What prompted you to write about matriarchal societies?

There was no single factor behind my decisions to write, at various times, about matriarchal cultures. Certainly, the facts that I’ve been married to career women, that we have six daughters, all of whom are successful professionally, that all of the women close to me have faced various forms of sexual/gender discrimination, and the fact that I spent some time as a single parent with prime custodial responsibilities all were contributing factors. I also wanted to explore, as it has been noted earlier, the use of power, and how it might be the same, and how it might be different, when exercised primarily by women. Needless to say, the reaction to these “explorations” has been mixed. I will note that there did not seem to be much gender difference between those who liked what I did and those who did not. Along these lines, the latest “exploration” of such issues, although not in a matriarchal society, is “The Lord-Protector’s Daughter,” which will appear in the August issue of Baen’s Universe.