Ratha and the Named

The Scratching Log

Blog for Ratha series home-page website. Posted by author Clare Bell.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Ratha's Courage - Good Stuff Happening

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 the 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

Labels: animal fantasy, big cats, cat fantasy, cats Clare Bell, Cybil Awards, KidLit08, prehistoric animals, prehistoric cats Ratha's Courage, sabertooth, The Named

posted by rathacat @ 12:00 PM

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• ClanChirps - Ratha on Twitter



• ClanChirps - Ratha on Twitter



• The 6th Ratha Tale and Brightspirit



• Ratha's Creatures - The Named clan cats



• Imaginator Press Paperback of Ratha's Courage



• Imaginator Press to Publish Print Edition of Ratha...



• Ratha Returns with New "Courage", Part 1



• Ratha's Creatures - What Are the Rumblers?



• Ratha's Courage now on Fictionwise.com



• Ratha Series recommended by Horn Book for Warriors...

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View Original Article

Sheila Ruth of Imaginator Press and 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:

Ratha's Courage publication announcement

http://wandsandworlds.com/community/node/5276

I am really pleased that Sheila is going to publish the Ratha's Courage print edition. Yeeearooo!

And I really appreciate the support of all the LJ fans and friends.  Thanks!

CB

Ratha Returns with New “Courage”

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) to Ratha's Challenge (MKM/MacMillan/1996), Ratha's prehistoric Miocene world fascinated readers. Throughout four books, she and the Named grew and developed.

In Ratha's Creature, she learned how to herd three-horn deer, discovered the truth about the supposedly witless UnNamed raiders, tamed her “creature”, the Red Tongue (fire), and led a blazing revolt against Meoran, the short-sighted, tyrannical clan leader. In Clan Ground, she fought down the challenge to her leadership by the orange-eyed demagogue Shongshar, who tried to turn the Named into a fire-worshiping hegemony. In Ratha and Thistle-chaser, she struggled with the daughter she wounded and abandoned. In Ratha's Challenge, she led the Named in a mystifying encounter with True-of-voice and the Song-entranced mammoth-hunting cat tribe.

Now, thirteen years later, comes Ratha's Courage: The Fifth Book of the Named. Why has there been such a long gap after Challenge and why at last did I return to the series with Courage?

When Ratha sprang from the pages in 1983, she created a whirl of excitement. She captured the 1984 IRA Children's Choice and the PEN Los Angeles awards. She became a regular on recommended book lists for teens and was hailed as an instant classic. CBS Storybreak not only optioned the book, but made an animated episode, which aired in 1987 (and is in clips on MySpaceTV and YouTube). She and the Named were on their way to recognition and popularity, like the kind accorded the present-day Warrior Cat series. .

Then time blew the dazzle away, like so much dust. I began to see the realities of the publishing world. Glowing reviews and awards, but low print runs. Praise by schools and libraries, but no shelf space in bookstores. British editions and paperbacks on Ratha's Creature and Clan Ground, but not on Thistle-chaser or Challenge. Invitations for author appearances and readings, but little publisher support. Finally, after 1996, the series sank out of sight in the mass grave of “Out of Print”. Getting back the rights loomed as an impossible or at least a formidable process. I didn't pursue it.

I mourned, tried to put Ratha behind me, even though it was hard to see old copies at used bookstores reminding me of might have been. I turned instead to my other love and vocation, electric vehicles.

In 1991 the First Gulf War sparked me into building an electric VW conversion from a kit.(The black Porsche 914 EV pictured on the site was my later car, “Black Magic“.)

Next - An Invitation and Writing Ratha's Courage

CB