Poetry Friday - The Herding Teacher's Name

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)

Ratha's Creatures - The Named clan cats

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").

Ratha's Creatures - What Are the Rumblers?

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 Creatures - What is the Blubber-Tusker?

VOYA Review of Ratha's Courage! VOYA is Voice of Youth Advocates

Before our little heroine in Ratha and Thistle-chaser meets Splayfoot the seamare, Newt/Thistle encounters another sea-beast that puzzles her. This one actually helps Newt, although she doesn't realize it at first, and probably wouldn't admit it later. By stealing this animal's leavings of clams and other shellfish, Newt learns to eat seafood. So, what is this creature who unintentionally aids her survival?

Here's some description from the book (page 10):

It looked immense, whiskered and blubbery. Creases formed in the rolls of fat around its neck as it swung its head from side to side. Its muzzle was wide and pushed in. Short but massive tusks protruded from beneath a loose, slobbery upper lip.

In Newt's mind, the creature becomes the “blubber-tusker”. Here's a bit more from pp. 10-12 of Ratha and Thistle-chaser:

With a startled grunt, the blubber-tusker heaved itself upright and stared at her with eyes spaced so far apart they seemed about to fall off the sides of its pug-nosed face.

She had almost reached the shell-bed when the creature bellowed and wriggled toward her, its heaving motion sending ripples through its blubber.

An elephant seal? That description could fit the huge California pinniped. However, recall from the previous installment that most seals and sea-lions were still pretty small. Enaliarctos, the “barking raider” and a very early sea-lion, was still in the otter-like stage. However, one branch of the family rapidly achieved heavyweight status, namely the walruses.

Paleontologists now think that sea-lions and walruses descended from a canid (dog/wolf) ancestor and seals from a mustelid (weasel/otter) ancestor. Sea-lions and walruses evolved in the Pacific Ocean while seals originated in the Atlantic and migrated to the Pacific. Walruses made the trip the other way, from Pacific to Atlantic. Then they became extinct in their original home and a branch migrated back to the Pacific to fill the walrus vacancy there.

Is Thistle-chaser's blubber-tusker the long-tusked whiskered gentleman we know from Lewis Carrol's poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter”, namely a modern species? No. Thistle's animal is a very early walrus which still has some of the characteristics of its sea-lion ancestry. It's canine teeth have developed into tusks for raking shellfish, but they have not attained the length of the modern species. Certain aspects of its skull are very sea-lion-like. Paleontologists who study this creature's fossilized bones have named it Aivukis, and it really was grunting and and wriggling around on the beaches of the California Miocene.

I made one semi-deliberate goof when I portrayed Aivukis as being contemporary with the early sea-lion, Enaliarctos. In truth, Aivukis appeared later. Walruses (family Odobenidae) developed from the early sea-lions (family Enaliarctidae). The first walrus was an animal that was larger than the early sea-lions, but still had sea-lion teeth, a creature called Neotherium. I used Aivukis since it looked and behaved differently from Enaliarctos. One might call this a bit of poetic license, although the fossil record isn't exactly a time machine. No one knows exactly happened back then, which makes it a fun playground for a series.

Below is artist M. R. Long's interpretation of Aivukis (from Savage and Long, Mammal Evolution: An Illustrated Guide - 1986). This book was a real source of inspiration for the beach setting of Ratha and Thistle-chaser. It deserves to come back into print.)

Whether or not Aivukis ever involuntarily shared its dinner with a limping little feline can't be told from fossils, but it might have happened!

This artist's re-creation of the creature helped inspire my description (“eyes so wide apart, etc.”)

Next up – Ratha's Challenge and the face-tails.


Clare

Ratha's Courage - Hope Burns Brighter

Author interview webcast with webjay Steve Sikes-Nova premiers tomorrow (Friday)!
To find out when it airs:
http://www.live365.com/stations/virginiaprograsser/schedule

To listen:
http://www.live365.com/stations/virginiaprograsser
Feedback: ratha13@earthlink.net


Dear patient and devoted Ratha fans,

I am pleased to announce that Ratha's Courage will be released, both as an E-book and a physically published print book. I got some projected dates from my agent, Richard Curtis, in an email this morning.

Courage will be available for download on www.fictionwise.com and other retail sites by the end of the year. The print edition is scheduled to appear by or before February. Amazon will be carrying both. I will be posting more details as I get them.

Viking-Penguin decided to cancel their hardcover and apparently didn't tell Amazon. They also did not respond to my queries about what was happening with the book. The only notification I got was a series of short emails. For that reason, my agent and I decided to move the book to another publisher.

It has taken a bit of time to make all the arrangements, but things are sufficiently in place so that I can now make this announcement.

This has been a difficult interval for me, as you can probably imagine. Instead of crawling into a black hole after I got the cancellation email, I decided to continue publicizing the reprints and working with Richard Curtis to get Courage published. I was determined, and still am, to make sure that everyone who wants a copy of Ratha's Courage can get one.

Firebird Books is still handling the reprints and they have plenty in their warehouse. E-Reads will be doing a promotion that will launch Courage. I know it was hard to wait, but E-Reads has acted very rapidly to get everything set up.

I deeply appreciate your loyalty, patience and understanding during this time.
Because of you, hope burns brighter, both for me and the Named.



May you get your heart's desire and find delight.

Clare

Ratha's Creatures - What are the "barking raiders"

In Ratha and Thistle-chaser, Book 3 of the Named, Newt (later called Thistle-chaser), fights a brief but intense battle with a pack of "barking raiders" who attack Splayfoot, the seamare (Paleoparadoxia - see previous post.) What are these creatures? Are they also based on fossil animals or is the author making things up?

Like all the other creatures that appear in Ratha's world, these yelping raiders also existed in the early Miocene. Those readers who put things together quickly, i.e. a beach dwelling animal, bulging eyes, a swimmer, barks, has flippers, etc. have already guessed that these animals are seals or sea-lions. Good call, except that seals and sea-lions as we know them today hadn't yet evolved 20-25 million years ago. However, their precursors did exist. When Newt rushes down onto the beach to defend Splayfoot, she encounters Enaliarctos, the early ancestor of the present California and Pacific Coast sea-lions.

Here is the begining of the scene from the book (pp. 36-37):

On the beach in the cove below, she saw Splayfoot
with her two seafoals huddling at her sides. Five
small animals with sleek, wet pelts and sinuous
shapes surrounded and menaced the family. These
small sea-lions reminded Newt of the otters she
had seen in the ocean, lolling in wave troughs.
The otters swam with webbed toes and long, powerful
tails, whereas these animals had clawed flippers
and much shorter tails. Their ears were small and
lay close to their heads, and their eyes bulged.
Their muzzles were tapered, with powerfuljaws
and teeth.

Of course, sounds don't fossilize, but being a sea-lion ancestor, Enaliarctos probably made the unique (and loud) sea-lion bark that echoes from many Pacific beaches and sea-washed rocks.

"Newt's opponent barked at her with a blast of fishy breath, then scooted free to bite her on the tail."

Ouch! She's lucky she didn't get an infection in the wound, since seal and sea-lion teeth can carry some nasty bacteria. Pinniped hunters and handlers, if not careful, often develop a stubborn inflammation called "seal hand".

From careful study of Enaliarctos fossils, paleontologists have developed a description of a creature that looks and lives a lot like an otter, although probably a descendent of the amphocyanid "bear-dogs" (see Ratha's Creatures - Bristlemanes). Serum albumin (protein) studies have placed sea-lions slightly closer to the bear Ursus, and seals slightly closer to the California sea-otter, Enhydra. Other studies indicate that the pinnipeds (seals, sea-lions and walruses) are more closely related to each other than any non-pinniped carnivore family. One depiction of pinniped family relationships shows seals descending from otter-like mustelids (weasels) while sea-lions arose from dog- and bear-like ancestors.

Below is an artist's interpretation of the animal (painting by M.R. Long in Mammal Evolution, by Savage and Long. This is an excellent book, though hard to find. It deserves reprinting.) This image influenced my description of the "barking raider" in the book; another instance of how art and writing interact.



The study of pinniped evolution also shows a split by location, with each side dominating their own ocean. Sea-lions, and their close relatives, the walruses, took the Pacific, while the seals made the Atlantic their own swimming pool. Later, some walruses crossed over to the Atlantic and some seals entered the Pacific.

Eniliarctos' head in particular, resembles a modern-day sea-lion's, with large eyes and enlarged nasal passages (to enhance inhaling and breath-holding for diving). Although external ears don't fossilize (although evidence of ear-moving muscle attachment points might be found on fossil skulls), Enaliarctos may have had small sea-lion-like ears. It also shows a modification of the cerebral circulatory system to impove drainage of blood from the brain while diving. This is also found in present-day sea-lions.

Enaliarctos had an otter-like body, with a reduced tail, as the creature was starting to shift from an otter-like swimming mode (using the tail) to a sea-lion mode (using the rear feet as sculls and the forefeet as flippers).

It still had rear legs that were more otterlike, so that it could bound along on land. Like the short-legged otter, it probably increased its stride by arching and flexing its back.

Next on stage - the blubber-tusker!

Ratha's Creatures - What Are Seamares?

You thought you knew all the prehistoric creatures, even the really strange ones. And then, up from the pages of Ratha and Thistle-chaser pops an real oddball.

Not Thistle herself, though she definitely has her quirks. What on (or off) Earth is Splayfoot, the seamare? This critter has got to be a made-up beastie, a major authorial indulgence. A horse-like head, including ears, a short horse-y neck and pony body, but legs and feet that don't work at all like a horse's, feet with webbed toes, and to top it off, the critter has tusks, swims, and eats clams?

As Ratha says to Thakur, when he returns from a scouting expedition to the seacoast, "Fat, tusked dapplebacks with short legs and duck feet? And they swim in this great wave-filled lake you found?" (On page 70 of Ratha and Thistle-chaser.)

Naw..Thakur must be having delusions. Maybe he ate some fermented fruit. Or did he?


In the 1960s while excavating for the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), the particle beam research facility that runs as straight as a laser through the hills west of Palo Alto, California, a construction crew found some very weird fossil bones. They even baffled Stanford University paleontologists; so much so that they bestowed upon the 20 million year-old remains the name "Paleoparadoxia", or "ancient puzzle". The discovery held up work on SLAC while the experts removed and preserved the fossils, which now reside in SLAC's Visitor's Center. Oddly enough, this find happened only about 10 miles from where I was living as a kid and I wasn't even aware of it until later. I think I did know vaguely that something prehistoric had been discovered at the new SLAC project, but not the details.

(Even stranger was that I had already made a toy "sea-horse" creature. As a child, I used to make animal figures from pipe-cleaners and later, telephone wire. I wanted critters I could pose and this was long before "action figures".( Actually, I think mine were better, since these animals would bend all over, not just at certain joints. Yes, there was Gumby, and later Pokey, but I found them boring.) The animals were mostly horses, but I had other creatures, such as cheetahs. Some were horse-derived, such as the sea-pony I made. He had a horse head, short neck, chunky body and webby feet with toes. I also stuffed a cork in him so that he would (semi-) float in the bathtub. I did him in two versions. The first was with pipe-cleaners, but when he got wet, the steel-wire stems rusted and he fell apart. The next version, done with scrap telephone wire from a Stanford office installation, was truely aquatic, due to the plastic insulation on the wire. He worked much better, but didn't float as well, being heavier.)

The text described Paleoparadoxia as "pony-sized" and "horse-like" with short, stout limbs and large,wide four-toed feet with "hoof-like nails". It also had some endearing oddities. On the forelimbs, the ulna and radius ( the two forearm bones) were fused so that "the foot could not be turned without rotating the whole leg". A drawing of the skeleton had a caption that described a "peculiar stance with inturned feet". According to this book and others, this peculiarity may have been an adapation for walking on unstable river or ocean bottoms, or in rough, shallow water. It also said that Paleoparadoxia moved on land "in the manner of sea lions" and that the tusks might have been used to "prize off food, be it seaweed, seagrass or even mollusc.".

(The word "desmostylian" comes from the creature's unique tooth structure. Each tooth is formed by a chain of upright tubes, linked together, forming a chain. "Desmos" is chain, "stylos" is pillar.)

Splayfoot leaped out at me from that picture and description. Perhaps my imagination added the webbing between the toes, although the feet do look somewhat webby in the painting.


Illustration by M. R. Long from Mammal Evolution: An illustrated Guide

Why did I choose the name 'seamare'? Well, first off, 'seahorse' already referred to a fish. Also the creature was female. Maybe I could have called her a 'sea-pony', but 'seamare' had a nice smooth sound to it. The name 'Splayfoot' came right out of the picture, especially the right fore-foot.

So here she is, confronting Newt/Thistle-chaser at the beginning of the story. (The "blubber-tusker" is a short-tusked Miocene walrus. The POV is Thistle's)

"Peering up the beach, she saw a natural jetty of gray sandstone thrusting out to sea beneath a cliff. on the promontory, gray and black shaped sprawled in the sun. At first she thought these animals resembled the blubber-tusker, but their broad bodies were less blubbery and more compact, slate-colored on top and cream below. Chunky fore- and hindlimbs folded back against sleek sides as the creatures lay on their bellies. Their heads were long and tapered, reminding Newt of the muzzle of a forest dappleback rather than the snout of a blubber-tusker. They also had leaf-shaped ears that swivelled and twitched."

"It grunted to itself as the waves washed its sides."

"...Newt saw the elongated muzzle, resembling that of a dappleback, but instead of a rounded nose and chin, the creature had a tapered snout with a pronounced overbite. It yawned, revealing downward-pointing incisors in the upper jaw and a cluster of tusks thrusting from the lower."

"With splay-toed webbed fore-feet, the creature hauled itself onto the beach, jaws wedged wide open by a huge, muck-covered shell."

"The beast seemed to ignore its hind legs, letting them drag behind while it humped and heaved along on belly and stout forelegs."

"For an instant the two confronted each other. With surprising speed, Splayfoot humped herself toward Newt, swinging her tusks. The seamare's anger propelled her up onto her rear legs, and Newt discovered that they weren't as useless as they had first appeared."

"Newt hadn't expected the seamare's sudden transformation from belly-dragger to walker. Splayfoot had a clumsy gait, with out-thrust elbows and turned-in feet, but it served well enough."

"The seamare's black forepaws, with their wide tapering toes and the webbing between, were nothing like the flippers of the blubber-tusker..."

"The seamare gave a bubbling roar and knocked all the remaining shell fragments away with a powerful sweep of her foreleg. She opened her jaws and waggled her head, giving the lurking meat-eater a good look at her tusks and teeth."

(quotes from pp. 32-36)

For more, get Ratha and Thistle-chaser! Or read the first chapter at http://www.rathascourage.com/.

This (as far as I know) was the first time Paleoparadoxia came to life in published fiction. The "huge shell" is the California "horse-neck" clam, also known in Washington as the geoduck. Yum! (Not really. Humans don't eat them much today. Too rubbery even with cooking. )

Interestingly enough, later depictions of Paleoparadoxia were much dumpier and far less charming (though probably more accurate). Since poetic license allows me a little leeway, I've chosen the image I like best.

CB

Choose interview questions for webcast!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why did you start writing?

Where do you get your ideas?

What other authors inspired you?

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

Music?

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

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

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

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

What was that like?

Do you have little cats?

Did watching them help develop the idea for the books?

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

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

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

Was Ratha’s Creature your first novel?

Was it your first professionally published novel?

How and when did it get published?

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

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

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

Was the series published outside the US? (Britain)

What brought the series back into print?

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

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

About Ratha’s Creature:

What species are Ratha and her clan?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is your favorite scene in the book?

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

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

In Clan Ground:

What species are the treelings?

How are the treelings named?

What kind of creature is Orange-Eyes/Shongshar?

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

Why does Ratha dream of the “Firecat”?

Why did you have Shongshar create a fire-religion?

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

In Ratha and Thistle-chaser:

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

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

Where is the beach where Newt lives?

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

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

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

In Ratha’s Challenge:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why are they so dangerous to the clan?

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

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

About the new Ratha’s Courage:

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

What sort of difficulties did you have?

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

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

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

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

What kind of creature is the “striper”?

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

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

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

Why did you stop writing in the 1990’s?

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

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

About the future:

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

Are there more Ratha stories in the works (Yes)

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

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

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

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

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

Others?

CB

Ratha's Creatures -- Treelings, Part 2

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

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

CB
Comment | Email | Digg Edit this post Options Edit this post

Ratha's Creatures - Bristlemanes

What are the bristlemanes?

In Clan Ground, a pack of savage creatures attacks the clan’s herds. These raiders are not the UnNamed and are not cat-like at all. The Named call them “belly-biters” since they attack a prey beast’s vulnerable abdominal area. Several readers have asked what these prehistoric animals are. Based on the description given in the book (heavy bristling neck fur, black jaws, bone-breaking teeth, longer snouts, sloping backs, and a cantering gait), at least one reader guessed that the bristlemanes are a species of early hyena. There were several candidates, including Pachycrocuta, Thalassictis, and the American hunting hyena, Chasmaporthetes.

When I wrote Clan Ground in 1983-84, that was exactly what I had in mind. However, this is a case of history (or, rather, pre-history) outrunning the writer. And, I admit, that in the excitement and pressure of writing a sequel to Ratha’s Creature, maybe the writer didn’t do quite enough background research.

When I returned to writing the series, I found a lot more information about prehistoric hyenas than I had known in 1984. One dismaying fact was that hyenas appeared later than I had assumed. In Ratha’s time, 20 million years ago in the early Miocene, hyenas were still small mongoose- or at best, jackal-sized creatures.

Time-wise, a better candidate is the amphicyonid “bear-dog”. It resembled a lightly built bear with a wolfy face and jaws. Amphicyon and its relatives appeared and diversified in the early Miocene. They included fast-moving meat-eaters as well as scavengers and some species may have resembled present-day spotted hyenas in appearance and behavior.

Another possibility is that the bristlemanes are creodonts; an early and now extinct order of carnivores (Creodontia) separate from the living Carnivora (dogs, bears, raccoons, weasels, and cats). The name of one family, the Hyaenadontidae, when translated, means “hyena-teeth”. Though hyaenadont creodonts reached their peak in the Oligocene, they hung around until the early Miocene. That was long enough for them to be a threat to Ratha and her clan.

I’ve decided to base the bristlemanes on Amphicyon and its kin, since they are the best fit time- and size-wise.

There are other prehistoric beasties in the Ratha books. Which ones do you want to know more about?

Please see the MySpace Spotlight on the series at http://www.mypace.com/myspace_authors

I am updating and adding to my website, http://www.rathascourage.com
Ratha is also on LiveJournal, Friendster, Facebook, Bebo, Eons and LibraryThing.

CB

Ratha's Creatures - Shongshar

Ratha’s Creatures

What is Shongshar? A sabertooth cat?

In Clan Ground, Ratha admits Orange-Eyes, an UnNamed stranger, to the clan. Later, when Ratha angers him by taking away his cubs by Bira (since they lack the Named “light” in their eyes), he becomes the fierce and arrogant Shongshar. He drives Ratha out of the clan and nearly kills Fessran with his long fangs.

Some readers think that Shongshar is based on the sabertooth cat Smilodon, a different species than Ratha’s kind, who are based on the cheetah-like nimravid, Dinaelurus. Smilodon, however, evolved millions of years later than Ratha’s people, appearing in the Pleistocene. The Miocene nimravids, on which Ratha is based, had both sabertooth and “conical tooth” species. Barburofelis, a distant Ratha relative, out-sabered the later Smilodon. Barburofelis had huge fangs that were so long they needed to be protected by a large bony flange on the animal’s jaw.

Even the more cat-like “conical tooth” nimravid species, such as Nimravus and Dinaelurus, had longer fangs than many cats. Nimravus, being more like a leopard or a clouded leopard, had longer fangs than Dinaelurus. Clouded leopards have the longest front fangs in the modern cat family for their size. The whole nimravid family had strong sabertooth tendencies. I often compare Ratha’s kind with the modern cheetah, but fossil Dinaelurus skulls have longer and sharper front fangs than do cheetahs. (See my reconstruction of a Dinaelurus crassus skull in clay).

Saberteeth have arisen in many mammalian lines. Creodonts, which were early, less specialized carnivores that arose long before cats were even a thought in Nature’s mind, had weasel- and martin-like forms with saberteeth. Nimravids gave rise to Dinictis, often called a “dirktooth” cats and Homotherium, known as the “scimitar-tooth” cat. Many of Ratha’s relatives are known as “false sabertooths” to distinguish them from the later “true sabertooths” of the Smilodon line.

Sabertoothed forms also arose among marsupials (kangaroos, opossums and other pouched mammals. Thylacosmilus, a lion-sized South American fossil marsupial carnivore, would have given Barburofelis competition for the nasty-saber award.

Saber-like teeth have emerged in many species, including primates. Some male baboons have fangs that make leopards think twice about attacking.

So, back to old Shongshar. What is he? Well, all of the UnNamed and the Named are the same basic species, although the Named have branched off in their own direction. Dinaelurus and the more leopard-like Nimravus were close sister-species and might have been able to hybridize.

As stated previously, all the nimravids had a tendency to develop saberteeth and Shongshar was an extreme case. Or he is a hybrid between Dinaelurus and Nimravus.

(Or he is a Smilodon that time-traveled back from the Pleistocene to the Miocene – no, just kidding. Or you can write that story.)

When you first read Clan Ground, what did you think Shongshar was (other than a big pain in Ratha’s tail)?

Comments?

CB

Ratha's Creatures - Treelings

What are the treelings?

In Clan Ground, the herding teacher Thakur (pronounced Ta-KOOR, since it is a Bengali word meaning “teacher”) literally runs across a small furry creature and accidentally injures it. His first thought is to eat it (he is a cat, after all), but he becomes intrigued by the little fur-ball. He calls it, Aree, based on the sound it makes, and decides to keep it as amusement and as a companion. Aree has hand instead of paws or claws, and uses them to climb trees, pick fruit, throw things, and pick ticks out of Thakur’s coat. Thakur discovers that Aree can do many other things, including some that influence the clan’s use of the Red Tongue (fire).

Once he convinces the clan that Aree is more useful than tasty, Ratha and the others accept Thakur’s odd little pet, letting the treeling groom them. When Aree turns out to be female and has babies, Ratha and other clan members adopt little treeling companions.

What kind of prehistoric creature is Aree? Readers have made many guesses, including monkey, ape, squirrel, raccoon, lemur, tarsier (bush baby), other type of primate, other type of rodent, other member of the raccoon family and totally made up by author.

Here’s a hint. I made one mistake in describing Aree, enabling her to do something that the real prehistoric species probably couldn’t.

Any ideas? Many readers already know, but I’d like to hear some guesses.

Next up in the Ratha series guessing game. What is Shongshar, the clever tyrant who uses the worship of fire to take over clan leadership?

CB

Ratha's Creatures - Did They Really Exist?

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.
The three-horn stag that Ratha encounters in the first page of the first book is based in part on the Miocene proto-ceratid ("before deer") species Synthoceratus. This animal had a y-forked nose-horn, but a very un-deer-like snout and little horn-stubs instead of true antlers. To make the creature more appealing (to me as well as readers), I added the branched antlers and the more elegant face of later deer species.
Originally the dapplebacks were based on Hyracotherium, a fossil better known as Eohippus, "the dawn horse". Their dappled backs came from a painting in a paleontology book, showing the little proto-horses browsing in a leafy forest.
Now researchers have decided that the "dawn horse" really isn't a horse ancestor at all; it more closely related to the hyrax and the elephants.
In my mind, the dapplebacks are still horses, perhaps early versions of forest-browsing Miohippian proto-ponies that later gave rise to the main branch of horse evolution, the hipparions, with their enlarged center toe of three. Not the modern horse Equus? No, actually Equus was a side branch. Hipparion and its relatives formed the main trunk of the horse-y tree.

The “shambleclaw” that Ratha sees in the forest is a giant American ground sloth. Not monstrous, like Megatherium, but not tiny either. The name attempts to describe how the creature might have shambled along awkwardly, hampered by the huge fore claws it used to dig up termite mounds and strip leaves from trees.

Young Ratha almost becomes bird food when she confronts a huge flightless “terror crane” based on the species Diornis, with a bit of Teratornis added in. After the dinosaurs vanished, mammals remained small and had to contend with feathered avian dinosaur descendents that resembled the recently extinct moas of New Zealand. The birds had a head start on the furries, and grew huge, dominating the forests and plains of the periods preceding the Miocene, the Eocene and Oligocene. They may well have hung on until the Miocene

In the 1980’s, Diornis and Teratornis were thought to be carnivores, due to their huge hooked beaks. Now paleontologists debate that image, pointing out that the heavy beaks could have cut through vegetation as well as flesh. But mammal is still on the bird menu in the Ratha books, although the mammal in question manages to escape.

CB

What inspired me to write the Ratha series

The wonder, majesty, and terror of Earth's life, as embodied in cats, both large and small. The flashing beauty of the cheetah in the chase, the arch of the mountain lion's spring, and the quivering of flesh as two huge male lions rebound from each other in a fight. The fossils that speak of cats and cat-like creatures millions of years dead, yet alive and stalking in human minds. The small cats in my life who bring the jungle into the living room, who stalk and pounce on my emotions and deliver an alien but deep love.

The human minds who have created and recreated cats in words and between pages, fiction and non-fiction. Joy Adamson's Elsa and Pippa recline beside Bagheera, Kipling's great black panther. I wanted so badly to be Mowgli, who was privileged to rest against that velvet side and hear the deep rumbling voice, so fierce and so wise.

Even more, I wanted to be Bagheera, to escape the Bandar-log taint of the human world. To swipe it away with the stroke of a paw, to yawn at it with curled tongue and white shining teeth, and then pad away like a mystery, leaving awe behind.

That was a child's dream, with a child's anger. That child grew up to become part of the human world and the anger became an energy directed at changing the bad things about it, such as war, starvation, hate, greed, cruelty, despoiling and destruction. Perhaps some of that energy did actually cause some small changes.

I can't say exactly what created Ratha and her world. I walk inside her skin, look out through her eyes, feel the muscles that retract and extend her claws. I live her struggles with the tyrant Shongshar and she lives with mine against an unfair and unjust Iraq war and those who grow fat on it. She tries to befriend Thistle-chaser and I try to do the same with an uncertain and equally prickly young stepchild. I stroke my kitty Athena and she nuzzles Ratharee, her treeling.

And if readers can experience Ratha as I have, it is a great joy.

Stay on this trail -- there will be more.

CB

Count-down

I'm both excited and nervous today, since the first two novels in the Ratha series will be released on July 19, 2007, which is only two days away. Ratha first saw print in hardcover in 1983, and Clan in 1984. That is more than a decade, which boggles my mind. I really don't feel 20-odd years older than the eager 29-year old who saw her book in print for the first time (and had to be peeled off the ceiling!)

Ratha is back because she survived in the hearts of readers. She wasn't more successful the first time out because the world wasn't ready for her ("A book about a talking big cat? Who wants to read something like that?"). When she and the clan faded from view in the 90's, I mourned them, but gathered up my life and went on to other things.

Now because of movies such as The Lion King and series such as Warriors, the world is ready. Ratha has survived because she inspired love and loyalty in her readers. Now she is ready to run again and be recognized for the pioneer that she was and still is.

She was created out of love and passion and that is the reason she and the clan still survive.
Long may they flourish!

Thank you, Ratha fans, thank you Firebird Books, Sharyn November and her Internet teen readers, endless thank-you's to all whose devotion got these books back in print. Yes, I did write another Ratha, (Ratha's Courage), but you gave me the opportunity.

Yes, I'm nervous, a bit scared, rejoicing, impatient, and more. Ideally I would have done much more preparation and publicity, but for various reasons it didn't happen, although I have done quite a bit and learned a terrific amount.


If you enjoyed this, bookmark it by clicking on the "BOOKMARK button. It will take you to a site where you can select a bookmarking service such as del.icio.us, Digg, or other.