Dr. Linda Malcor Website: Dragonlords of Dumnonia. Email: Legend@malcor.com Location: Aliso Viejo, California Interview:Click Here!

The Battlestar Galactica Fan Club Co-President Shawn O'Donnell "BGR" (bgresurrection_1999@yahoo.com) recently spoke with Linda Malcor, PhD, author and creator/webmaster of "Dragonlords of Dumnonia". Dr. Malcor is a free-lance writer and researcher. She lives in Aliso Viejo, California with her husband and their son and daughter. She enjoys cooking, singing, war games, science fiction and fantasy.

BGR: Considering that you are known as a writer...what originally pushed you into that career path?

LM: Pushed me? Lemme tell you a story . When I was back in, oh, eighth grade, I was taking extra curricular classes, one of which was in creative writing. I told my teacher that I wanted to be a physics professor who did creative writing on the side. He laughed and told me that I would be a writer who maybe did physics on the side. Chalk one up for the teacher.

BGR: What was you're first published work?

LM: Depends on what you mean by "published". The first work I had turned into a bound book and a produced play (school distribution for both ) was...Hmm...I honestly can't remember the title anymore . But it was a Halloween play about a boy who met a supernatural figure named Jack, and I was in third grade when I wrote it . If you mean by an actual press, that would be a poem called "Black Velvet", which I published when I was in high school (my sophomore year, I think).

BGR: What current projects are you working on?

LM: I have four completed novels and about half a dozen novels "in various stages of preparation", about two dozen screen plays that I'm marketing, something in the neighborhood of half a dozen nonfiction articles in progress, and about three nonfiction books, and that leaves out all the fanfiction, poems, short stories, etc. that I'm working on. (I'm a big believer that the cure for writer's block is to be working on several things at once.)

BGR: What are you're thoughts on future projects...where would you like to go in you're writing?

LM: I want more of my fantasy fiction published. I'm sure my nonfiction about Arthur will sell as quickly as I can write it . I'm just preferring to spend my time being a mom and working on my fantasy fiction at the moment. I also wouldn't mind seeing a few of my fiction scripts produced . (My nonfiction ones sell regularly, when I want to put in the work on them.)

BGR: I'd like to step back and talk about Dragonlords... tell us about the site and mythos behind it...

LM:Ah, Dragonlords. The site (http://www.dragonlordsnet.com) is... well, eclectic and huge . It features gay rights information, a bookstore that--among other things--has one of the best selection lists for King Arthur anywhere in the world, Queen's Own (the Official Mercedes Lackey Fan Club), an online writing group, an informational site for victims of domestic violence within same-sex relationships, and much, much more.

As for the mythos...It's based on an AD&D world that I've been running for over 20 years--with some modifications. I have a Ph.D. in Indo-European Comparative Mythology, and I'm extremely active at the government level in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Both of those details of my life have had an impact on the fantasy world that I've created. On the surface, Dragonlords may look like a conventional battle between Good and Evil, but I'm one of those dreaded "contextualists" who insists on reading the Bible in historical context. Nothing is simple.

All of the "evil" factions have a reason for being that way, and they are only "evil" when viewed in comparison to the "good" side. The favored deity is actually what AD&D folks would describe as a "Neutral"--who has unpredictable shifts to other "alignments." In other words, he's about as "human" as you get . My primary character, Shashtah, is bisexual in the extreme, capable of loving everyone in every sense, regardless of gender, race, or anything else. He's in tune with the part of every living creature that is "immortal." What I did was stick a totally accepting character in a completely restrictive realm that is based off Middle Eastern culture and philosophy. Some of the tenets he accepts; others he finds illogical and impractical. I then confront him with issues that characterize everything from the current Israeli/Palestinian conflict to the modern debate on sexuality within the major denominations of the Christian Church to concerns that can confront the average adult human being (e.g., what do you do if you are a single adult male, guardian of two children, and find yourself in the military and sent off to war?). In other words, Dragonlords is built for players with adult interests and adult concerns. We ask players to deal with hard issues and to confront them in an adult manner. We hope they can then turn around and apply the principles that they've tested in the game to their real world lives.

BGR: What was you're motivation in creating this realm?

LM: Hmm..Well, that depends on what point in my life you are talking about. I originally created the realm when I was in 11th grade (1977), in a creative writing class, and just discovering AD&D. Over the more than two decades since then the realm has changed as the situations I've confronted in my life have changed. As I became increasingly involved in the debate about sexuality that is going on within my church, I incorporated that debate into my fantasy world. The older I become, the more I experience, the more refined and complicated my fantasy "testing ground" becomes.

I'd had all this going offline since 1977, and I assume it would still be going in such a capacity if things had remained essentially status quo in my life. But in 1997 I was involved in Pern fandom, and Anne McCaffrey came out with a set of rules for her fandom that I could not abide. I spend a great deal of my time working for gay rights, and Ms. McCaffrey legislated Catholic doctrine within her fandom, which made it (a) impossible for me to continue to play most of the characters I had created and (b) hypocritical of me to work for the equality of gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender (glbt) people during the day and then teach kids by night to accept what I believe to be erroneous stereotypes. So I left Pern fandom and created the online version of Dragonlords as a home for all those characters from Pern fandom that were no longer viable and for anyone else who found the realm interesting. In other words, I had to practice what I preach.

BGR: I must ask you...Myth seems to impart itself upon you're work...do you consider it integral to you're writing?

LM: Oh, absolutely! My degree is in folklore and mythology. In essence, folklore is the study of how human beings communicate on the everyday, narrative level. Mythology is the study of how human beings communicate on the timeless, religious level. Both types of communication are absolutely essential when you present a fantasy/scifi world that you want to come off as believable to your audience. That's what I love so much about Battlestar Galactica.

The original BG writers understood that basic principle. The second season writers didn't get that, and that's part of why things fell apart so badly. Richard Hatch seems to "grok", if you will, this principle, and that's why he has my whole-hearted support in his attempts to revive BG.

BGR: Touching upon mythos again...do you think that legend plays an equally important role in Science Fiction as well as Fantasy writing?

LM: As long as you are dealing with how human beings communicate, I don't think you can separate folklore, legend, myth or anything else from Science Fiction, Fantasy or any other genre. Legend is a part of folklore, and if you are going to talk about how human beings handle interacting with alien cultures, then you need to deal with that at a folkloric level. If you aren't doing that, then your work winds up being stiff, unbelievable and of little interest to the majority of science fiction and fantasy fans. Kids are not stupid. My four-year-old has an instinctive understanding of folkloric patterns. That's not because he happens to be my son. It's because he's a human being. Most presses and producers just don't seem to get that.

I've seen numerous books, movies and series panned for a variety of reasons that range from bad writing to bad acting to poor finances, when the truth is that the people creating the end product couldn't comprehend what my four-year-old knows without anyone explaining it to him. You can't break mythic and folkloric patterns and expect to hold an audience. You need to play to those patterns and traditions. Ask George Lucas . Stephen Spielberg also has a serious clue .

BGR: Let's go beyond writing...you are a very busy person. Can we talk about the other things that you do?

LM: ::GUFFAW!:: Where do you want to start ? I have a Curriculum Vitae (CV--an academic's equivalent of a resume) that's currently about 15 pages long...and that's getting longer by the minute . You can see the narrative, "nutshell" version at http://www.dragonlordsnet.com/author.htm. To summarize briefly, in addition to writing fiction and nonfiction and overseeing my own fandom , I'm co-President of Queen's Own (the official Mercedes Lackey fan club), Moderator of Social Justice Ministries for Los Ranchos Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church (USA), Moderator of the Los Ranchos Chapter of More Light Presbyterians (which works for the equality of glbt people within my church), Co-chair of the Peace and Justice Commission for St. Mark Presbyterian Church of Newport Beach, CA, co-chair and chair of various subcommittees for my congregation's probable relocation to a new facility, outside faculty member of a doctoral committee for Pacific University, member of the editorial board for a couple of online journals, webmaster for over a dozen sites, mother of two (ages four years and six weeks ), and probably several dozen other things that I've forgotten about at the moment .

I process between 700 and 800 e-mail messages per day on average, and I have extremely little sympathy for anyone who says s/he has no time to do something when the truth is that that person simply doesn't want to do something . You can do anything you want to do; you make the time for it.

BGR: A question that should be asked...how do you balance everything?

LM: Values. I split everything up into individual tasks. Then I apply a simple test. How important is "x" in relation to everything else I have to do? My priorities are fluid. My family comes first (immediate and then extended). After that, the issue or event that has the greatest impact on the people and/or issues that matter most to me gets my immediate attention. Using that litmus test, I get through as many things as I can during my waking hours every day (which is quite a lot of time, since I'm an insomniac ).

BGR: Turning to questions regarding Battlestar Galactica...what makes the show special to you?

LM: Hmm...Well, truth be told, I originally started watching it because I'm a Bonanza fan, and I adore Lorne Greene . Then I fell madly in love with both Apollo and Starbuck . I think those characters are spectacular, and the relationship between them is one of the best ever to be presented on television. Beyond that, I enjoyed the show's use of folkloric and mythological motifs (which is why the season where they got to Earth annoyed me so much; in the established pattern your characters never, ever reach the "Promised Land" or the story is over.).

BGR: What do you personally see for the future of Battlestar Galactica?

LM: After having worked in Hollywood for over a decade, I'd say probably cable TV is where BG is most likely to find a future home. Personally, I don't watch network TV anymore ("Law and Order", "Will and Grace" and "West Wing" are the only shows that have a chance of tempting me away from the cable channels.) What I'd really like to see is a pairing between books and feature film releases. That format would suit the BG series as well as it suits Star Trek and other scifi classics like Dune.

If BG is going to succeed, though, it needs to be done right. That means done according to what the fans want, not according to what is profitable for a studio in the opinion of the ranking MBAs. Fans have an instinctive sense of the patterns that made the series great in the first place, and those patterns have nothing to do with a balance sheet. (I have tremendous respect for fans, which is why I work so closely with members of my own fandom.) If something is popular, the money will follow. Something will only be popular, though, if you speak to the popular imagination.

That imagination doesn't give two figs about Hollywood's infinite wisdom about budgets. I've seen the failure of countless movies and series blamed on hapless writers, producers and other innocents when the real cause was that the production started to care more about the bottom line than about the story it was telling. Tell a good story along traditional storytelling lines, and you'll captivate the world every time (and I don't care if you're talking Star Wars, Titanic, or Twin Peaks). I believe that Richard Hatch understands that basic truth, and that's why I support his efforts to revive Battlestar.

CureMode's Homepage

"Battlestar Galactica", the stylized "Battlestar Galactica" logo, and "Universal" logo are trademarks of Universal City Studios. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. These pages are for non-profit informational purposes with no intention of infringing upon the copyrights of the copyright owner.