Blatant Plug

While I was in Rhode Island this past week, my latest short story was published on the web, as part of a pdf file (a first for me). The story is "Singer for the Dead" and it is set in Monte Cook's Diamond Throne setting. The collection, Children of the Rune, may be purchased and downloaded here. For those preferring dead tree technology for their books (which, admittedly, are durable, portable, and can be read with a flashlight), the print version will be available in August.

What makes this an interesting book for me is that almost all of the writers involved are friends, and we're all in the same general generation of authors. While I have always enjoyed by Dragonlance short stories, I have drifted to the "Elder God" end of the spectrum among other, rising young writers in Krynn, while in the Thieves' World short stories I've worked on, I have been one of the "new kids" (Both series were a lot of fun to work on - Margaret Weis and Lynn Abbey are wonderful editors, and both series are highly recommended). A lot of the group here I have had social dealings with along with working in the same shared world. We've gossipped at parties and hefted beers and traded information on our City of Heroes characters in addition to worked together.

For example, I got to read the stories by Stan! and Wolfgang Baur in early drafts, since they are fellow West Coast Alliterates, which meet every second Monday at an ever-changing location in Seattle. Thomas Reid, in addition to being my former cube-mate at WotC, is another Alliterate, dating back to my Wisconsin days. Will McDermott, Miranda Horner, Bruce Cordell, Keith Strohm are all former WotC alumni and co-workers. Ed Greenwood and I go back to half-past forever on the original Forgotten Realms and worked together most recently on Cormyr: A Novel. And I attended Sue and Monte's wedding years ago in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. I must confess I have no deeply personal gossip about Mike Mearls or Richard Lee Byers, but I did once score a six-pack from Lucien Soulban in exchange for introducing him to some of the editors at WotC.

The end result, for me, is a very comfortable collection of writers. These are all authors with experience in the care and feeding of shared worlds, turned loose on a new territory for the first collected fiction work in the Diamond Throne. The end results are really, really, good, and I recommend you check it out, either now in download or later when the paper version shows up.

End of Blatant Plug (now go buy the book!)

More later,