"As from His Lair, the Wild Beast"

Another Servant tale will see publication later this year in Rage of the Behemoth from RBE, the folks that brought us last year's Return of the Sword. Some pretty great folks are part of the lineup, including one of my favoriet persons to share a panel with, Mary Rosenblum, and Lois Tilton's out of retirement story, to which I will get to write the introduction as well.

Cool idea, with several stories each set in a different environment, like Scalding Sands or Ageless Mountains. There will be special editions with each of the differnt environments own cover, as well.

Magic and Mechanica

It is finally here!

Enter a world of piston-driven fantasy, where magic smashes headlong into the down-to-earth reality of technology and machines. From the all out war of dragon-riding sorcerers against an army of self-replicating, clockwork robots in Christopher M. Cevasco's "Gambit," to the discovery of an alien submersible by pirates in Christopher Heath's Azieran tale "Savior in a Flask," further still to Nicholas Ian Hawkins' collision of a wizardly scholar and the newly-invented printing press that will ruin his career in "Knowledge and Dust," you will certainly be amazed at the breathtaking imaginations of fifteen authors. Dragons, steam-powered tanks, Aztec warriors, angry gods, assassins both large and small...Magic & Mechanica is unlike any collection of fantasy you've ever seen.

This anthology includes my story "Night of Shadows, Night of Knives" which probalby has the longest path to publication of any of my stories, ever. I first conceived of the beginning nearly 20 years ago. The first drafts are long lost, but about 4 years ago I discovered a version that had been adapted for Wizards of the Coast in the late 90's. They had an editorial change, and then lost it, eventually returning it to me rejected after nearly two years.

I re-wrote it for this anthology, they liked it, and here it is, finally, in print.

It is a very streamlined story, set in a vaguely middle-eastern city. A crit partner called the style "Castle Noir" which I like, and fits it as well as any other description.

Lots of good stuff in this anthology, from some pretty good writers.

Servant review by Rich Horton

Kind words from Rich Horton!

Michael Ehart's The Servant of the Manthycore is a short novel that appeared in 2007 from a small outfit called Double-Edged Publishing. I confess I started reading with minimal hopes. But I was quite pleasantly surprised. The title character and heroine is a Bronze Age woman who with her lover was tricked into an encounter with the Manthycore, a monster that requires a human servant to kill other people for him to eat. The Manthycore has imprisoned the lover in a sort of stasis, as a hostage, while the woman, later named Ninshi, travels around, almost invincible, killing people. By the time of the main action she was for generations been trying to find a way to escape this service. In this book she rescues a young slave girl, kills some bad people, and finds a hint at a secret that may allow her to compel the Manthycore to release her, only to again be betrayed. Besides some fine action and some nicely plotted episodes, and sturdy writing, I enjoyed the hints seeded through the book of some familiar characters. The main weakness is that the novel, assembled from several short stories, is a bit loosely structured. To be marketable to a major publisher it would probably have to be twice its length (and I think it could bear that expansion) and the plot would have to be tightened considerably. But as it stands it's enjoyable work.

Okay now!

link here: The Elephant Forgets - http://ecbatan.livejournal.com/