Book 1 of theTwins of Petaybee available in Paperback Dec. 26, 2006!

Twins of Petaybee Book 1

CHANGELINGS: release date Dec. 27, 2005

Power Play, the last book in the Petaybee series, ended when Yana Maddock gave birth to twins, the children of her beloved selkie husband, Sean Shongili. Changelings takes up where Power Play left off, shortly after the birth of the twins, who share their father's most remarkable characteristics and turn into seals at the drop of a drop of water. Even with track cat Nanook and snow leopard Coaxtl on duty as feline nursemaids, the kids are a handful for parents who are also in charge of governing a planet and monitoring its rather stringent immigration procedure.   While the twins were being born and growing to childhood, Petaybee has been busy growing a volcanic temperate region at its equator, a place far more attractive to off worlders than the cold poles that were the only other land masses. The planet has so many other valuable qualities that Sean and Yana already must fend off those who would quickly overpopulate it and over-extend its fragile resources.

Meanwhile, the twins want to test their flippers and swim farther than the little iced over patches of river they've been allowed until their eighth birthdays, but dangers both natural and of human origin make their parents wary. Just before their birthdays, they decide to test an early gift and swim farther than they ever have. They rescue and befriend a trapped river otter, then rescue his family from wolves before being whisked back to Kilcoole by their angry aunt Sinead and her team.

Although their parents do not seem too angry with them, the twins are amazed when, during the communal phase of the Night Chants when residents of the village communicate with their sentient planet, the planet inexplicably rejects them. Soon they learn they are to be banished to go off-world to a space station school run by a wealthy friend of their parents.

Now the twins, who have scorned the outsiders who look for a home on their world, find themselves the outsiders. Somehow they have to maintain their secret abilities until they can return home. And though they long for the day when they are finally allowed to return, they are shocked to learn that they are summoned home to help their mother try to locate their missing father. Sean vanished while swimming out to the active undersea volcano and despite other searches has not been found. The twins have three new allies to help them in their search. Their school friend Ke-ola, the sea turtle who is the totem animal of his family, and their old friend the river otter.

THE ORIGINAL PETAYBEE SERIES SOON TO BE REISSUED

above are the original covers. Here's the new cover for the first of the reissues. If it looks askew that's cause it is--I took the digital shot at a funny angle. On the books, the cover will be on straight, I'm pretty sure.

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."

CHANGELINGS: 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.

MAELSTROM: The second book in the Twins of Petaybee series. See brief description above.

THE ACORNA BOOKS