The First Selkie Twins of
Petaybee novel
OVER THE VOLCANO
THE ORIGINAL PETAYBEE SERIES SOON TO BE REISSUED
This series was the first work Anne McCaffrey and I did together. It all started a long time ago when she came to visit Fairbanks, Alaska, my home of 18 years, and I was her liaison and warmup act in the schools, where she did talks with Middle School kids about being a writer. I had been running workshops for a couple of weeks beforehand. While she was there, charming all and sundry, I tried to make sure she got to see as much of Alaska as it was seeing of her. I dragged her out of her warm hotel to see the Northern Lights and asked some friends of mine who were science fiction fans if they'd mind if I brought Anne to their house for a dogsled ride and moose spaghetti. Oddly enough, they had no objection.
Anne and I corresponded over the next few years. While I was writing a series about folk music and magic, she invited me to visit her in Ireland to do some research on Irish folk music. While I was there, we discussed Alaska and Ireland and came up for an idea about a planet inhabited by "inconvenient people" such as Eskimos (or Inuit) and Irish people who had been sitting on valuable real estate back on earth so were moved out into the far reaches of the universe to some podunk terraformed ice ball. The corporate entities who did the people moving belonged to The Company or Intergal but were referred to by the planet's inhabitants as "the Powers that Be" or "the PTBs" and the planet a drawling pronunciation o that, :"Petaybee." As bigshots who think other people don't count as much as money usually do, the PTBs found that Petaybee had something they wanted--some valuable minerals--and were going to move the people. Then they start noticing that the planet has a few species they didn't order living on its surface. When they send a medically discharged veteran, Col. Yanaba Maddock, there to die, they coerce her into investigating the irregularities on "their" world. She learns that the people of Petaybee and the planet itself have minds of their own. In the course of the books Yana's relationship with the planet and its people evolves as does her romance with the brilliant and handsome, and often even human, biologist Dr. Sean Shongili. Together, Yana, Sean, the Petaybeans and their world fight back at the Powers That Be with the message "Hell no, we won't go."
OVER THE VOLCANO: The first in the series about Sean and Yana's twins, Ronan Born For Water and Murel Monster Slayer Shongili, selkies like their father. In this book the twins, with the help of their Snow Leopard and Track Cat nannies, Coaxtl and Nanook, and an inquisitive otter with "hundreds of relatives" explore their dual nature as seals and people while exploring their planet, coping with the invasion of strangers, and with their own exile.