The Wall He Liked Not
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The Sword Defiant is out in the world, and lo! there are many reviews, mostly positive. I've done a bunch of guest blogs and interviews to promote it, which I'm tracking here: https://garhanrahan.com/2023/05/02/the-sword-defiant-blog-quest/
More to come, including a Reddit fantasy AMA on May 25th.
I did a signing in the local Waterstones, which went very well.
That's Professor Mike Cosgrave, who founded the local gaming society lo these many years ago. My thanks to the Wargaming and Roleplaying Society, who came out in force to buy books. Many, many books, in some cases.
Also (relatively) finished - Dagger in the Heart, my campaign for the Heart RPG. I'm still waiting on Moria edits, and really really wish I could share some of the graphics I've seen, because... oh. Oh yes.
Digging through old files, I found one of the source documents for the Sword Defiant. Many years ago, I wrote a fun little story called "A Harnessed Death" (https://garhanrahan.com/2021/04/07/a-harnessed-death/) and contemplated putting together another few humorous fantasy stories. I only wrote one more, but it was a seed for the sword, so to speak.
Now Beornhot was accounted a great hero in those lands, and he travelled far and wide. The bards and strolling players made many songs of the Saga of Beornhot, the full telling of which would take many weeks.
After many years of high adventure, he grew tired of peril and plunder, and found his thoughts turning more and more often towards hearth and home. It came to pass that, one day, he drove the sword called Reaver into the bloody earth and proclaimed that he had gone as far as his desire would take him, and it was time to return home.
This is the Lay of the Homecoming of Beornhot.
Many misfortunes befell him on his return journey, godly curses and the bewitchments of witches, and so it took him longer than planned, but in time he returned to the home he had left behind. Beornhot strove against the Sea of Groaning Ice, and came home, and sat awkwardly in the living room because, in his absence, they had repainted it in a curious shade of pink and he liked it not.
Beornhot navigated the Maze of Murua, and came home, and found that he had borrowed a fiver off his neighbour several years early, and that usury was not a sin in that land.
Beornhot slew the Hydra, for it blocked his path, and came home, and learned that his dog had died some years previously.
Beornhot crossed the Desert of Finite Yet Very Numerous Woes, and came home, and they held a feast in his honour, and he found he was in that uncomfortable social space where he had no news of very great importance to relate, but did not know his neighbours well enough to make small talk, so he ended up just pushing his boar flank around the plate.
Beornhot contended with the Sorcerer of Gol, and threw him down, and came home, and found that his wife wished to discuss exactly who had shared Beornhot’s bed over the many years of his journey, and that was a conversation more troubling than any malice conjured by the Sorcerer of Gol.
Beornhot plundered the tombs of the Grey Kings, for they were only a slight detour from his route home, and, tombs plundered, came home, and for a time was a popular raconteur in the local inn, yet soon the locals tired of tales of icy seas and hydras and mazes and sorcerers, and he was ill-equipped to talk about farming, which was their chief concern.
Thus it was that Beornhot came home, and so concludes the Lay of the Homecoming.
Fortunately for the bards and strolling players, Beornhot’s deeds in his later wanderings became Beornhot’s Other Saga, The One Without The Depressing Part Where He Goes Home.
I've also got the edits for Book 2 of Lands of the Firstborn, which may be called The King Uncrowned. Or might not. I'll have those finished by the end of the month, and then it's full speed on with Book 3, which is currently called The Sword Triumphant but won't be when it's done.
Also in the near future - Cymera in Edinburgh.
https://www.cymerafestival.co.uk/cymera23-events/2023/4/4/war-stories-with-gareth-hanrahan-anna-smith-spark-and-ian-whates - and it'll be livestreamed if you have a digital pass.
Please do call into the reddit AMA if you are so inclined.