“Happy birthday!” Sorrel and I screamed in unison as we jumped out from beneath the little kitchen table we’d been hiding under. My dad had just walked into our small hut after a long day of laboring, and though he looked exhausted and a bit flushed, his face transformed into a grin. I picked up […]
THE HISTORY OF Westeros stretches back thousands of years, but the period in which House Targaryen unified the various realms into the Seven Kingdoms as we know them covers less than three hundred. The history of the family goes back further than that, however, to its beginnings in the Freehold of Valyria. The Targaryens were […]
First, I got myself born. A decent crowd was on hand to watch, and they’ve always given me that much: the worst of the job was up to me, my mother being let’s just say out of it. On any other day they’d have seen her outside on the deck of her trailer home, good […]
No one does anything alone, and I owe more thanks than I can say to the many, many people who have helped along the way. I’m still not sure what I did to deserve my agent, Julie Barer, but I sure am grateful. My undying gratitude to you, Nicole Cunningham Nolan, and everyone at The […]
The maesters of the Citadel who keep the histories of Westeros have used Aegon’s Conquest as their touchstone for the past three hundred years. Births, deaths, battles, and other events are dated either AC (After the Conquest) or BC (Before the Conquest). True scholars know that such dating is far from precise. Aegon Targaryen’s conquest […]
EIGHTEEN DAYS BEFORE Private Investigator J. D. Spengler of Tampa Bay, Florida, was taking the highway exit from I-90 West onto Montana State Highway 1 when he was blinded by the setting sun and he ran over something big enough on the road that he nearly lost control of his rental car. Thump-thump. It happened […]
We thought it hadn’t worked,” Mum said. “We thought they’d just been lost or destroyed.” I’d already sat back down on the bed by then. I was still clutching the sutras to me. Maybe the right reaction should have been to set them on fire, but at the moment they felt like the only thing […]
TWENTY YEARS BEFORE Coven elders seldom agreed on anything, save for two matters considered to be their highest of laws: The devil should never be summoned. And, under no circumstance, were black mirrors ever to be used for scrying. As one of the best seers on the island, Sofia Santorini believed some rules were meant […]
The forest had become a labyrinth of snow and ice. I’d been monitoring the parameters of the thicket for an hour, and my vantage point in the crook of a tree branch had turned useless. The gusting wind blew thick flurries to sweep away my tracks, but buried along with them any signs of potential […]
I’m sure I can tell this story. I’m also sure no one will believe it. That’s fine with me. Telling it will be enough. My problem—and I’m sure many writers have it, not just newbies like me—is deciding where to start. My first thought was with the shed, because that’s where my adventures really began, […]
JOHN 20:8 IN THE DREAM, he told her the words about where he took his degrees, his postdoc, his research fellowship. They were his noise and not really for consumption. More like meditation; like even his mouth knew the pointlessness of it, and just wanted to recite. Dilworth. Otago. Auckland. Overseas to Corpus. (She likes […]
Erlok Grael stood separate from his peers, awaiting the Choosing. They waited within a small open-air amphitheater, the architecture all gleaming white marble and gold-encased capstones. Helia wore its opulence proudly, as if in defiance of the brutalities of life beyond the shores of the Blessed Isles. The others joked and laughed together, their collective […]