Short fiction

Lior and the Sea

This rare and sought-after 12,000-word Middle Kingdoms novelette was published for the first time in the Tor Fantasy tribute anthology Moonsinger’s Friends: In Honor of André Norton, and is available in digital format exclusively at Ebooks Direct.

Lior is the Rodmistress of a small north-coast fishing village in Darthen. Her work brings her up against the Sea on a daily basis. But one day a desperate challenge that Lior issues to the Sea itself in the face of a deadly ocean storm produces a change in the relationship that not even a Rodmistress can easily cope with.

Soon Lior must choose between the safety and security of the life she’s always known and the terrifying power and possibility offered her by what was once just a force of nature, but has now become something much more personal…

Reader advisory: This work contains adult / mature situations set in a sexually diverse and inclusive culture.

Short fiction Sirronde's World

The Span (Sirronde’s World #1)

Sirronde d’Aneik is a Rodmistress — one of the many wielders of the blue Flame of Power whom the Goddess sends into the Middle Kingdoms on Her business of keeping the flawed world She created running as best it can.

This tale from Sirronde’s early practice tells of her mission to discover why it is that a vital bridge being built in the sparsely-settled mountainous region of south Arlen won’t stay built. What she finds isn’t (as she initially suspects) a curse or a structural problem, but something far more dangerous, born of a love gone tragically wrong.

Sirronde is skilled at her magical craft, but finding a solution to the personal and public disasters about to unfold in the tiny one-street village of Dalthant at first seems impossible. Unwilling to accept defeat, Sirronde devises a last-ditch plan to save the innocent lives enmeshed in the building of the King’s new bridge, and the two lovers whose fates are entangled with it. That plan will drive Sirronde literally into the arms of the Goddess’s ancient foe — Her dark Lover, the Shadow. But can she escape that deadly embrace without paying her own soul as the price?

The first novelette in the “Sirronde’s World” sequence, The Span was originally published in Dragon Magazine in February 1999. The third work in the sequence, Parting Gifts, appeared in the fantasy anthology Flashing Swords 5 in 1981, and is also available at Ebooks Direct. The second work in the sequence is presently in progress.

Reader advisory: This novelette contains adult / mature themes and situations set in a sexually diverse and inclusive universe.

Short fiction Sirronde's World

Parting Gifts (Sirronde’s World #3)

The third and and final novella in the “Sirronde’s World” series. Sirronde faces an ultimate challenge as she discovers she must go up against the Shadow during the Dreadnights, that wintry time of year when the Goddess’s archenemy is at its strongest — and with no help but that of two most unpromising traveling companions: an untried young man and a kitten. Her fate lies in their hands (or paws) and theirs in hers as the three venture into the darkness under the mountain, none of them knowing whether any of them will live to see the dawn…

“Parting Gifts” first appeared in the Dell SF anthology Flashing Swords 5. Original cover art for the author’s story is by Richard Corben.

Short fiction Tales of the Five miniseries

The Levin-Gad (Tales of the Five #1)

In this 20,000-word novelette set in the main character through-line of the Door Into… novels, the first man in a thousand years to bear the blue Flame of Power, Herewiss s’Hearn, is now happily married to King Freelorn of Arlen, their lover Segnbora tai-Enraesi, the fire elemental Sunspark and the dragon Hasai. But Herewiss tells none of them why (at a most delicate moment) he must undertake a clandestine mission to the city of Darthis.

His reasons are secret: his intentions desperate. So why does Herewiss wind up spending his whole visit in a tavern? Only the Stuck Pig’s indefatigable bouncer, Iras, can learn the reason why… and soon finds herself caught up in a kind of tavern brawl that no one’s ever imagined.

“The Levin-Gad” is the first of five novelettes to be published during late 2018 and early 2019, spanning the years between Book 3 of the Tale of the Five, The Door Into Sunset, and the forthcoming The Door Into Starlight.