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Jin Hannigan is a twenty-something legal aide in a town where nothing ever happens. Except for two minor technicalities: She’s actually living in one version of hell. And she’s the mortal incarnation of the Goddess of Mercy. Imagine her surprise in All the Gates of Hell.
The Yamada Monogatari Series. We follow a disgraced minor aristocrat of Heian Era Japan through magical adventures, loss, and redemption, set against the timeline of actual historical events. The Heian Japanese saw the world as a magical, mystical, dangerous, mysterious place. I took that and ran with it.
Yamada Monogatari: Demon Hunter, To Break the Demon Gate, The War God’s Son, and The Emperor in Shadow.
The Laws of Power Series, currently at three volumes, to conclude with The Seventh Law of Power, currently in progress. Wizards and witches discover the true cost of magic…and the true goal.
Before the novels, I was a short story writer…and I still am. Which occasionally allows me to do collections of those stories: Here are five of my best:
The Ogre’s Wife: Fairy Tales For Grownups (finalist for the World Fantasy Award).
On the Banks of the River of Heaven
The God of Small Troubles and Other Stories
Our Lady of 47 Ursae Majoris and Other Stories. Totally Science Fiction.
The novella form is a natural for fantasy. Long enough to fully develop the story but short enough to force you to cut to the chase. I plan to do more of these, but in the meantime: Hereafter, and After, Little Fire and Fog, and The Heavenly Fox.
One of my favorite writers in my formative years was Andre Norton. A Warrior of Dreams was inspired by and intended as a tribute to the debt I will always owe her.
Bergstryker U is a short collection of one novelette plus a short story set at a mythical university with a really odd student body. They are unabashedly romantic, in the same sense that The Ogre’s Wife is romantic. I do that sometimes. I will likely do it again.
Taleera the Witch of Amurlee was the main character in the very first story I sold professionally, to Amazing Stories. In The Ghost War she guides a young witch attempting to save all of her people from absolute destruction. The setting eventually becomes the universe of The Laws of Power Series.
Richard Parks 