A Letter to Sir Richard Amesbury, from Sir Anthony Grimston.
My dear friend,
It should come as no surprise to you that the kingdom in an intolerable state. In all my years as a professional scoundrel and despoiler of maidens, I have never seen anything to equal this. I simply cannot do business.
The dearth of maidens is […]

This is a reiteration of classic short story structure that harkens back to Marion Zimmer Bradley and beyond but was enunciated to me by Dave Freer of Baen Books fame. It has since become something of a recurring mantra as I wind my way down the dimly lit halls of the Slush Pile and, frankly, […]

The Last Arrow of Liang Xi
By Brian Dolton
The sound of the clay jug breaking disturbed the silence of the mountainside. The arrow had severed the red cord, and only the red one. The five others remained intact, their suspended jugs swinging in the wind that swirled up from the gorge. Jong Huan lowered his bow.
“A […]

I have changed the settings for accepting comments so that you no longer need to be registered in order to add your $0.02 to a post.
I am, however, moderating the initial posts to make sure sure spammers don’t overwhelm the blogzine.

Okay, we all know that there are no new ideas in fiction, right? Especially when it comes to manga.  The Japanese are absolute masters of running over the same opossum to the point that they’ll vary the positions of the entry and exit of the tire treads by millimeters just to see what changes on […]

Fatecraft
By Lindsey Duncan
Pazia Ke’Lieren awoke flailing and shouting, nightmare recollections of broken locks and the thugs who had grabbed her hot on her mind. With no clear target in the semi-dark, she felt her foot connect with something soft even as she fell forward and landed hard on the planking of an inordinately fussy carriage. […]

 
Dragontrap
by Stefan Ingstrand
The black dragon swooped down toward the mountaintop, enormous wings beating frantically. With a muffled grunt, it half landed, half crashed into the eternal snow outside the cave.
That’s a pretty good disguise, Hrungie thought, stretching her own wings as she watched from the heap of gold and jewels inside. The human-sized halberd that […]