A new anthology from Craig Comer available for pre-order. Eleven tales of Sword & Sorcery, low fantasy, and high adventure.
I had fun time working on these tales, dusting off the old and polishing up the new, never before released. Herein lies a span of almost twenty years of writing, and whereas I hadn’t remembered every twist and turn of each of them, I had a clearly etched memory of when I’d written them. Each is dear to me, and I hope will be an enjoyable read for you!
Broken into three sections, I thought I’d share more about each in turn:
TALES OF LOST LANDS – To reclaim the heart of her god, Mior bargains with mages and delves deep into the temple of a cult. Caita Halftallow finds strength amongst the herd, the better to crush her enemies, while Jaelyn’s song lends her the strength to slay fiends.
The winner of the Artist’s Challenge Anthology contest, “The Song of Jaelyn” first saw print in 2008. The contest rules were simple: submit a story inspired by the anthology’s cover. With a ship besieged by a storm, and a begowned woman staring longingly at the sea, the story formed quickly and almost wrote itself. Its theme of a wronged, and seemingly desperate, victim turning the tables on their assailants continued in other tales. In “Tazirum’s Dagger,” my second published story, it’s a group of young would-be adventurers who get in over their heads. “The Tomb of Jorem’bel” and “The Lure of Caita Halftallow” feature heroes fighting against the odds to save their family’s legacies.
These are tales inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s BLACK ARROW and Sir Walter Scott’s IVANHOE, not to mention the adventures of more brawny rogues like Conan and David Eddings’ Sparhawk. They are gritty and set in lands both familiar and strange, where magic exists but is clouded in mystery and not readily visible. And if the gods play a hand in the fate of our heroes, it is only for their own ends.