Tag Archives: Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Word of Podcast

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If you’re interested in the sf/f field in general, the SF Signal web site is probably already familiar to you. This week they’ve put up one of their regular podcasts, this time a panel discussion on the state of the Swords & Sorcery (S&S)subgenre and where the genre is at the moment, (Episode 108): 2012 Sword & Sorcery Mega Panel Part 1
.    Panelists were:

Lou Anders is the editor of Pyr Books, Scott Andrews is the editor of  Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Violette Malan and James Sutter are authors, Jaym Gates and Patrick Hester are the SF Signal podcast moderators. Besides being an interesting discussion in itself for anyone even remotely interested in the subject (and I’m looking forward to part 2), it was interesting to me personally because my name came up several times as a modern S&S author in connection with the Lord Yamada stories.

I can see it. For one thing, as subgenres go, S&S is pretty mecurial. Any subgenre that can encompass at various times Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Leiber, C.L. Moore, Joanna Russ, G.R.R. Martin, and Michael Moorcock, has to be a bit of a moving target. For another, at various times in my development I was very deliberately writing S&S. For one thing, I went through an early phase where I didn’t read much else. For another, when I was first trying to break into the fantasy magazines (all maybe three of them at the time), S&S was in the ascendant, as hot or hotter than Steampunk is now. I wrote a fair bit of it, and apparently I still am.

I’ll grant you, I wasn’t thinking of Yamada as S&S when the series first came to me. I had him envisioned more as a Heian-era noire detective, sort of Sam Spade with a tachi. He quickly grew past that limited conception, and thank heavens for that, but the tone remained that of a generalist fantasy with mystery overtones. And yet the stories still easily fit under the S&S umbrella. I hadn’t thought of them that way, but it’s true, and perfectly fine with me.

Categories aside, I think this is the first time that my name and work has come up in a podcast that wasn’t a podcast of one of my own stories. Getting a reminder now and then that other people do read and like what you do doesn’t entirely suck.

In the Palace of the Jade Lion

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When Realms of Fantasy closed it had two of my stories in inventory, and now that the contracts are signed I can mention that the first of them, “In the Palace of the Jade Lion,” has sold to Beneath Ceaseless Skies. This is a 12,000 word ghost story set in ancient China during the Warring States period, and the first non-Yamada story that I’ve placed there.

I’m rather proud of this one. Which I suppose is the kind of thing a writer would normally say, but it’s true. I think it’s a fun story and I’m rather pleased with the way it turned out. Naturally I’m happy that it found a good home.

The Final Tally

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I got an email this morning from the owners of Realms of Fantasy officially releasing the last two stories of mine that had been contracted for the magazine. If those two had been published I’d have had 27 stories there, total. As it was, the final count was 25. it’s possilble that someone may have published more stories there than I did, but off the top of my head I can’t think who it might be. As Theodora Goss pointed out elsewhere, with the loss of ROF and the combining of Fantasy Magazine and LightSpeed, there are no more “generalist” fantasy-only fiction magazines, and that’s a shame. There’s Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Black Gate but both are a bit more specialized in adventure and S&S-type fantasy. Realms of Fantasy under Shawna McCarthy was far more ecumenical, and ran the gamut, which is something I like to do in my work as well. We were a good fit.

For the record, here’s the list of every story I published in Realms of Fantasy over 16 years:

  1. “The Last Waltz,” February 1995
  2. “The Right Sort of Flea,” April 1997
  3. “Lord Madoc and the Red Knight,” December 1997
  4. “Take a Long Step,” April 1999
  5. “How Konti Scrounged the World,” February 2000
  6. “The Fourth Law of Power,” August 2000
  7. “Judgment Day,” October 2000
  8. “The Trickster’s Wife,” February 2001
  9. “The First Law of Power,” June 2001
  10. “A Respectful Silence,” December 2001
  11. “Kallisti,” April 2002
  12. “Worshipping Small Gods,” August 2003
  13. “Yamabushi,” December 2003
  14. “The Right God,” August 2004
  15. “Death, the Devil, and the Lady in White,” April 2005
  16. “Fox Tails,” June 2005 (The first Lord Yamada story)
  17. “The Penultimate Riddle,” August 2005
  18. “Empty Places,” December 2005
  19. “Moon Viewing at Shiji Bridge,” April 2006
  20. “A Touch of Hell,” April 2007
  21. “Hot Water,” December 2007
  22. “On the Banks of the River of Heaven,” April 2008
  23. “The River of Three Crossings,” February 2009
  24. “A Road Once Traveled,” December 2009
  25. “The Swan Troika,” February 2011

Not a bad list. I only wish it could have been longer.