F: Umm, in Trickster's Choice, when-uh... Aly and Naw-[stumbled over pronunciation]

T: Nawat

F: Uh, are they going to, like, get together? Because... he's a crow. [laughter]

T: Well, in some aspects he's always going to be a crow. So, the question you've got to ask yourself is: If he stays with Aly, he's gonna have to turn into a man somehow, isn't he? He's gonna have to learn. Maybe he does that in Trickster's Queen. I don't know. [mumble??mumble] Sunday, before I left for Ohio. [Tammy looks dryly at audience.] OCTOBER.

Yes? [nods to audience member]

F: Um, I have a question about Buri. Why, when she married Raoul, did she give up working a--in the Queen's Riders?

T: Um, becase she saw how utterly joyful Alanna & George and Jonathan & Thayet were, with one of them being away all the time. And she really decided she could either run around with the Queen's Riders and have babies that way, or she could turn command over to Sarge and go ride around with Raoul and the King's Own. It's not that she's giving up fighting, she's just making sure she goes with her husband while she does it.

F: That's good.

T: Oh, no, no, no. She's K'mir. You [Weild? Draw?] your sword until you're too weak to draw it. [laughter]

F: [muffled question about where Tammy got her idea for girl-heroes in general, and what role models she had]

T: Well, when I was... role-models for heroines and why I write the young adult teen heroes that I do: girls... when I started out reading fantasy, and actually I grew up in the late '50s, early 1960s... and, especially in fantasy, I was looking for... I loved fantasy and thought it was wonderful. I read a lot of adventure books, I thought they were wonderful. I thought the writers just forgot the girls. 'Cause I knew i would've been happy climbing around the wilderness with Davey Crockett. I would've been very happy living in Robin Hood's band. And not in my own leafy bower, thank you very much, with my pretty little girl bow that I shoot at little target-things... [laughter] Not that I'm bitter! Umm...

F: Read Rowanhood!

T: I did. But Rowanhood was not out when I was in middle school. Actually, a lot of these writers have only come along since 1985. Um, my first book was published in '83. So, I did what a lot of writers do, um, when I started writing, which was at that time. I wrote what I wanted to read. And what I wanted to read was girls kicking butt. [laughter] Girls, like me, kicking with with swords, and horses, and whatever else came down the pike. And... as I got older, in 1975, around there, Marion Zimmer Bradley's and writers like Suzy McKee Charness started writing women warriors. But theirs were either gay or celibate, and I was straight and not. [laughter]

I like that face. [gestures to baby in crowd] He? She? She's going: [Tammy imitates baby] That's a nice face. Sorry. [laughter]

I was neither, so I wanted straight females and, obviously... [Tammy gets distracted by baby again] Sorry, I normally don't get so derailed by cuteness... [laughter]

Umm... I wanted to read about somebody I could identify with. And I'd grown up feminist. My mother was a feminist. I got patted on the head and called out little Women's Libber in middle school. And... I was into martial arts. Umm, and they had girls out there kicking butt. Um, usually they died, though. Umm... so when it came time to write my first adult novel, I tried doing something literary and ground to a halt--a screeching halt--around about page five. And I thought, "you know, I used to write like it was breathing, like I could just... the words jumped from my head to the page. And what was I writing about? Girl sword-slingers." So I thought maybe the important thing about a first novel isn't what you write about, whether it's literary or not, but that you get it done. Because those of you who've tried to do books, and who've done short stories, know that that wall between short story and novel is really scary. So, I did it. I finished a book about a firl warriorm and, beyond me-being-my-own-worst-critic aspect--we're all our own worst critics--this book stank. This book stank in a dead-dog-lying-out-in-the-desert-sun-in-Waco-Texas kind of way. [laughter] I wrapped it in foil, dug a pit, shoved it down there with a stake through it, poured in cement, paved it over... [laughter] That was bad.

Umm, but it was a book. So, about six months later I had this dream and I didn't remember what it was about--in fact, when I actually sat down to write, I only had an image in my head and it never ended up in the book. But it unlocked something in me, and I wrote a scene about a boy and girl--twins--talking to their father, who's telling them how they're going to live their lives. And I wrote that scene, and the scene that followed, and the next, and the next, and the next, until six months and 732 manuscript pages later, I had a book about a girl who disguises herself as a boy to become a knight. And... I continue to write girls who kick butt, through magic or through warrior-craft, because there are still--for every book with a girl hero published, there are still, well, seven out of every ten books published for kids have boy heroes. The reasoning, the so-called "reasoning" is that boys won't read books with girl heroes, when you know the extra-cool ones who... and a third of my fan-base is guys. Umm... while girls will read anything. So, until I see the numbers start to even up more, that's where I'm going to concentrate. I have nothing against guys--my girls are surrounded with them. Umm, my girls train with them, learn magic with them, they're great. But... we need more girl heroes. We need more women heroes, out there in--everywhere.

F: What made you make the character Briar, then?

T: Well, Briar--I figured... The Circle of Magic was my first i--series where I wasn't working with a girl-in-a-primarily-guy-environment. Alanna was surrounded by guys. Daine was surrounded by them. Circle of Magic, I knew... about my thread-witch. I knew about my weather-witch. And I thought: "it's a group hero, there should be a guy." And there was Briar. And, I had a picture that looked like Briar to me. And I went from there. Um... and Briar, when it came time, he got his own book. And I di--like I say, I have nothing against guys. It's just [like?] when I'm gonna be doing a stand-alone book about Numair in the years from when his friendship with Ozorne went to pieces until, uh... certain fans have requested the exact moment at which he meets Daine. And I have to suspect their motives for this, because the exact moment at which Numair-the-man meets Daine, he is unclothed. [laughter] But that's what the fans are asking for. So, I--it--I will do guy-heroes, it's just primarily my focus, for--until it changes, is gonna be be female heroes.