Lifeboat in a stormy sea
Hello and welcome to the first of these newsletters. There's something wonderfully retro about sending an email these days, but from text I came and to text I shall always return. I intend to send one of these out every month or three, with a mix of updates about my writing and whatever other news or commentary that seems worthy of inclusion.
Writing Update
I'm currently working on Book Two of Lands of the Firstborn, and as Book One isn't out yet, you may not quite know what I'm talking about. The first book in the series, The Sword Defiant, was only announced recently. Here's the lovely cover.
It's more traditional-fantasy than the Black Iron Legacy, or at least it started off that way. A band of heroes slay the Dark Lord, and then fail to figure out how to live in the world they made.
Book 2 is currently in the messy stage where I'm no longer sure what it is or what it's about, but there's nothing to do but plough ahead through the forest until I find a hill where I can survey the narrative and work out what it all means. It's going slowly - so much so that I've taken some time off from my regular RPG writing to catch up.
(Next year is going to be the year of better outlines and better planning, he told himself).
I have a reputation for being a fast and prolific writer. In truth, I'm a slow and prolific one. I keep plugging away, no matter what.
Also in the pipeline: Black Iron Legacy IV, two large-ish RPG projects, and some short fiction.
Barcelona
I was honoured to be invited to be a guest at Festival 42, a newish genre convention in Barcelona. It was absurdly marvellous - they treated me like a minor celebrity, and I got to spend lots of time wandering around the city before being whisked over to the venue to be interviewed/illegibly sign books/go on panels with far bigger writers. Four museums, two cathedrals, and innumerable game shops visited. (The hotel was right in the middle of the 'Freaky Triangle', a district where all the geek stuff clusters, which led to a very, very surreal experience on the first night.
"Oh, look, here we are on what we assume to be a random Spanish street, and look! A sci-fi bookshop. And right next to it, a k-pop shop. And then an anime store. And then a game store. And a comic shop. And another comic shop. And more anime." It was like the Shoe Event Horizon, made weirder by the thought that there was a pretty good chance that if I said "this is like the Shoe Event Horizon" to a random passerby, they'd have understood me.
Assuming I knew what the Spanish for "Shoe Event Horizon" is, which I don't.
Here's a panel I did at the astounding Gigamesh bookstore. https://youtu.be/TsxIFXDw2ME
Next convention is the more familiar environs of Dragonmeet in London, where I shall not be treated as a celebrity, but instead will hang out with friends I haven't seen since before the pandemic, and that's wonderful too.
Black Iron Legacy, Book 4
And as a thank-you for signing up and reading this far, here's the prologue from the current draft of the unnamed fourth book:
“What will it…” The barman reconsiders his words. “What can it be?”
Oh, I’ve stopped drinking, says the late Terevant Erevesic. I’m just looking for someone. Here, have one on me. He reaches out his skeletal hand and places a silver coin on the counter. The barman stares at the dead man’s coin, then sweeps it away and pours himself a measure of brandy.
“Your health, sir.”
Bit late for that. Terevant leans forward, although it’s hard to speak in a conspiratorial whisper when your voice sounds like the grinding of bones in a stygian abyss. Do you know Tomas Mondolin?
“The historian?”
The very man.
“He drinks here, sometimes. I haven’t seen him in weeks, mind you.”
Another six silver coins appear on the counter.
“Although I seem to recall he’s in the back room right now.”
If a lovely violent woman shows up asking for me, says Terevant, tell her I went in there.
Once, ‘historian’ would have described Tomas Mondolin quite accurately. But one man’s ancient relic might be the raw material for another man’s alchemical weapon, which the second man can sell to a third, more violent man, and then this third man can kill the fourth, fifth, sixth and however high you care to count.
Speaking as a casualty, Terevant disapproves of the practise.
Anyway, Tomas Mondolin is indeed in that back room. Duttin showed Terevant an old photograph of Mondolin when she sent him on this quest, and the man in the back room had the same nervous eyes, the same twitchy smile. He looks as the photo might if it had been stuffed into a back pocket and forgotten about for years - worn and crumpled, stained and sweaty.
Seated opposite Mondolin is a woman, heavy-set, with a ruby in her brow, rings jangling on her fingers. Blue lips signify she’s a native of Jashan. On the table between them, a handful of little ivory idols, each no bigger than one of Terevant’s finger-bones, and a pile of coins. Clearly, some sort of questionable trade in arcane relics.
There are also three armed guards in the room. Threatening types, and if Terevant still had a nose, he’d likely be stunned by the stench of the trio, all leather and steel and casual violence. They only have swords, though, so Terevant ignores them. There are advantages to being dead.
The Jashani woman snarls. “Get out!”
Don’t mind me. Finish your business. I just want a word with Professor Mondolin, afterwards.
Mondolin smiles nervously, squirming in his seat. The guards tense, readying for a fight, but they have to know that they’ve got little chance against a Vigilant soldier of Haith.
“We’re done here,” says the woman, grabbing the coins off the table and pushing back her chair. “You can have him.”
“Wait!” Mondolin points at Terevant’s sword. “Ezith, that blade - it’s a Haithi phylactery! It holds the souls of a whole Haithi dynasty. Highly potent.”
The Jashani - Ezith, apparently - appraises Terevant. Appraises the situation.
Appraises the sword.
“Worth a bloody fortune, Ezith,” says Mondolin, sliding out of his chair and inching towards a back door.
Ezith nods slowly, then sharply taps one of her rings off the table. The ring cracks, and there’s a blinding flash of light.
Blinding if you’ve got eyes, that is. Terevant’s eye sockets are empty.
To their credit, the three guards have clearly practised for moments like this. They turn away from the flash an instant before it happens, draw their swords swiftly, and close on Terevant, a fence of steel and muscle between him and his quarry.
Still, he’s quicker. He draws his family sword - the Blade Erevesic, phylactery of his ancestors’ souls, seventeenth of the treasure of Haith - and swings it in a wild, fierce arc. The blow knocks a weapon from the hands of one of the three, sends the second stumbling into the third. Terevant steps forward and shoves one foe aside. Distantly, he’s aware that the third swordsman’s blade is rattling around inside his clavicle. With a twitch of his shoulder, he tears the sword from the guard’s grasp and pushes through their line, marching towards Mondolin and the back door.
A warm glow of self-satisfaction thrills his bones for, oh, about two seconds before a gullhead bodyguard bursts in the back door, hatred in its bulging yellow eyes. The creature’s got the body of a wrestler, all corded muscle beneath the mangy feathers. Ezith points at Terevant, and the gullhead screeches and charges without hesitation.
Terevant brings the Blade Erevesic up, and the gullhead co-operatively impales itself on the sword. Unfortunately, that’s not enough to kill the beast - the thing was grown in an alchemist’s vat, made to be resilient and crammed full of redundant organs. The gullhead shrieks as it barrels into Terevant, knocking him backwards into the guards. All five go down in an absurd heap - three living men, one dead man, and one abomination that’s part man, part seagull, all bile and anger.
Terevant lands heavily with the gullhead on top of him. Blood spurts from somewhere beneath him, splashing across the side of his skull and dripping into his right eye-socket. Blood’s such an absurd inconvenience, he thinks distantly. Whatever passes for blood in a gullhead gushes all over Terevant’s uniform, while the gullhead frantically pecks at Terevant’s face. It’s like being head butted by a pickaxe. He feels his cheekbone crack, and it’s hard to see what’s going on when his skull’s bouncing off the floor, but he’s pretty sure that Mondolin’s escaped out the door.
Damnation, he mutters. The Sword Erevesic’s trapped beneath the gullhead, but Terevant’s able to get his left arm free of the tangle. He gets his bony fingers into the monster’s maw, then down its gullet. He shoves his whole hand in there, holds it there as the gullhead bucks, claws at him, smashes at him. It vomits blood and bile and unspeakable froth, then turns a gratifying shade of purple beneath the whitish feathers and stops moving at last.
He heaves the gull-head’s corpse aside and rises. One of the guards groans and clutches at Terevant’s boot. Terevant kicks him in irritation, then reaches up and extracts the other sword from his ribcage. Mondolin’s gone, and Ezith too no doubt, vanished into the chaos of the docks district beyond. Mandolin might take passage on ship, or escape into the hinterlands. They’ll have to start the search all over again, and time’s running short.
The back door opens again, and Mondolin comes stumbling back in, followed by a lovely violent woman. She shoves Mondolin to the ground.
“Look what I found, love,” says Naola.
Have a good rest-of-November. As always, I'm mytholder on what remains of twitter, and pretty much everywhere else too.