Blood and Ivory-A Tapestry

by P. C. Hodgell

  In the bridal wreath of that lady fair.

  Oh sad was her fate, when in sportive jest

  She hid from her lord in the old oak chest,

  It closed with a spring and a dreadful doom

  And the bride lay clasped in a living tomb,

  Oh, the mistletoe bough!

  [1929]

  MAPS

  (Included in this section are the other maps that P. C. has

  drawn over the years to show the lands of Jame's world, that

  were not used as one of the short story locations.)

  ART

  (Enclosed here are some of the various

  sketches and drawings that P. C. has done

  throughout the years of Jame and others.)

  An Introduction To P. C. Hodgell

  Pat Hodgell can't remember a time when she wasn't passionately interested in science fiction and fantasy. "David Starr: Space Ranger by Paul French was the first novel with which I fell in love, so much so that I started making my own copy of the library book, long-hand in a spiral notebook, complete with a carefully drawn facsimile of the frontispiece. Long afterward, I came across a paperback reprint and learned that my beloved 'Paul French' was none other than the ubiquitous Issac Asimov."

  Over the years, as her interest grew, Pat collected piles of paperback science fiction and fantasy novels and comic books. Soon, however, reading and collecting genre fiction wasn't enough for her and, after college, she began to write it as well.

  "It would be nice to say that, after the long suppression of the writing impulse, the dam burst—but it didn't. Due to lack of practice, I simply didn't know how to put a story down on paper." Pat began to learn, however, and by the next summer she had several stories finished and an invitation to the Clarion Writer's Workshop. "There, for the first time, I found a whole community of people like me—storytellers, wordsmiths, an entire family I never knew I had," Pat says of the Clarion experience. "Even more wonderful, here suddenly were professionals like Harlan Ellison and Kate Wilhelm telling me that I could indeed write. I could hardly believe my luck." She made her first professional sale two years later. Since then, she's sold stories to such anthologies as Berkley Showcase, Elsewhere III, Imaginary Lands, and the Last Dangerous Visions. Pat has also published three novels: God Stalk, Dark of the Moon, (Reprinted together in the omnibus Dark of the Gods.) and Seeker's Mask, also a short story collection, Blood and Ivory: A Tapestry, all part of an on-going fantasy saga concerned not only with high adventure, but also with questions of personal identity, religion, politics, honor, and arboreal drift. She is currently working on her fourth Jame novel.

  Both of Pat's parents are professional artists. Other reputed ancestors include a decapitated French Huguenot, a sheep thief tried by Chaucer, and a "parcel of New York Millerites who in 1843 sold their possessions, put on white nightgowns, and sat on the chicken coop waiting for the world to end. When it didn't they moved to Wisconsin out of sheer embarrassment."

  Pat earned her Master's in English Literature from the University of Minnesota, her doctorate at the University of Minnesota with a dissertation on sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, and is a graduate of both the Clarion and the Milford Writer's Workshops. In addition to her work with WDS, she is a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh in modern British literature and composition, and teaches an audio-cassette-based course on science fiction and fantasy for the University of Minnesota.

  Pat lives in Wisconsin, in a nineteenth-century wood-framed house, which has been in her family for generations. In addition to writing and teaching, she attends science fiction conventions, collects yarn, knits, embroiders, and makes her own Christmas cards.

  THE END

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