Tag: preview

This is the seventh preview for the Farewell, Something Lovely short story collection that I will soon be Kickstarting. You can find “the Spear” here, “Flotsam Jewel” here, “For Simple Coin” here, “Of Shadows and Flutes” here, “A Pound of Dead Flesh” here, and “Farewell, Something Lovely” here.

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SINGER OF A STRANGE SONG

Drust rubbed his stubbled chin. “She reminds me of my sister.”

Brude didn’t like that comment, and he didn’t like the cold gleam in his friend’s eye. Drust’s shaved head, thick neck, brawny arms, and tattoos might intimidate most, but what frightened Brude was that particular gleam that meant violence, likely ending in death.
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This is the sixth preview for the Farewell, Something Lovely short story collection that I will soon be Kickstarting. You can find “the Spear” here, “Flotsam Jewel” here, “For Simple Coin” here, “Of Shadows and Flutes” here, and “A Pound of Dead Flesh” here.

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FAREWELL, SOMETHING LOVELY

I didn’t owe Mollo a thing, except maybe a kick in the teeth. A couple of years back, he had threatened to end me. I had beaten him good, made him think, but I wasn’t the one who had given him the second smile just below his chin. That came from someone trying to settle an argument. It hadn’t worked. Word was that he had gutted more than 50 men. I had known some of them. They wouldn’t be missed.
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This is the fifth preview for the Farewell, Something Lovely short story collection that I will soon be Kickstarting. You can find “the Spear” here, “Flotsam Jewel” here, “For Simple Coin” here, and “Of Shadows and Flutes” here.

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A POUND OF DEAD FLESH

A smile spread across Drust’s face, showing his chipped teeth. “And there’s Aidan, the man who’ll make us rich.”

“The man who’ll steal our purses, more like,” Brude said, glancing at his companion.
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This is the fourth preview for the Farewell, Something Lovely short story collection that I will soon be Kickstarting. You can find the first, “the Spear,” here, the second, “Flotsam Jewel,” here, and the third, “For Simple Coin,” here.

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OF SHADOWS AND FLUTE

Decamaris stood outside the circle of illumination cast by the bonfire. Silently, he watched and listened as the man calling himself Laersun whipped the crowd into a frenzy with his visions of a union of thieves, a great guild that would take a place of power in the city. No one stood near Decamaris. Wrapped in shadow as much as in cloak and hood, he watched and waited. Across the bay, the lights of the Reach winked and twinkled, beckoning. Above, clouds blocked the stars and moons. A great storm approached, on this all the weather witches agreed.
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This is the third preview for the Farewell, Something Lovely short story collection that I will soon be Kickstarting. You can find the first, “the Spear,” here, and the second, “Flotsam Jewel,” here.

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FOR SIMPLE COIN

The crowd on the street flowed, not slowing, ignorant of the peril Caspan Trey could all but taste. His eyes fixed on his home, a shack built on the side of a warehouse used by smugglers. The door to the hovel he called home hung open. He considered his options, knowing he had only two—enter his home or leave Elnya to her fate. He had promised to protect her. Had given his word. (more…)

This is the second preview for the Farewell, Something Lovely short story collection that I will soon be Kickstarting. You can find the first, “the Spear,” here.

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FLOTSAM JEWEL

The building’s undulations lulled Calum into a semi-trance. He sat in a chair on the roof of the Golden Boar, a gambling hall that masqueraded as a brothel, booted feet resting on the ledge. Like every other structure in Flotsam, the Boar floated in what had once been a harbor, outside the walls of Hadrapole.
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Here is the first preview for the stories that will be presented in Farewell, Something Lovely. The Kickstarter for the collection will not begin until the rewards for Centurion, Legionary of Rome have been sent out to the backers, so it will probably be late October or early November 2013.

If you have questions or concerns, I will try to answer them as best I can. You can leave a comment or email me.

This first story is titled “the Spear.”

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Chang didn’t know the name of the place, and he didn’t particularly care. Below street level, it sat on a block about three streets up from the wharves. He found it outside the walls, in the Stonedocks—the berths used by smugglers and pirates, nominally controlled by Hadrapole, but really controlled by no one. Neither of the Night Guilds, not the Blackhands nor the Mashaam, dominated the Docks. Both tried, and this invariably led to some of the bodies found every morning in the streets, alleys and shore of the Docks.

He guessed the building was supposed to be a tavern—maybe a brothel or an inn, if anyone made a distinction between the two in that place. Chang knew the Stonedocks well; he had done plenty of business there. That day he had arranged to meet one of the Hands. A messenger had left a note with his landlord. Chang lived in Twelve Shadow Walk, abutting the Pale Gate, in the shadows of that gate’s twelve towers. The landlord had no clue about Chang’s business, but he probably thought him some sort of merchant. That belief had apparently changed after the visit from the Hands’ messenger.

In the tavern, the stink of sour beer and spoiled food assailed Chang’s nostrils, worse even than he had expected. He almost rapped his head on a beam. That surprised him. He rarely had to duck his head in the buildings of Hadrapole. That low ceiling caught the smoke that drifted lazily about, cast off by both torches and candles. The mid-day bells had not yet sounded in the city, and already the darkness of the blackest midnight had descended in the tavern.

Chang took a seat near a window, with his back to a wall. Many of the patrons, all of them dirty, slovenly, miserable racks, watched him. Chang didn’t care. People would always stare. Few other men with his features walked the streets of Hadrapole. The city was cosmopolitan, but among the impoverished and destitute—which would be the kindest name for the denizens of that hole— xenophobia remained common. They hated foreigners. To a one, they all forgot that their roots lay in foreign lands. The original tribes that had inhabited the lands around Hadrapole had been exterminated or assimilated by the Empire.

The rich and the merchants hated foreigners also—Chang knew that well—but they hid it better.