish she had eaten on clan ground. She decided that she hadn't accidentally poisoned herself.

Ratha's stomach calmed. Yawning hugely, she stumbled off to have a healing snooze beneath the ferns.

A sharp pull at her whiskers startled her out of sleep. Her eyes slitted open to see a scrub-jay-sized bird pecking at her.

It sidled around her looking for something else to pull or poke and she noticed that its body was longer than that of a scrub jay.

Her paw itched to slap at the bird, but curiosity stopped her. Its wings, half-extended, seemed much broader than the jays she knew.

Each wing also appeared to have two tips. Ratha squeezed her eyes shut; opened them again.

First the fish, now this. Was she still so tired that she was seeing things?

The bird wagged its head, turning black, beady eyes on her. It squawked, crouched and flitted away.

As she followed its flight, she thought she saw each broad wing...

...split down its length so that the bird had two single-tipped wings on each side.

She saw that these wings, like the fish fins, were in front and rear pairs. It had a pair of legs too.

The wings beat in counterpoint, the front set rising while the rear set fell, with long glides between.

Ratha shook her head until her ears flapped. This was a very strange place, she thought.

Every creature except the condor-eagle seemed to have...more...of everything.

Ratha tried to remember her unknown rescuer, but her fading awareness had left her with a fuzzy impression.

What sort of beast was the flying animal who had helped her, Ratha wondered. A great bat that whistled and chirped?

It didn't smell like a bat, at least not like the little ones she had caught as a cub. And bats didn't have long, furred forelimbs

Getting up, she wobbled only a little. As expected, she hurt, and the talon wounds where the condor-eagle dug in pulled and stung.

Hoping the stiffness in her body would ease, she took a few steps and felt her stride grow more fluid.

Looking around, she swiveled her ears, unsure what to do next.

When in doubt, wash, as her mother had often said. Ratha sat and cleaned the dried blood and dirt out of her fur.

When she finished, she shook her pelt, smelling the breeze.

Catching the tang of salt, she found herself in a little valley that opened seaward into a meadow, but no beach lay beyond.

Instead the meadow perched atop the high cliffs she had seen from the air.

Ratha paced to the cliff edge and gazed at the sun sparkling on the water.

Somewhere out there lay clan ground. Would she ever return?

A shake in the ground under her feet interrupted her thoughts.

The tremor continued, making her drive her claws into the soil, awakening the cramped ache in her feet. from clinging onto the condor-eagle.

The air itself seemed to shake and rumble and the tremor grew stronger, bucking and jolting her.

Ratha decided that the cliff-top was not a good place to be.

She made herself unclench her claws from the soil, lunged around, and bounded inland.

The shaking made her path jagged and her strides uneven. A strange roaring echoed through the trees to one side.

Panic drove Ratha deep into the forest before the ground settled and stilled.

Here the trees were massive, with huge root-dikes at their bases separating muddy hollows between.

She had to jump, scramble, and climb over the root dikes and snarls. She showed her teeth at the trees for impeding her way.

Not only were the trees frightening, but she felt as though eyes watched her.

Not only were the trees frightening, but she felt as though eyes watched her.
Ratha used her rage to fight off a growing desolation and loneliness. She felt hungry again.

Fish could sustain her, but she really needed meat.

Tail still bottle-brushed and nape ridged, Ratha began prowling, threading in and out of the trees.

Hoots and shrieks in the trees above told her that other tree-dwelling creatures lived in the branches.

Ratha thought briefly and painfully about her treeling companion, Ratharee. The treeling was safe at home.

Ratha had given the small lemur-like creature to her friend Bira to look after while she directed the herders and Firekeepers.

Though she missed Ratharee, she felt glad that the treeling wasn't here. This place was too threatening for a gentle treeling.

She hoped that whatever she did catch didn't look like Ratharee. Even if it did have an extra set of arms or legs.

Weren't there any normal animals here?

Ratha recognized the presence of hoofed creatures from tracks in the soil.

The patterns, however, seemed a bit different than the ones she saw at home. She couldn't put a claw on it.

More of the hoof-prints were overlaid by others, as if their makers walked in a strange way...

...that made them trample more of their own tracks.

This brought another wave of uncertainty, but Ratha snarled it away and continued hunting.

A rustle in the bushes alerted her to ground-dwelling prey. It had a horsey scent, mixed in with something muddy or swampy.

Following the sound and scent, Ratha circled downwind of the beast.

She glimpsed a gray and black coarse-furred rump among the leaves.

The swishing tail looked a bit like a dappleback's. Curious as well as hungry, she came closer, choosing her steps with care.

She stilled even before a pair of elongated horse-like ears poked up through the foliage.

A short wrinkled trunk uncurled and extended to strip leaves from a branch.

Her tail-tip switched in puzzlement.

From the rear, her prey looked like a fat dappleback, had ears like a rumbler, yet also a short trunk.

What other surprises would it reveal?

Even before Ratha made the conscious decision to attack, she was belly-down, creeping silently.

She coiled and launched, knifing through the brush and landing on the creature's back.

The beast lunged, startled, honking in fear.

Clinging to the prey's shoulders, Ratha twisted her head around to bite the arch of the neck...

...but she didn't find it.

To her dismay, she couldn't get her jaws open wide enough to bite the mass of flesh above the creature's forequarters.

The beast didn't seem to have a neck, just more body, hidden by the leaves, but definitely there.

Confused, Ratha swung a forepaw up to strike the head, but she only hit what felt like another limb.

She lunged up, seeking the head. The thing had ears and a trunk, so it had to have a head.

Ratha's chest slammed into a furry, upraised portion of her prey's back.

Although her rear feet clasped the barrel of chest, her forepaws found more ribs. What was this thing?

Losing patience with both herself and her prey, she clawed her way up the slope of the upraised part of the back.

She slapped frantically, trying to get her claws into the head or neck.
The creature bellowed.

She felt the upper body twist sharply, then something pointed and hard, like an elbow, rammed into her side, knocking her askew.

Her claws tore free and she tumbled into the branches.

As the would-be prey leaped away, Ratha caught a blurred impression of four running legs.

Was that a raised fore-portion of the body with another set of limbs (arms?), shoulders, a neck, and a head?

Then it was gone, leaving only swaying boughs. Ratha lay blinking, not sure what she had seen, or if she had really seen it.

Bruised but otherwise undamaged, Ratha crept away in defeat.

Thirsty, she sought out a stream. Again she caught and ate the eel-trout, then lay down, trying to make sense of her experience.

She tried to fit the animal together in her mind, but...

...there were too many parts.

The long ears, the wrinkled trunk, the fat rump, the hoofed feet, the lower belly and ribs she could identify, but the rest...

When Ratha's belly was reasonably full, she crept downstream.

On a mud-bank, she pounced on something that looked like a cross between a salamander and a snake.

Watching it squirm under her paws, she noticed that it looked like the newts on clan ground...

...except for an extra set of salamander legs. Intrigued, she released the creature and watched it.

The salamander threw its body into curves to drive the legs, just like the salamanders and newts at home.

This creature, however,swung its body into double curves, combining walking with snake-like slithering.

Thinking that it might be deformed, Ratha caught another. It too showed the same extra limbs and manner of movement.

Thakur should be here, she thought. He would love to explore this place and its odd animals.

Raucous cries overhead made her eye the higher branches suspiciously.

She wondered if the fluttering creatures above really were birds. Certainly not the ones she knew.

Spying one on a dead limb, she paced toward it. Ah, that was better. Only one pair of wings.

Then she saw that it held to its perch not just with one set of claws, but two.

In addition to the expected pair of legs behind the wings, another pair descended forward of the wings.

The thing had the same number of legs as she, plus the wings. She snorted in disgust, whirled and trotted away.

The forest opened as she made her way upslope, letting her see more of the sky. Blue near the seacoast, it now looked ash-gray.

She wrinkled her nose at the sulfurous smell.

Ratha knew she was approaching the foot of the mountain range she had seen from the air.

More groans and rumbles from beneath her feet made her hesitate. Only the sea lay behind her, blocking her way home.

If she wanted to explore further, she had to cross these mountains.

The trees thinned, letting her onto open ground.

She walked across rocks with strange blobby shapes, like dappleback manure piles when the horses had eaten too much grass.

These, however, were solid and night-black.

When she stepped on one that felt strangely hot, she retreated, but when she found herself unhurt, she went on.

She soon encountered another stream, flowing across more of the blobby hot rocks. It steamed.

At first she thought the rising fumes were mist, but they felt hot.

With care, she walked upstream.

The water and rock blobs warmed steadily until the water boiled and heat shimmer rose from them. Had one of those rocks...moved?

Her fur prickled. She stared at another. Yes, they were moving. Very slowly. Not rolling.

Oozing forward like huge slugs.

A hot wind made Ratha's eyes water and drifting steam stung her nose.

One of the sluggy rocks broke open, showing a core the color of the Red Tongue's embers.

Every hair bristling, Ratha retreated, showing her teeth. This was too much.

Extra-legged animals and oozing red-cored rocks. She spun around, heading downslope, seeking a place to hide.

She was overwhelmed, drowning in strangeness. She had to get away or go mad...

Ratha scrambled over a hillock entwined with roots, spied an opening, thrust her foot in. At last, a cave!

She peered in. As far as she could tell, it had no other inhabitants or other threats.

Diving into the refuge, Ratha crawled into the damp darkness and curled up, burying her tail in her nose.

Soon her breathing slowed and she fell asleep.

Ratha woke, slowly, drowsily. She felt a furry body curled up against her.

“Ratharee,” she mumbled, expecting to hear an answering chirp. None came.

Must be a clan cub that crawled in beside me, she thought, and started to drift off again.

What a crazy dream she had about many-legged animals and oozing rocks.

She drew in a long satisfied breath, then realized that what she smelled was not the soil of her home den.

Her fur stiffened; her tail flared. Her ears flattened.

If this wasn't her home den, then what was this creature curled up beside her? Not Ratharee or a clan cub.

She noticed that a flap of furred skin extended from the cub's hip region to the tip of the shoulder spar.

Ratha's ears swiveled in puzzlement. What was this funny flap on the cub's back-spar?

It almost looked like a wing, though far too small to bear the little creature in flight.

The flap wasn't a unique characteristic either, for the cub had one on each side.

Again, two more limbs, not necessarily legs.

Well, it is consistent, she thought, remembering the multi-finned eel-trout and the snaky salamander.

The basic shape of these island animals was a long body, a leg at each corner, like her own, but an extra pair or limbs between.

If this was true, she thought, her head spinning, then I, with only two sets of legs, am the strange one

Ratha sat in the dark, asking herself an unsettling question. Am I at a disadvantage in this place?

I certainly was when I tried to take down that chunky multi-legged dappleback beast, Ratha thought.

Do all the animals here run faster, fight harder, and fly faster than those at home. Am I...

...the crippled one? Am I like my daughter Thistle-chaser, who once limped on only three paws?

For an instant, her throat tightened, then she growled, banishing the thought.

She had planned to sneak out of the den, leaving the odd little cub behind...

...but the unsettling thoughts made her reach out a paw and gather it against her.

The cub stirred and its eyes opened.

They fixed on her with an unexpected intensity, seeking her gaze as a Named cub would do.

Ratha saw that the cub's eyes were larger and more elongated than those of a clan youngster.

The huge irises showed a smoky color that she couldn't make out in the dim cave.

To her surprise, the cub's pupils were elongated at a slant, rather than up and down.

Alien eyes, yet with an intentness and knowing quality that convinced her that this was not just another strange animal.

She saw no fear in the cub's gaze, just curiosity, and a strange shifting brilliance like the Red Tongue glowing through smoke.

The same light of awareness that gave her clan their names.

Her voice felt rough as she said, “Little one, how can you have this gift of my people in your eyes?”

The cub blinked and drew back its whiskers, as if she had blown in its face. But she hadn't.

Was it just her voice that disturbed the little creature?

The cub made odd chirps that rose in pitch. They became clicks, then faded to ghostly whispers too high for her to hear.

For more about:

Speculations about centauroid evolution
d
More centauroid speculative biology

Rumblers

Treelings

The Named clan cats

Tahitian trees with “root dikes”

Paleogeography of Miocene California.
Ratha's Island would have been about 200 miles southwest of the coastline.

Palegography of Tertiary California

Watch the world change through time: Paleogeography animations

Paleogeography

Four wings? Not a fantasy: Microraptor gui

More about Microraptor

Six-legged walking by a bottom-dwelling fish

More about bristlemanes
Not all amphicyonids were bear-sized monsters. Early species were the size of a coyote or small wolf. Here is an amphicyon, Temnocyonine ferox from the John Day Formation

What are the bristlemanes?

Weight distribution and balance is important for birds as well as aircraft. I leaned how to fly in a Cessna 152.

Argentavis had 5 foot flight feathers.

Cheetah breeding and “The Catwalk”. Basis for “courting circle” in Ratha's Courage.

Cheetah dewclaw:

Cheetah dewclaw function:

Aerodynamics and ecology of Giant Teratorn. Agentavis was a predator, not a scavenger.

Argentavis frightening sabertooth cats away from prey.

Argentavis compared to human.

Ratha, Thakur and Thistle:

A young Named cub – artist's idea

Three-horn “deer” were based on protoceratids:

More about horse evolution:

Original conception of dappleback; Hyracotherium or Eohippus

Other possibilities

Striper (hipparion) picture - art by Mauricio Anton

Named herder

Giant 30 million-year old terratorn fossil (discovered in 1990's, re-interpreted).

Argentavis magnificens (giant prehistoric bird) compared to a Cessna 152 aircraft:
I learned to fly in a Cessna 152.

The "condor-eagle" is based on Argentavis magnificens.

Fessran is the leader of the Firekeepers, who carry torches and tend fires. Fan art:

Ratha and her people are extrapolated from the nimravid fossil, Dinaelurus crassus.

Cheetah face showing tear-lines:

Thakur the herding teacher

Me (Clare Bell)
Ratha
Inspiration for Ratha

The Named Cat Clan

Dapplebacks and three-horned deer
Dapplebacks - When Birds Ate Horses
Dapplebacks - The Bush of Horse Evolution

Three-horn deer - Wiki article
Three-horn deer - Image on a postage stamp

Miocene birds of prey
Teratorn - Giant bird of prey

Enjoy!

Clan Ground Available Through Amazon "Used and New" Link

2009-02-09T13:38:00.000-08:00

Recently the first four books in Ratha series have appeared as Amazon Kindle editions, but at the same time, the Clan Ground paperback edition went out of print. However, we rescued the remaining new paperbacks, so if there is a hole in your Ratha paperback collection, you can fill it.
Technically these copies will be sold as "used", but are basically new, since they are right out of the original publisher's warehouse.

On Amazon - Go to the book's page and click on the "Used and new" button.
You can also find it on Alibris.

In the meantime my agent and I will be seeking to get back the paperback rights to that book so that it can be re-published.

Clan Ground is the second book in the Named or Ratha series.

Alternate Evolution - Cat into pointy-eared humanoid - 1

2009-01-18T16:24:00.000-08:00

The idea for the Named began not with a story, but with a sketch. I like to work back and forth between images and written words. In my early 20's, in the mid-to late 1970's, I did a drawing to explore how a pointy-eared alien (such as Star Trek's Vulcans) could arise from a feline ancestor. I was and still am, an unabashed fan of the original and later TV series and movies. Some fans speculated that the Vulcans descended not from anthropoid ancestors, as we humans evidently have, but from a felinoid species. That, said the authors of this theory would explain many Vulcan characteristics. Not only the pointed ears, but enormous strength, graceful movement, going into heat(!), the raised third eyelid, the ferocity barely checked by logic, etc. etc.

So I scribbled and erased, (and probably smudged) my way through many stages of possible development. Unfortunately life tends to gobble up many things, and that drawing did not survive the many moves and career changes I went through. It may yet be hiding in a misplaced box or portfolio, however I decided to re-create it. Shown in the accompanying image are the first three stages of such a projected fictional evolution. The first is the four-footed feline founder of the line, a creature similar to the big cats of our planet. I didn't model it directly on any particular species, so it is somewhat generic as well as fairly quick to draw. I may go back and think a little harder about the concept and re-do the first creature sketch, but it serves for now.

The second stage is intriguing. It invokes the idea of neoteny ('neo' meaning new, and 'teny' which means holding onto), which is the retention of infant or juvenile characteristics into adulthood. You see this in adult dogs, which retain the floppier ears, shorter faces, domed skulls, playful behavior, docility, and other traits seen in wolf puppies but not adult wolves. Humans biologically engineered certain canids by selecting puppies that kept their “puppiness” as they grew. Some small dog breeds carry neoteny to an extreme, with the tiny adult physiques, large heads, bulging eyes and pushed-in faces more characteristic of newborns than adults.

This has not happened as much with cats, although the pushed-in face of the pure-bred “pig-faced” Persian may have elements of neotenic development. This process has fashioned many domestic and wild species including our own.

There is evidence that the high forehead, short domed skull and smooth brow of Homo sapiens sapiens may have originated from the infantile characteristics of more beetle-browed, long-headed ancestor. Infant and child skeletons of Neanderthal (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) and other related types show that these hominid infants had domed skulls and high foreheads at birth. As the individual grew up, the skull lengthened, brow ridges developed and forehead sloped back. Children who, for some reason retained the more juvenile head structure into adulthood may have been our progenitors.
(It is not thought now that Neanderthals were our direct ancestors, but other hominid types show similar developmental traits, and the “missing link” to us certainly lay among them.

So, this second stage of feline-based evolution shows a creature with a smaller more kitten- or cub-like face, having retained the juvenile form derived from neotenization (retaining early-life structures into adulthood). The changing ratio of face to skull (for whatever reason) is lifting the limits on brain development, as it did in primates and hominids. Whether the enlarging brain pushed cranial skull development or the skull enlarged for another reason and just happened to facilitate brain growth, we haven't yet established.

Although the drawing shows the face only, I have assumed that the overall proportions of head to body are also changing, the head becoming larger in relation to the rest.

The third stage shows the feline-derived equivalent of an early primate such as a lemur. It still retains portions of its origin, most notably in the ear structure, the feline splitting of the face by a line that separates the whisker-pads, and in the teeth, which show a more carnivorous capability as opposed to the modern lemur's insect-eating dental arrangement.

For those who are curious, Larry Gonick has an interesting graphical presentation of the hominid neoteny theory in his comic book, The Evolution of Everything. That is where I first saw it, but he also gives scholarly references.

CB

Poetry Friday - The Herding Teacher's Name

2008-11-21T13:10:00.000-08:00

A little doggerel (or cat-eral) about one of my favorite characters from my Ratha series about intelligent prehistoric cats; Thakur, the clan's herding teacher. It addresses a silly problem with his name. Somewhat inspired by Edward Lear:

The Herding Teacher's Name (or I Should Be Working on Something Else)
(just for fun)

by Clare Bell

The herding teacher's name is Ta-KOOR
I'll admit that it's a little bit obscure
Although it sounds absurd
It's a Bengali word
The herding teacher's name is Ta-KOOR

Oh the herding teacher's name is Ta-KOOR
I can't blame you if you're not really sure
The books where he resides
Lack pronunciation guides
Yes, the herding teacher's name is Ta-KOOR

We call the herding teacher Ta-KOOR
THA-kur isn't right and needs a cure
It was a glaring feature in the TV movie "Creature" *
But the herding teacher's name is Ta-KOOR

Get it through your furry heads; it's Ta-KOOR
If you say it wrong you may not be a boor
As it's writ in Ratha's Creature
It really does mean "teacher"
The poor herding teacher's name is Ta-KOOR

Ah, the herding teacher goes by Ta-KOOR
Regrettably it rhymes with "manure"
You must do quite a dance
When herding elephants
Since they leave behind a whole lot more than spoor.
And the herding teacher says his name ... TA-KOOR!

(copyright 2008 by Clare Bell)

Using Children's Nonfiction For Research - See Inside an Aztec Town

2008-11-17T13:22:00.001-08:00

For an author, especially when faced with a deadline, a great source for information about nearly everything is the kids non-fiction section in the library. When I was writing my novel, The Jaguar Princess (Tor Books 1993) about ancient Aztec Mexico, I stumbled upon a fantastic reference. See Inside An Aztec Town by Cottie Burland, edited by Adrian Singleton is part of the See Inside series of illustrated kid's picture books, with series editor R. J. Unstead and first published by Hutchinson and Co., Great Britain in 1980, reprinted by Warwick Press in the US.

In a spare but densely-packed 28 pages, See Inside an Aztec Town thoroughly immerses the reader in the exciting and exotic details of pre-Columbian Aztec civilization. Illustrators Charlotte Snook, Maurice Wilson, Ron Jobson, and Rob McCaig do a stunning job of reviving and recreating the Aztec city-state of Tenochtitlan. The painting of Tlatelolco Market, and the accompanying text inspired an early scene in Jaguar Princess where my little heroine, the Olmec slave-girl Mixcatl, escapes from the selling block and runs amuck through the marketplace.

The description of the calmecac, or school for noble boys, and the intriguing details involving the instruction, treatment and often punishment of its students led me to set a large part of my story within its walls. Mixcatl is not a student there; she begins as a slave, emptying slop jars from the student's rooms. However, it is in the calmecac that her talent as a scribe and a glyph-painter emerges, as well as another and more sinister ability. More wonderful illustrations inspired scenes in the Temple Precinct, outside the Royal Palace and on the boats that plied the numerous canals within the city.

Even the fore- and end-papers, with their wonderful array of Aztec glyphs, helped inspire Mixcatl's profession and gifts.

This was not the only reference I used for the novel, but it had a special spark that helped me recreate the Aztec city through the eyes of a captured slave girl. It led me to other, more detailed references,

Reviews and reader comments of Jaguar Princess have mentioned the richly detailed background of Tenochtilan. Some suggested (half-jokingly) that perhaps I had managed to teleport back in time and space. Yes, in a way I did, and the time-portal was a children's picture book.

CB

The Named Are Being Twits Again...

2008-11-14T13:09:00.000-08:00

For purposes of fun and silliness, I have given the Named clan cat characters the ability to temporarily teleport from their home in the California Miocene so that they can peek into the human world and remark upon what they see. This, of course is not to be regarded as 'canon', i.e. in the storyline of the actual books. Think of it as sort of an alternate universe version.

Of course, the main event recently, was of course, the election. I was and am, an unabashed (though some may yet wish to bash me) Obama supporter.

Please note that I have added one or two introductory Tweets. Also, the words prefaced by a '#' (pound sign) were used as Twitter search categories. For more (dis) orientation, see my earlier blog post, "Ratha on Twitter".

So, without more author blather, here are Ratha, Bira, Thakur, Cherfan, Thistle-chaser
and last, but certainly not least, the clan's fiesty Firekeeper leader Fessran. She would have the audacity to fall in love with the prez elect.

Cats don't tweet, but they do chirp. Let the Chirps begin:

Who is behind all this prehistoric cat stuff? http://bit.ly/2n88x4 5:17 PM Oct 24th from TwitWall

Trying Twitwall. The pic is what Ratha will be for Halloween... 5:21 PM Oct 24th from web

For #Halloween, Thakur wants to be ... Joe Biden! 5:34 PM Oct 31st from web

For #Halloween, Cherfan wants to be....Joe the Plumber! 5:44 PM Oct 31st from web

For #Halloween, Fessran says she doesn't know squat about the #First_Amendment and wants to be....#Sarah Palin! 5:57 PM Oct 31st from web

Now, back to our regularly scheduled (hah!) transtemporal broadcasting from the Miocene....Fessran says Obama is one hot cat! Prrrrr... 11:46 AM Nov 5th

ClanChirps - For the newbie whitetippers (nice followers), the Chirps are by characters in my Ratha series about big prehistoric cats. 12:05 PM Nov 5

ClanChirps - Ratha: "Fessran, get your tail back here! We have a story to finish. 11:48 AM Nov 5th from web

ClanChirps - Fessran: "I don't wanna come back yet. I'm in love with #Obama-cat. Quit pulling my tail, Ratha!" 1:20 PM Nov 5th from web

ClanChirps – Ratha: “C'mon, Fessran. #Obama-cat already has a mate. A good one. And cubs. The clan needs you back home.” 3:28 PM Nov 5th from web

Characters doing the ClanChirps reside in #Ratha's_Courage, my new #book about #prehistoric big #cats. http://www.rathascourage.com 12:28 PM Nov 6th from web

ClanChirps- Fessran:“I know you're going to light fires under some deserving tails, Obama-cat. I gotta go back and light fires of my own...” ... 12:32 PM Nov 6th from web

ClanChirps – Fessran “Farewell, love of my life! May you eat of the haunch and sleep in the driest den, you cool Obama-cat.” 3:58 PM Nov 6th from web

ClanChirps - Ratha and Bira together: "FESSRAN!" 12:14 PM Nov 7th from web

ClanChirps – Ratha: “Bira, you take Fessran's scruff and I'll grab her tail. All right, back to the Miocene!” * poof * 4:50 PM Nov 8th from web

OK guys, enough...

CB

Solo's Journey by Joy Smith Aiken

2008-11-09T11:09:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, to take a break from the laptop, I picked up Solo's Journey. Intending to sample the first few chapters, I found myself drawn in to the story of Solo, a feral kit who loses his mother and has to find his own way in the feral cat colony. I don't usually read other cat fantasy books, since I write the Ratha series, and I like to keep my slate clean, so to speak.

I picked up Solo out of curiosity, but ended up devouring it in one evening. Gulping books is part of my pattern, since I'm naturally a fast reader. Not all books get devoured in one session, since life inevitably interrupts. Some books are consumed in multiple smaller gulps, but Solo's Journey shoved life aside temporarily. Good books do that.

Sometimes I regret that the hunger for narrative pulls me through the pages so fast, but I am also a re-reader, and sometimes after finishing a novel, I will go right back to the beginning and read it again, allowing me to savor the writer's skill.

Solo's Journey appeared in 1987, according to the copyright date in my hardcover copy, before the Warriors series made the concept of talking cats in feral cat clans wildly popular among kids. Both Solo's Journey and my own Ratha series were too early for this wave, and both suffered for it. However both were reprinted.

I greatly enjoyed Aiken's originality in portraying the feral cat society, especially in her use of invented onomatopoeic (sounds like what it means, at least to human ears) terms. The words also sound like feline vocalizations “Prill” for a female cat, “bard” for an intact male, “silt” and “siltaa” for solid and liquid waste respectively, and the honorific “Dom” for the dominant male tomcat.

Some of the novel's power may come from real-life experience, as the dedication hints. Aiken mentions a real Solo, and implies that the book may be an apology for an act she regrets. It makes me want to know the real Solo's story, though perhaps it is a sad one.

Although Solo's Journey describes battles between clans in adjacent territories, it moves beyond those conflicts. The inside jacket text says that the book was inspired by Watership Down, and like the rabbit tale, involves destruction of the cats' home ground and a quest to discover a new home. During the journey, however, Solo rises to leadership, finds his gifts, and discovers a new and inspiring purpose. I won't reveal what it is for fear of spoiling the book, but I do urge readers who have enjoyed both Warriors and my Ratha series to go along on Solo's Journey.

The Flaming Torch - My Vote and Yours

2008-11-03T10:09:00.000-08:00

Today I will be driving from my home in Patterson to Modesto. I will be carrying my absentee ballot, which I have completed, but did not have time to mail. My destination will be the country voter registration office, where I can hand my sealed ballot to an election official. Why am I doing that? To make sure my vote gets counted.

Why do I vote? Because there are people who don't want me to.

I am not going to name parties or names, but in the past and today, people and organizations have discouraged and prevented Americans from voting. Historically, neither political party has been exempt from these practices; ask any Civil Rights veteran of the 1960's.

A basic tactic of the power-hungry is to convince citizens not to participate in elections. If the majority in a country are economically beaten down, frightenened, discouraged and lied to enough, they cease to hope and they cease to vote.

An apathetic, powerless constituency will not challenge even the most insane of government actions. A democratic republic can degenerate into an oligarchy, where few rule and many suffer. Those who rule know this well. They depend on it. They do everything they can to alienate and discourage the electorate, enlisting cynics in the opposition who joining them in crying that voting is rigged, useless, and the only answer to social injustice is violence.

Does voting make a difference? Yes, voting makes a difference. Why else would those in power try to suppress it?

Denying people the right to vote is not just a tactic used in the 1960's South. This cruel and ugly beast reared its head in the last elections and is threatening this one.

It has struck In Ohio, where 200,000 new voters were nearly stricken from the rolls. In New Mexico, where private detectives hired by politicos intimidated poor and Hispanic voters (in their homes!) by asking them questions that intimated that they had no right to vote. In California, where phony petitions misled people into registering for the wrong party. In Florida (again!) where absentee ballots were thrown in the trash. In Virginia, where voters were given flyers telling them to vote on the wrong day.

And I am sure that before this election ends, there will be more. Much more.

That is why I am hand-carrying my absentee ballot to the Elections Office. I want it to be counted. Not lost in the mail, sent astray or thrown in the trash, but counted.

Not to vote, for whatever reason, is to say yes to those who would pillage our government and economy. Not to vote is to deny hope for change. Not to vote is to give in and say that representative democracy doesn't work and this great human experiment has failed.

To vote is to lift a flaming torch in defiance of those who would deny liberty, equality, justice, and hope.

Lift your flaming torch and VOTE.

P.S - Back from Modesto, mission accomplished, wearing an "I Voted" official sticker on my shirt pocket.

CB

KidLit Bloggers Blog The Vote: http://www.chasingray.com/archives/2008/11/blog_the_vote_2008.html

Ratha's Courage - Good Stuff Happening

2008-10-20T12:00:00.000-07:00

Alien pipe-cleaner critter steals brownies while oblivious author signs Ratha's Courage at Northern California Independent Booksellers Association conference, Oakland, CA, Nov 5, 2008
Picture by JC Simmonds of Beagle Bay

Ratha's Courage has been making various appearances at different events and online sites. Previous posts on this blog have followed Courage's torturous road to publication and final and welcomed refuge at Sheila Ruth's Imaginator Press.

Sheila kindly invited me to attend KitLitospshere08 in Portland Oregon. This was a conference for children's and young adult book bloggers, including book reviewers, librarians, writers, illustrators and other publishing professionals. Since other KidLit08 bloggers have described the conference in detail and with greater wit than I could here, I'll just hit some of the personal high points. I had to scramble a bit to get all the arrangements in place and without conference organizer partner Jone McCulloch's aid in getting registered, it would have been harder.

I went up on the Coast Starlight Amtrak train and enjoyed the ride, especially along some of the inland Oregon coast, where I watched bald eagles soaring out over the estuary. As soon as I figure out how to get the picture out of my cellphone, I'll post it here. My clunky old road-warrior of a Sony Mavica digital camera decided to take a vacation, so the phone was a backup. I hope I can fix the Mavica or get it fixed. It has been a real workhorse.

Being a compulsive note-taker at conferences, I filled up several pages with notes on the sessions. I decided not to post them here. Instead they are in the Yahoo KidLitosphere group files, and are available to anyone in that group.

Just for the heck of it, I took along some stuff for display, including a pipe-cleaner alien critter that I made. I thought it would be an eye-catcher during the Meet the Authors event. Actually my little friend got more attention at the hotel bar. I suppose folks decided that they could explain it as a booze- induced hallucination. Here's Betsy Bird mugging with the critter, and a bit from her SLJ Fuse#8 blog (scroll down her blog page).

After the conference, I stayed in Beaverton, OR, spending a delightful few days with the family of a young Ratha fan who is a writer, photographer, and an artist, then returned home on the southbound Coast Starlight.

More good things continued to happen once I got back. Joan Druett, a New Zealand literary blogger, wrote about Ratha's Courage and the rough road to publication in a post called “Fantasies and Miracles”

I had sent Imaginator Press an article of how science fiction writer Andre Norton helped get Ratha's Creature published. Sheila and I decided to use it as a press release, and she sent it out. The result, among other things, was another Joan Druett post, “An Inspiring Story of Sponsorship”. Thank you, Joan!

Since pipe-cleaner critters were part of the story, here is another pic of the little brownie raider in closeup. He's not a kitty, but a strange little beastie called a "chumat", which is sort of the alien equivalent.

I knew that since Courage appeared this year, the book was eligible for the kidlit blogging community's Cybil awards. Scarcely had nominations opened, and before I could wonder if Courage would be chosen, a devoted Ratha fan had dashed in (at a speed that would make Thakur the Named herding teacher dizzy), to nominate it in th e Science Fiction category. I think more than one reader wanted to name it, but the Cybil rules say one nomination per book. Even if Courage just makes it to the Cybil short list, I will be very pleased, and if it gets a Cybil, I will be knocked over backwards and all the Named clan cats will have to lick my face to revive me. There are so many other deserving books out there, but one can always hope!

CB

ClanChirps - Ratha on Twitter

2008-10-07T13:27:00.001-07:00

Twitter, according to many Internet experts, is the next hot item for promoting people and their creations, including books. Twitter is a microblogging service that limits posts to 140 characters, thus challenging its users to generate intriguing and provoking messages within that format. In that aspect, it resembles short forms of poetry. In answering the question, "What are you doing right now?" Twitter lets users give peeks into their lives and engages them in what kidlit blogger Mark Blevis (http://www.JustOneMoreBook.com) calls "short, snacky conversations".

I was peripherally aware of Twitter, but most Tweets (Twitter posts) I'd seen seemed to be either totally obscure or completely boring. Sheila Ruth of Imaginator Press (publisher of Ratha's Courage!) and Wands and Worlds told me she was using Twitter, so, encouraged by her example, I decided to give it a whirl. Hearing that another writer had given her characters Twitter identities and had them Tweet each other several times a day, I thought it could be fun to have Ratha, Fessran, Thistle-chaser and the rest of the Named gang make their little snacky comments about their world, our world and each other.

So why ClanChirps? Well, for one thing, I hadn't quite figured out how to make multiple user identies on Twitter, and I wanted to get going, so I just decided to preface the clan cats' Tweets with a word that would distinguish theirs from mine. Cats, however, don't tweet, which is one reason why the Twitter logo is a bird. Cats make lots of other sounds, however, and they use short high calls that are described as chirping or trilling. Yes, cats can chirp. Listen to a mom kitty calling her babies. Big cats do it too. As Bira says in one of the earlier posts, " Ask any cheetah."

So, once given Twitter access, the Named have left their tracks all over it. From Ratha's first online chirp in response to the care of monarch butterfly caterpillar waste removal ("Can't you teach your caterpillars to use a litterbox?" ), through a clan variation of a 4th of July barbeque:

ClanChirps - Mondir: "Why are we dragging this toward the firepit? You aren't going to throw it in and let it burn up, are you?" 06:06 PM September 01, 2008

ClanChirps - Cherfan: "That's what a barbecue is, dung-for-brains! You grab the meat out before it burns. Makes it tastier..." 06:12 PM

There's Fessran's garbled attempt to participate in "Talk Like a Pirate Day", and baffled feline comments on human election year politics:

ClanChirps - Ratha:"I'm peeking into the future human world. What's a 'sarah palin'?" 01:44 PM September 15, 2008 from web

ClanChirps - Fessran: "I don't know, but I see a really scary thing called a 'mccain'. Poor humans." 02:05 PM September 15, 2008 from web

ClanChirps - Fessran: "I don't think the sarah palin would like me. I'm in a book, I'm sexy, and I think I'm in love with Ratha... 02:16 PM September 15, 2008 from web

Fessran: "I'm not really. I just wanted to claw-poke the palin, who doesn't think us females should love each other." 02:56 PM September 15, 2008 from web

As you can see, the Named have been romping around, making absolute Twits of themselves.

The Chirps also include a little ongoing tale, done in dialog, which is a prequel to Ratha's Courage. Featuring Bundi, from Clan Ground, and Mishanti, from Ratha and Thistle-Chaser, this little Twitter-playlet relates how the rumblers (indrotheres) Grunt and Belch came to be among the clan's herdbeasts and how they got their names. Composed directly on Twitter, this Named Twit-improv (Twitprov?) is coming directly from the kitty's mouth, so to speak, and not even the author knows what the Named will do or say next.

Mishanti, warning Bundi to be careful while getting a threehorn milch-doe from the herd to provide milk for the rumbler babies:

ClanChirps- Mishanti: "Not get kicked in head, else you talk like me and Thistle. Kicked in furry butt, maybe OK." 10:18 PM September 04, 2008 from web

Join me (Twitter ID"rathacat") and the Named bunch and "whitetip" (follow) us through the interlinked paths of the Miocene and the present day.

As Ratha says, "Yaaaarrr! Chirp!"

ClanChirps - Ratha on Twitter

2008-10-07T13:27:00.000-07:00

Twitter, according to many Internet experts, is the next hot item for promoting people and their creations, including books. Twitter is a microblogging service that limits posts to 140 characters, thus challenging its users to generate intriguing and provoking messages within that format. In that aspect, it resembles short forms of poetry. In answering the question, "What are you doing right now?" Twitter lets users give peeks into their lives and engages them in what kidlit blogger Mark Blevis (http://www.JustOneMoreBook.com) calls "short, snacky conversations".

I was peripherally aware of Twitter, but most Tweets (Twitter posts) I'd seen seemed to be either totally obscure or completely boring. Sheila Ruth of Imaginator Press (publisher of Ratha's Courage!) and Wands and Worlds told me she was using Twitter, so, encouraged by her example, I decided to give it a whirl. Hearing that another writer had given her characters Twitter identities and having them Tweet each other several times a day, I thought it could be fun to have Ratha, Fessran, Thistle-chaser and the rest of the Named gang make their little snacky comments about their world, our world and each other.

So why ClanChirps? Well, for one thing, I hadn't quite figured out how to make multiple user identies on Twitter, and I wanted to get going, so I just decided to preface the clan cats' Tweets with a word that would distinguish theirs from mine. Cats, however, don't tweet, which is one reason why the Twitter logo is a bird. Cats make lots of other sounds, however, and they use short high calls that are described as chirping or trilling. Yes, cats can chirp. Listen to a mom kitty calling her babies. Big cats do it too. As Bira says in one of the earlier posts, " Ask any cheetah."

So, once given Twitter access, the Named have left their tracks all over it. From Ratha's first online chirp in response to the care of monarch butterfly caterpillar waste removal ("Can't you teach your caterpillars to use a litterbox?" ), through a clan variation of a 4th of July barbeque:

ClanChirps - Mondir: "Why are we dragging this toward the firepit? You aren't going to throw it in and let it burn up, are you?" 06:06 PM September 01, 2008

ClanChirps - Cherfan: "That's what a barbecue is, dung-for-brains! You grab the meat out before it burns. Makes it tastier..." 06:12 PM

There's Fessran's garbled attempt to participate in "Talk Like a Pirate Day", and baffled feline comments on human election year politics:

ClanChirps - Ratha:"I'm peeking into the future human world. What's a 'sarah palin'?" 01:44 PM September 15, 2008 from web

ClanChirps - Fessran: "I don't know, but I see a really scary thing called a 'mccain'. Poor humans." 02:05 PM September 15, 2008 from web

ClanChirps - Fessran: "I don't think the sarah palin would like me. I'm in a book, I'm sexy, and I think I'm in love with Ratha... 02:16 PM September 15, 2008 from web

Fessran: "I'm not really. I just wanted to claw-poke the palin, who doesn't think us females should love each other." 02:56 PM September 15, 2008 from web

As you can see, the Named have been romping around, making absolute Twits of themselves.

The Chirps also include a little ongoing tale, done in dialog, which is a prequel to Ratha's Courage. Featuring Bundi, from Clan Ground, and Mishanti, from Ratha and Thistle-Chaser, this little Twitter-playlet relates how the rumblers (indrotheres) Grunt and Belch came to be among the clan's herdbeasts and how they got their names. Composed directly on Twitter, this Named Twit-improv (Twitprov?) is coming directly from the kitty's mouth, so to speak, and not even the author knows what the Named will do or say next.

Mishanti, warning Bundi to be careful while getting a threehorn milch-doe from the herd to provide milk for the rumbler babies:

ClanChirps- Mishanti: "Not get kicked in head, else you talk like me and Thistle. Kicked in furry butt, maybe OK." 10:18 PM September 04, 2008 from web

Join me (Twitter ID"rathacat") and the Named bunch and "whitetip" (follow) us through the interlinked paths of the Miocene and the present day.

As Ratha says, "Yaaaarrr! Chirp!"

The 6th Ratha Tale and Brightspirit

2008-09-23T15:50:00.000-07:00

The 6th Ratha tale - Idealism and its Discontents

Back in the days when all was rosy, Courage was written, turned in, eagerly accepted, and the Named Series appeared to be on the verge of a boom that could rival Harry Potter or Warriors, Sharyn November asked me to do a Ratha short story for her Firebirds Soaring anthology. So, I did. And she liked it and bought it. Firebirds Soaring will be out in December, and in it you will find, among many fine tales by Firebird Books authors, one called "Bonechewer's Legacy".

Actually, "Legacy" should be called the 4 1/2th Ratha tale, because, time-wise, it takes place after Challenge (#4) and before Courage (#5).

Why Bonechewer? I mean, he's long gone, since he died in the first book. But he was such a strong and unique being ("character" doesn't sound like the right word - as if I pasted him together out of construction paper and popsicle sticks) that Ratha can't forget him and I can't either. He was possibly my best creation in all the books, described by reviewers as as "brilliant", "irreverent", "flip", "sardonic" and unforgettable. So I decided to have some fun with him before I finally let him go, and the result is "Legacy".

I got the advanced reading copy of Firebirds Soaring a few days ago. After a brief worry-flurry about whether my emailed corrections ("Bonechewer", not Bone-chewer") got in (they did, thank you, Sharyn), I checked out how "Legacy" looked in print. The accompanying artwork by Mike Dringenberg brings out the spirit of the story and is just plain beautiful, so thank you, Mike. I've seen Dringenberg's work in the various Neil Gamen "Sandman" comics and compilations, and admired it, but never thought that one of Mike's illustrations would grace one of my stories.

Though I am not new to short stories, most of my works are novels. I have had short non-Ratha tales in such collections as Tales of the Witchworld ("The Hunting of Lord Etsalian's Daughter") and Catfantastic ("The Damcat", "Bomber and the Bismarck", "A Tangled Tahitian Tale"). Putting the world of the Named clan-cats into a shorter format was a challenge. Luckily I already had a theme in mind based on some recent rough times in my life. I won't name the individuals or companies who gave me the bumpy ride, but their efforts to dishearten me ended up inspiring me. (Note: these guys were not in the publishing industry.) Funny how that works, isn't it?

I was raised as a progressive idealist and I have been one all my life. As a youngster, I went to the early 1960's anti-war marches with my then-stepfather Donald Stewerd. I now consider him to be my real father, and his ideas about peace, social justice, non-violence, and conflict resolution influenced me then and still do. The upside to being an idealist is that doing what you think is right for the world generates a sense of purpose and a huge amount of energy. I got a real high out of marching in the anti-Vietnam War Moratoriums, "bird-dogging" for peace candidates, such as Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern," and being professionally employed in developing various electric vehicles, such as the Think and Corbin Sparrow.

The down side of being an idealist is that other people see that energy and think only "how can I harness that to benefit myself and my company?" They will, and have, taken advantage of an idealist's good nature and tremendous drive. However, if idealism and money clash, you can bet who loses. "It will only take a $50 per car investment to make sure that the customer doesn't get a 156V DC electrical shock? No, I'm sorry. That will cut too far into my profits and my $100 bottles of wine at dinner."

Having been seduced down that road too many times, I quit the field and turned my experiences into themes in my fiction. Ratha is becoming a visionary, starting to look beyond the immediate needs of the Named. Instead of meeting the UnNamed or other outsiders with the fierceness of fire, she wants instead to extend friendship. It is her dream to gather in the struggling and suffering and become a benevolent leader who is loved instead of feared. That makes her (as it made me) vulnerable to exploitation by others who care nothing for her vision and want only to manipulate and destroy her.

Being victimized in such a way makes the wounded idealist think that his or her dedication was misguided. Depression, retreat and cynicsm follow. How does one recover and find the enthusiasm once again? Many never do, and their talents are lost. This is tragic, considering how badly such people are needed, especially now.

When someone else grabs you by your dreams and throws you into a pit, how do you struggle out? Read "Bonechewer's Legacy" and let me know what you think of the story.

In other news...

Please visit the Brightspirit Disaster Relief Fund Auction, which is being held in memory of the Warrior fan and Wands and Worlds member, Brightspirit,
Emily Cherry. She and her parents were both killed in a tornado and her grandmothers are honoring her with this event. The Erin Hunter authors of the Warriors series have donated many items to this auction. Other authors have also contributed. Here's the link:

http://brightspirit.cmarket.com .

I've donated a set of the Named series novels (signed and kitty-face doodled) to the auction and the direct link to those items is:

http://www.cmarket.com/auction/item/Item.action?_sourcePage=%2Fitem%2FbrowseImage.jsp&id=73969825

Check out the auction, do some good and get some neat books!

CB

Ratha's Creatures - The Named clan cats

2008-08-29T11:54:00.000-07:00

Readers ask if the various creatures in the Ratha series really existed. The answer is yes, they are based on real fossils, but a few have been slightly modified. Keep in mind that I began the series in 1983 and wrote it until the mid 1990's. Paleontology has made huge leaps since then, finding many new prehistoric species and making new discoveries about old ones.

A case in point is Ratha herself. I originally based her on the leopard-like Nimravus (shown in the Charles R. Knight painting of Nimravus (bottom) fighting Eusmilus (top)). At that time, researchers thought that nimravids were directly ancestral to modern cats. A recent re-examination of nimravid fossil skulls revealed that the bony structure (bulla) of the middle ear is slightly different than in true cats. On the basis of this anatomical difference, some researchers place nimravids in a separate family, although some still disagree.

Painting by Charles R. Knight, copyright by Rhoda Knight Kalt

Renewed study of another fossil, Dinaelurus crassus, (Eaton, 1926), has changed the view of this animal from that of a leopard-like ambush predator to a cheetah-like prey chaser. Although no bones from the body have yet been found, the skull, as compared to other nimravids, has very cheetah-like characteristics.

The Named behave in some ways very much like modern cheetahs. They sprint after herdbeasts and knock the animals down with a forepaw swipe. Thakur, the herding teacher, has a slim athletic physique and loves to run. They had also been portrayed as very cheetah-like on the original series book jackets (in part because the cover artist for my cheetah book, Tomorrow's Sphinx, did covers for the later Ratha books).

My love for cheetahs may have unconsciously expressed itself in my descriptions of the Named, so that many people who visualized them (such as fans and artists) used pictures of cheetahs.

Ratha and her kind aren't all cheetah. They share cub-nursing duties in a common area, as do mothers in a lion pride. As shown in the books, they have solid-colored coats like lions, although the young have spots that later fade. The large clan males, such as Cherfan attack their enemies like male lions, body-slamming them and striking out with heavy front paws. The Named also jump like pumas and climb trees like leopards.

When I read the recent arguments that Dinaelurus was a cheetah-like cursorial predator, I decided to switch Ratha's ancestry from Nimravus to Dinaelurus. The two are sister species and very similar. So I invented the fictional species Dinaelurus ("terrible cat") illumina ("enlightened") sapiens ("human-equivalent mentality").

Imaginator Press Paperback of Ratha's Courage

2008-08-12T16:10:00.000-07:00

Imaginator Press has been moving very fast to get Ratha's Courage into paperback for the October release date (Yay, Sheila Ruth!). Ratha fans probably noticed that Courage is back up on Amazon for pre-order, which is great. In the process of taking down the old Viking-Penguin page and putting up the new Imaginator page, the two early five-star reviews got lost. Luckily I had saved them. Usually I don't reprint reviews, as the Amazon Connect feature is not intended for that. When I asked one of the original reviewers to re-post on the new page, it would not accept the post, probably because the book has not been released yet. To help the book along and because it has had a rough road (undeserved) to print publication, I have decided to reprint the two five-star Courage reviews here so that they appear on my Amazon Connect feature as well as other sites that feature this blog.

(The new cover art is not yet up on the Amazon page yet, but as soon as it appears, I will add it to this post.)

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

Long Awaited and Well Worth the Wait, November 2, 2007

By	J. Feldes "CoyoteWoman" (Las Vegas, NV) - See all my reviews

I was lucky enough to receive an advance copy of 'Ratha's Courage' and hope I can do it justice with my review! Clare Bell has been in hiding for many years now, but she has finally come back to her fans with "Ratha's Courage". It picks up where "Ratha and Tail-Chaser" left off, furthering the tenuous relationship between the Named and the communal followers of True-of-Voice. I was awed by the amazing twist the story took towards the end as the lines of friend and foe blurred into something altogether new and different. Ratha continues to mature as leader of her tribe of fire-wielding talking cats. Ms. Bell's time away from the unique feline world she gave us has not lessened her familiarity with the personalities of the individuals (most noteably Thakur, Fessran and especially Ratha herself) integral to the story line, and the continuity is fantastic - no plot holes here! The story line is somewhat more sophisticated than the original 'Ratha's Creature', and would probably be hard for young (under 8 or so) readers to follow, but any pre-teen or 'young adult' should be able to catch on with ease. As with all the books, there are some sexual overtones parents may want to watch for.
'Ratha's Courage' was definitely worth the wait, and hopefully there will be another adventure of the Named waiting in the wings.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

Another Fantasy Masterpiece by Clare Bell, March 1, 2008

By	'The Virginiaprograsser' "Always Have a Song ... (Tidewater, Virginia) - See all my reviews

I was also fortunate enough to recieve an advance copy of Ratha's Courage. It is amazing how vibrant and alive Bell's characters continue to be after all this time has passed between her last wonderful Ratha novel (Ratha's Challenge) and this worthy successor. Time has in no way dimmed Bell's skill as a writer and Courage delivers in every way possible.

I may be getting ahead of myself here but I can't wait for the next installment of The Named series. Through the power of Clare Bell's writing you end up caring about Ratha and her clan that much...5 Stars.

:)Steve Sikes-Nova
Educator, Audio Journalist, Music PR
Tidewater, Virginia, USA

Thanks folks!

Imaginator Press to Publish Print Edition of Ratha's Courage

2008-07-27T18:54:00.000-07:00

Sheila Ruth of Imaginator Press and I ( Clare Bell, author of the Named series), have signed an agreement to publish a print edition of Ratha's Courage. Sheila also co-administers Wands and Worlds, a well-known teenage fantasy fiction fan site ( www.wandsandworlds.com). Agent Richard Curtis helped arrange the agreement. For more information and Sheila's announcement on WW, please see the link.

Ratha Returns with New "Courage", Part 1

2008-05-16T11:48:00.000-07:00

by Clare Bell

Ratha, the fire-wielding leader of the Named prehistoric cat clan, has, according to the recent VOYA review of the new Ratha's Courage, “a long and venerable history”. From the now-classic hardcover Ratha's Creature (Atheneum/Margaret K. McElderry/1983) through Clan Ground, Ratha and Thistle-chaser, to Ratha's Challenge, Ratha's prehistoric Miocene world fascinated readers. Now, thirteen years later, comes Ratha's Courage. Why has there been such a long gap after Challenge and why at last did I return to the series?

When Ratha sprang into print in 1983, she captured the 1984 IRA Children's Choice and jumped onto recommended teen book lists. CBS Storybreak adapted the book for a 1987 animated episode (see clips on MySpace TV and YouTube). After such an entrance, the series should have been commercially successful, but it wasn't for various reasons.

I mourned, and turned instead to my other love, electric vehicles. I became an EV journalist/editor for the Electric Auto Association, and later an
electric vehicle engineer.

In 2003 a call came from acclaimed Firebird Books editor Sharyn November. Sharyn interacts via Internet with teen readers and her young advisors suggested re-issuing my Ratha series. Would I write another book in order to pull the series back into print? Could Ratha, perhaps grown creaky from a 13 year sleep, handle another adventure? The answer came back in a Ratha-growl. Yes, of course!

Stay tuned for more!

CB

Ratha's Creatures - What Are the Rumblers?

2008-05-15T18:12:00.000-07:00

Ratha's Courage introduces several new creatures to the series, including a larger horse called a “striper” and the two “rumblers”, Grunt and Belch. Adopted by the herder Bundi, and his younger friend Mishanti while still small, these beasts have unexpectedly grown into behemoths greater than the elephant-like “face-tails”(based on American mastodons – see “What are the Face-tails” in previous blog posts) that the Named are still struggling to domesticate. Ratha, having been preoccupied with clan business, hasn't been paying much attention to Bundi and Mishanti's two pets.

Here is her encounter with Grunt and Belch from Ratha's Courage, Chapter 2:

“As Ratha came to a grassy clearing, the sound of splintering branches made her look up. The hair lifted on her neck and her eyes widened. The alert hunter within made Ratha take a quick step back before she caught herself.

Slightly embarrassed to be so startled, Ratha bent her head and gave her foreleg a quick swipe with her tongue. Then she looked again.
There was almost no word in the Named tongue to describe the two gray-brown beasts browsing in the treetops. They were mountainous. They even looked a bit like mountains, with backs sloping slightly up from rump to shoulders, extended necks increasing the slope and carrying the ascending line to huge, blocky, horselike heads.”

Though distantly related to horses, Grunt and Belch are not equine. Ratha's language may not describe them very accurately, but our language does. The rumblers are based on a fossil beast from the Oligocene and Miocene called Indricotherium (formerly Baluchitherium because its fossils were discovered in Pakistan). Indricotheres are gigantic hornless rhinoceroses, the largest land mammal ever, exceeding elephants and mammoths in both weight and height. At a shoulder height of about 20 feet, the ability to brows at 25 feet and a weight of 15 tons, no wonder they remind Ratha of mountains!

Although today's horses and rhinos look nothing like each other, they are both perissodactyls, or mammals with an odd number of toes. This group includes horses, rhinos and tapirs, who trace their ancestry back to recently described tapir-like animals called paleotheres. Eohippus, the “dawn horse” of our childhood prehistoric animal books, is now thought to be a small paleothere, like the early Paleotherium hassiacum. Paleotheres didn't remain small, either. The later Paleotherium magnum could browse branches 6 feet from the ground. It had a horse-like head and long neck, but the legs, although elongated like a horse's, were heavy; the feet had three toes with pads underneath. The limbs looked as though they belonged to a tall rhino.
Similarities between paleotheres, early horses and early rhinos have long confused paleontologists, and even now, they haven't yet got it all sorted out. Many early rhinos were small and slender, like the early horses. Many older books refer to them as “running rhinoceroses”, which may seem like a contradiction in terms. Others became the heavyweights similar to the species of rhinos we know today. One, in particular, grew to enormous height so that it could browse high in the trees where other mammals couldn't reach. Its size freed it from having to defend against predators, so it lost its horn and became Indricotherium.

Like the reader, Ratha is a bit baffled.

“She had no idea what these beasts were. Once she had seen a rhino, a low-slung leathery-skinned animal with a head that resembled those moving among the branches far above her. That animal had a horn on its nose. These didn't, just a bulbous swelling above the upper lip.”

She and others of the Named could have easily seen a rhinoceros, since they have existed in various forms for 40 million years, well into her time. The woolly rhino, Coelodonta antiquitas, lived into the last Ice Age and images of it survive on the walls of caves once inhabited by prehistoric humans.

Why do Bundi and Mishanti call the indricotheres “rumblers”? Here, Ratha discovers the reason.

“Her ears swiveled to the sound of drawn-out grinding and crashing. She narrowed her eyes. The beasts were not just eating leaves or twigs; they were crunching up whole branches. A substantial part of the tree's canopy was already gone. Ratha promptly changed her mind about the creatures doing no harm. If they kept this up, they might just eat the top off every tree in the forest.
"Don't be afraid, clan leader," came a yowl from above. "The rumblers are gentle."
Inwardly Ratha bristled at the slightly mocking tone but didn't let her tail even twitch.
One rumble-beast lowered its head to gaze at Ratha. It was still chewing. The mushy slurping sound made her put back her ears. It was as disgusting as any other herdbeast's chomping, and much louder.
The rumbler's eyes, however, were mild, unlike the rhino's red-rimmed, irritable stare.
"They may be gentle, but I still don't want to be sat on." Ratha reared up on her hind legs, squinting to find Bundi in the treetop. "Where are you, Bundi, you little son of a three-horn?"

Even as newborns, wouldn't the two indricothere calves have been too large for Bundi and Mishanti to tame? True, but if they had lost their mother, and were starving and weak, their condition would have made it much easier for the Named herder and his friend to “adopt” and feed them. And their behavior provided suitable names.
Grunt and Belch do provide some comic relief when they dismay Ratha and Fessran, but they also play a critical part in the story's climax. To find out how, read the book!
For an intriguing discussion of paleotheres, horses and rhinos, see National Geographic, Prehistoric Mammals, by Alan Turner, illustrated (gorgeously!) by Mauricio Anton.

CB

Ratha's Courage now on Fictionwise.com

2008-05-13T11:26:00.000-07:00

Hi folks,

Ratha's Courage just went up as an E-book on Fictionwise.com.

I believe that it will also be updated on Amazon.com, with publisher listed as E-Reads/Fictionwise

It is still on Baen Books Webscriptions .

Things are rolling!

CB

Ratha Series recommended by Horn Book for Warriors fans

2008-05-08T11:09:00.000-07:00

In answer to the parent of a 4th grade Warriors fan, about other books to read,
Horn Book Magazine columnist Claire E. Gross recommended the Ratha series as a good follow-on for older Warriors fans.

Here's a quote from the May 2008 Ask the Horn Book feature:

"A: Two direct corollaries to the Warriors series come to mind (for those of you without pre-teens, the series is a multi-volumed, multi-tiered fantasy drama about sentient, heroic cats). There’s SF Said and Dave McKean’s two Varjak Paw books, about a street cat gifted in martial arts. And in a few years (the target age is a little older), try Clare Bell’s five-volumed Named series (beginning with Ratha’s Creature), about the epic struggles of giant prehistoric cats"

Here's the link:

http://www.hbook.com/newsletter/index.html

Thank you, Horn Book!

Do you folks review E-Books? Ratha's Courage could use a boost..

CB

Ratha's Creatures - What Are the Face-tails?

2008-05-01T09:53:00.001-07:00

You meet them in the first few pages of Ratha's Challenge, trumpeting, stamping and flapping their ears. Even a half-grown face-tail is too much for the Named and after the youngster launches the young herder Khushi into a thornbush, Ratha and the others give up, although only temporarily.
So what are these animals? In the book they are called mammoths, although the Named don't use that term. Actually, it is a bit of an author mistake. Creatures such as the woolly mammoth, the steppe mammoth, the imperial mammoth and others, didn't exist in the Early Miocene 20 million years ago. Although people tend to think that mammoths were ancestral to elephants, they were actually close cousins.
The family Elephantidae includes the African elephant, Loxodonta africana, the Asiatic elephant, Elephas maximus and the mammoths, Mammuthus. They all originated in Africa about 4 mya. The fact that mammoths died out relatively recently, a few thousand years ago, gives the impression that elephants are their descendants, but they evolved separately in parallel lines. The true ancestors of elephants and mammoths alike appear to be the four-tusked Stegotetrabeladon and the smaller Primelephas, who have the tooth structure that defines true elephants. Primelephas, like Stegotetrabelodon, had tusks in the lower jaw, but they receded, giving way to the two upper tusks of the elephants.
So, mammoths weren't around during Ratha's time. What then could the face-tails possibly be?

One possible proboscidean (trunk- or proboscis-bearing) candidate is Deinotherium, which looked a lot like an elephant, but its tusks originated from the lower incisor teeth. They grew from the lower jaw and turned downward. Deinotheres originated about 40 Mya and survived until 5 mya, so they span the required time period. However the series is set on the West Coast of North America, and all deinothere fossils found so far have been in Africa. This doesn't rule out deinotheres, however. There might have been some migrants and we haven't yet found their remains.
Another group of proboscideans called mastodonts originated later than the deinotheres and co-evolved with them. One mastodon family includes the American mastodon, confusingly called Mammut. Like the later mammoths, the American mastodon had a hairy coat and two upturned tusks rooted in the upper jaw. Mammut paralleled the mammoths but it was a distant cousin, with a separate 25 million year evolutionary history. Though the mastodonts gave rise to the elephants, Mammut and its kind were also a contemporary with the mammoths, disappearing with them in the Pleistocene extinction of mega-beasts. (Click the image to enlarge.)

It is too easy to confuse the American mastodon, Mammut, with its Mammuthus cousins, which is probably one reason for my mistake. I imagine that early paleontologists though Mammut was a mammoth, hence the similar name.
Mammut is probably the best candidate for the boisterous tusker who throws Khushi into a thornbush.
It existed at the right time and place. It was also smaller than its contemporaries, which would make it slightly easier for the puma- and cheetah-like Named to capture and manage.
Why did I describe the young face-tail's fur as orange? Because many of the frozen baby mammoths dug up in Siberia had remnants of orange-colored hair. At first paleontologists assumed that the hair had been that hue during life and that the baby mammoths had different coloration than adults.
However, later investigation suggested that the orange was a result of pigment loss during burial and that the original coat was a variation of dark brown. This was another case of paleontology outrunning the author.
By the way, it was Rudyard Kipling's “Two-Tails” the pack-elephant in his poem about British-Indian army animals, who inspired the term face-tails. A trunk looks very much like a tail, hence “Two-Tails”, which gave rise to the Named idea that these animals wear their tails on their faces, and the term “face-tails”.
CB

Ratha's Courage E-Released on Baen!

2008-04-09T11:18:00.000-07:00

This version is an electronic book, which means you purchase it, then download it into your laptop, Sony reader or other device. On sale now for $6.00.

To buy it from Baen Books, you need to get an account, which is free and easy.

Here's the link:

http://www.webscription.net/p-822-rathas-courage.aspx

Baen's homepage is:

http://www.baen.com

Baen will have an exclusive on the book during April, then Amazon and Fictionwise http://www.fictionwise.com will be carrying it.

If Courage does well as an E-book, the next step is print publication.

Eeeeyarooo!

The other books in the series are Firebird re-issues and are available through the net and at bookstores.

My deepest thanks to everyone who made this happen, including E-Reads, Baen, and my agent, Richard Curtis.

A Taste of Ratha's Courage

2008-03-28T15:32:00.000-07:00

Update 2: The book wasn't up as of 4/3. E-Reads has done the E-Book file, checked it and has sent it to Baen. As well as herding the book to E-publication, I am currently writing the kickoff announcement article that will appear on the E-Reads Blog (http://www.ereads.com).

Ratha's Courage to be released 4/1/08 on Baen Books (http://www.baen.com) along with E-Reads (http://www.ereads.com)

Ratha's Courage
by Clare Bell
Excerpt copyright 2007

Chapter One

A shiver of excitement went through Ratha. She began her stalk, belly fur brushing the ground. Grass whispered past her legs as she felt the slow controlled power of each muscle. Her tail-tip tingled with the urge to twitch, but she held it still.

The horse the Named called a striper tossed its head and flapped its tail, eyes widening. Ratha slowed her down-wind stalk so that she seemed nearly frozen, yet was still moving. The striper swung its neck around, jerking its head and ears back.

Ratha stilled until the herdbeast settled, then quickened her stalk, easing her weight from one foot to the next, placing each directly ahead of the one behind and moving so smoothly she felt as though she were flowing across and through the grass, a green-eyed river of tawny gold.

Nearing the striper’s dancing rear hooves, inhaling it’s sweat-sharpened scent, Ratha trembled with the impulse to dash, spring and wrestle her prey to the ground. She took a long slow breath, as the herding teacher, Thakur had taught her, mastered her urge and crept around the striper, circling in front of it.

Stripers were new to the Named herds. This horse was dun, with dark brown mane and tail. Ratha turned her head to bring her gaze down along its banded forelegs to the three-toed feet. These feet differed from those of the smaller dappleback horses that the clan had long tended. The striper’s center toe, sheathed in a single hoof, was larger, the side toes further off the ground. That hoof had far more power than the four and three-toed feet of the dapplebacks. Ratha had dodged it many times and other herders had been sent sprawling.

The striper grunted and whinnied, its nostrils flaring with her smell. From her crouch, Ratha lifted her chin and stared up at the horse, trying to catch and hold its gaze. As if sensing her purpose, the striper reared, its forefeet cutting the air, its tail whisking its flanks. She froze again; waited.

When the striper dropped down, she pounced on its stare with her own. Again it evaded her, closing its eyes and ducking its head, showing her only its bristling mane.

She knew the stripers were smarter than the dapplebacks; by now her stare would have a dappleback helplessly imprisoned.

Thakur had warned her that the stripers were clever; that the larger head held a more alert and cunning mind. Suppressing her frustrated growl, Ratha made several rasping snarls that were almost barks.

The sounds had the effect she wanted. The striper’s ears swiveled, the head came up, the eyes opened. Again her eyes sought the striper’s gaze and this time she captured it. The animal stiffened, as if about to fight, but snort and stamp as it would, the striper couldn’t break Ratha’s stare. It stilled to near-immobility, only its hide shivering.

Ratha felt triumph strengthen her heartbeat and deepen her breathing. She was so close; she could reach out and tap one of the horse’s forelegs with a front paw.

Again came the rush of desire that threatened to propel her up onto the horse’s shoulders, driving her teeth into its neck. In her imagination, she was already atop the striper, feeling the stiff upright mane bristle into the corners of her mouth. Part of her already felt the velvet-furred skin resist, stretch and then tear through beneath the points of her fangs, her neck muscles pulling and twisting in just the right way so that her fangs would slip between the neckbones and skillfully separate them while the prey’s blood flowed in pulses over her tongue. . .

Outwardly Ratha shuddered, yet kept her eyes fixed on those of the horse while inwardly she swiped the feelings aside. No, such a fevered attack was not the way of the Named. She had fought this internal battle many times before, when she trained as a cub under Thakur, and later when she began her duties as a herder. Even when she culled herd-beasts, she would not let instinct run wild.

Ratha used her frustration and desire, pouring them out savagely through her eyes. The horse was now as still as if it were already in her killing embrace. The muscles and tendons atop her forelegs quivered with the need to drive her claws out and deep into flesh.

She lifted out of her crouch, rearing up on her hind paws to lay one foreleg almost gently over the horse’s shoulders and up along the back of its neck. In spite of her care, the beast started, but before it could begin its escape flurry, Ratha slapped the other forepaw around the underside of its neck.

Now Ratha used her claws, but only enough to maintain her hold as she pushed backwards with her hind feet to unbalance the striper and pull it over. She was so close to the horse now that she couldn’t hold its gaze, but she no longer needed to. It was falling into the daze that doomed prey often assumed.

Instead of digging into the striper’s nape with claws and teeth, Ratha used the pressure and friction of her pads combined with her weight and her experience in knowing exactly how and where to push in order to topple the beast.

As if in a trance, the striper sank to its knees. Ratha climbed further onto it, using her weight to press the horse down onto its belly. She draped herself across the animal, one forepaw keeping the horse’s forelegs, with their dangerous hooves, at a distance. She wrapped the other forepaw around the top of the horse’s head, twisting it up so that the throat lay exposed.

Feeling the striper's heartbeat thudding through its ribs and into her own body, Ratha bent her head, jaws starting to open. The heart’s beat was strong in the creature’s neck, visibly jolting the skin over the great vessels and releasing a deep temptation in Ratha to bite deeply and hard.

Instead she opened her mouth to its full gape and set her teeth in position for the instinctive throat bite. With the horse’s sweat-smell hot in her nose, she squeezed her eyes shut with the effort not to bite, feeling the jaw-closing muscles beneath her eyes and on the sides of her forehead tremble with the strain.

The onlookers, Thakur and the young cubs learning herding from him, had grown quiet, as if they sensed the conflict within her.

Slowly, deliberately, she pulled her head up, feeling the skin of her muzzle slide
back over her teeth as her mouth closed. She swallowed the saliva that had flooded her mouth, staying atop the striper while the youngsters shrilled their praise and Thakur added his deeper note. Their cries sounded strangely muted to her, as if they were distant or her ears muffled...

(End of excerpt)

Courage galloping toward 4/1/08 release

2008-03-25T23:51:00.000-07:00

My agent, Richard Curtis, has just confirmed today that everything is on-track.

Courage will be released on 4/1/08 as an E-Reads/Baen Books selection.

Baen's website is www. baen. com. (Note - you can buy individual titles as well as the subscription.) E-Reads is www. ereads. com.

After all this time and grief, it really is happening.

Yarrrooo!

"Get the blood off the book. You can leave the sweat and tears..."

Ratha's Courage to appear on Fictionwise and Amazon

2008-02-13T11:36:00.000-08:00

I got an email from my agent Richard Curtis that Ratha's Courage: the Fifth Book of the Named, has completed processing as an e-book and will be appearing on Fictionwise and Amazon in a few weeks.
I haven't been posting much lately, due to weather, infectious bronchitis, and waiting for the book to come out. I'm much better now, and feeling more chipper, since Courage is actually going to appear soon.
Look for more "Ratha's Creatures" explorations in the critters of California's Miocene period.

Thanks again to all my fans and blog readers for all your support during a difficult time.

Clare