I’ve had official word that Charlie Finlay, editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, has bought another story from me. This one’s called “Ten Half-Pennies,” and it features my new series character, Baldemar. I hope Charlie won’t mind my quoting from his acceptance letter, in which he said, “I loved this story -- probably my favorite thing from you in a while, which is saying something.”
I created Baldemar for the anthology, The Book of Swords, edited by Gardner Dozois and due out in 2017, or possibly very late this year. The story in the anthology, “The Sword of Destiny,” finds the character at the end of his career as a wizard’s henchman. “Ten Half-Pennies” starts him out as a young boy and tells how he came into the service of Thelerion the thaumaturge, a wizard even less dependable than the average spellslinger.
I plan to do the same thing as I did with Raffalon the thief, who was created for the cross-genre anthology, Rogues, co-edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. While waiting for Rogues to come out, I wrote several stories about the earlier life of my thief and sold them to F&SF. Next summer, I will put together all the Raffalon stories, including an extra I have yet to write, and self-publish them as an ebook and POD paperback.
Meanwhile, I’m halfway through another Baldemar story, as he pursues his career as a young henchman to Thelerion. I’m about to send him off to Khoram-in-the-Waste, a ruined city in the desert, to recover an ancient magic object for his master. How that’s going to work out, I don’t know yet, but it’s always fun to see where these stories go.
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