Most commented posts
- Thefts — 1 comments
- Pass on the Cup of Dreams — 1 comments
- How do you know when it’s love? — 1 comments
Author's posts
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 …
Sep 20
Do-Over
I just watched the latest post-apocalypse offering, the first episode of the television series Revolution. They’re giving us a future with lots of swords, crossbows, horses, bad-guy militias, and no electricity (though someone’s secretly holding out on that, so stay tuned). It got me thinking about some of the others in this ‘shit’s hit …
Aug 22
The Wall
Let’s face it: being a writer is like having homework every day for the rest of your life, someone once said. Homework has gone from pencils and pens to typewriters to laptops, but a few things haven’t changed. One is the tyranny of the rectilinear blankness staring you in the face, whether it’s a …
Jul 30
Thefts
Morgan’s Mill is finally out as an e-book. A lot of research went into this one and almost as many revisions as the years it rode the bench. The seed of the original idea came from some family history — maternal ancestors who once owned a small gristmill across the road from their farm in Eastern …
Jul 06
Muselair?
It’s one of those names fantasy writers like to use (often too much; I’m guilty of that) instead of a contemporary word—like study, office or library—that might break the spell, setting a reunion of old questing elves in Poughkeepsie, for instance, to mangle Ursula LeGuin’s well-known aphorism. It’s a place where you go to reflect …
- 1
- 2
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.