We were given only two days’ notice for an all-staff meeting at 10 a.m. on New Year’s Day. On the busy Eve, in waiters’ stations and at pass-windows, everyone had their take on this mysterious and heartlessly-timed gathering. Ten hours into the new year we walked into the restaurant–to tables devoid of place-settings, to stacks of …
Category: Everything Else
Nov 20
How do you know when it’s love?
So it’s finally done, Pass on the Cup of Dreams, the third novel in the Six Kingdoms series, which will be published in early December in e-format and as a POD book by the wonderful folks at Lucky Bat. Or about the same time my new lucky beard will stop scratching. As a boyhood fan of the Red Sox (I …
May 20
Blue Peter
Remember that aptitude test we took early on in high school to find out what we’re good at? Maybe the test was a help for some, but by then I had a pretty good idea of the direction I was going because of the crocodile behind the sofa. Years before, my parents surely had no idea …
Apr 20
My 1000 acres on Mars
As if the recent Chelyabinsk meteor explosion wasn’t enough to give us a glimmer of the much larger event that wiped out the dinosaurs, now we have Stephen Hawking, the renowned astrophysicist, telling us recently that humans won’t survive another 1000 years without escaping beyond our ‘fragile’ planet. Or, as the prescient Tennyson urged in …
Mar 20
The Dog Park
The Edmonds dog park is a triangular acre of sand and gravel, bounded on one side by the Burlington Northern railroad tracks, and on the other by the parking area for an adjacent waterfront park. The only side not fenced in is the seventy-five yards of pebbly beach strewn with driftwood logs. Clear days get …
Feb 21
Ask Geppetto (or Dr. Frankenstein)
There’s a quote, attributed to the father of the late novelist, Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Sometimes a Great Notion: “Good writing ain’t necessarily good reading.” Good writing is more easily defined than good reading. But for me the best measure of a ‘good read’ is when the book–its …
Jan 21
Lincoln’s Last Letter
In the movie Lincoln, the president spent part of the last day of his life–April 14, 1865–on an outing with his wife Mary and then later had some business to attend to with members of his cabinet, before hurriedly keeping an appointment with his wife to go to a play at Ford’s Theater. What Spielberg’s …
Dec 21
Christmas List
The call came several days before Christmas that year: a prominent and respected New York-based editor of sf/fantasy, whom I’d met through a writing workshop, wanted to buy my novel. As Christmas gifts go, selling a first novel is way up there on the all-time list (though the top spot will always be the December …
Nov 21
Hoarding
It’s time for it all to go, all the writerly detritus from a time when King Paper still ruled. Oh, there will be more, from books as yet unwritten, but there has to be room for it, and presently there isn’t. There are far too many apple boxes filled with: drafts of …
Oct 24
Kleroterias
Ancient Greece has often been called the cradle of democracy. Sure, most of the people living in its city-states were not allowed to be citizens, and women couldn’t vote or own property (at least Sparta got the latter right). Still, they had a pretty good thing going, considering the alternatives elsewhere at the time. According …
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A Beast In The Ruins
A Beast In The Ruins is an 8,000-word story set in the same Six Kingdoms world as his novels The Shadow of His Wings, The Mace of Souls and Pass on the Cup of Dreams.
It begins: “Old age sometimes carries with it the urge to confess to secrets accumulated over the years. I have only one: I murdered my brother. I had no hand in his death, nor did I ask anyone else to do what I could not. I never wished him dead even after we were estranged. You may think this a riddle. It is not. I did kill him. To understand why, you must come back with me to the day he and I met the Bell Boys…”
The Six Kingdoms Codex
The Six Kingdoms Codex, is a 55-page companion volume to Bruce's fantasy novels The Shadow of His Wings, The Mace of Souls and Pass on the Cup of Dreams.
In it you’ll find a story written exclusively for the Codex; an extensive glossary and background material to the Six Kingdoms world; and a color map by cartographer Pieter Talens.