A March Gift for YOU!

Over at Book View Cafe, I'm offering a free ebook copy of Azkhantian Tales, my collection of short fiction set in the world of The Seven-Petaled Shield. (Maybe you'll enjoy it enough to post a review?)

Across the Azkhantian steppe, warrior women ride to battle against foes both human and supernatural. From the world of The Seven-Petaled Shield come four fantasy tales, originally published in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword & Sorceress.

Prophecy links a mother and daughter in an unbreakable bond.
A young woman defies tradition to become a shaman.
When twins are magically divided, the survivor searches for the other half of her soul.
A warrior woman discovers that to wield a magical blade dishonorably carries a heavy price.

The giveaway ends March 7, 2015.


Here's the link to the BVC newsletter, with all the nifty details.

Women Heroes in The Seven-Petaled Shield

Novels begin in many different ways, drawing their “motive energy” or “visions of ultimate coolness” from varied sources. Which is a high-falutin’ way of saying that there is no one right way in which to begin a story. It can start with a visual image (very common with me, as I’m a visual writer), an emotional turning-point, or an idea that grabs the imagination. Or a line of dialog or a melody. Many writers experience a tango-like dance with their creative inspirations, which ranges from the times the source dictates its own story in total defiance of genre boundaries and market demands, to those instances when the writer summons a story to fit certain specifications. The world of The Seven-Petaled Shield began with the latter.

My first professional short story sale was to Marion Zimmer Bradley for the debut volume of Sword & Sorceress. (It was, of course, an occasion of much rejoicing!) When the anthology became an annual series, I kept submitting stories, and looking around for different cultures and situations. For one of the later volumes (XIII), I wanted to explore the tensions between a nomadic horse people and a city-based culture like Rome, and their different values and forms of magic. I did not call them Romans and Scythians, but these models were very much in my mind. As I delved further into my research, researching aspects of life and warfare that spoke to me, I learned that although Scythian women were definitely second-class citizens, the Sarmatian women rode to battle and were likely the origin of the “Amazons” of legend. Thus began a series of “Azkhantian” tales, in which the women of a nomadic horse people battle against the relentless incursions of Gelon (this world’s Roman Empire) What could be more perfect for a sword and sorcery story featuring a strong woman protagonist?

Cover - The Seven-Petaled Shield

My love affair with this world and its people began with a series of short stories in Sword & Sorceress. I kept wanting to go back and explore more...and before I knew it, I'd committed trilogy -- one long story arc with four major cultures, a vast and wonderful landscape, and characters I came to treasure for their compassion, their arrogance, their wisdom, their courage, their human frailty.

The first part, The Seven-Petaled Shield (which is also the name of the trilogy) comes out from DAW in June. Here's the cover, with a painting by the wonderful Matt Stawicki:

I am such a happy camper. (And you can pre-order it from your favorite indie bookstore or the usual internet sources.)

I'll be blogging more about it as the time approaches.