Peter

 

Since Peter never writes me GUEST POSTS any more I decided to steal a link to some of the new things happening over on his shiny new website.

http://peterdickinson.com/old-stuff-revisted/

” . . . I opened a file titled “Preface” and found something I’d written when it was decided that some edition of the first volume of our Elemental Spirits series, Water, ought to have a preface. I don’t remember the ins and outs of it, nor why it isn’t in the edition on my bookshelf,* but we seem to have cannibalised our efforts and come up with a composite. You will find the remains of mine,  In the Mermaid Tavern: The Sea Witch, in the Short Stories section. . .”

There now.  More free fiction.  And KES tomorrow night.

* * *

* Because it took 1,000,000 years for your wife to write two short stories for FIRE and Putnams decided to reissue WATER in a matching edition^ and to make it a little more interesting they asked us to write a little ‘new material’.  They didn’t want a whole new story or stories–which, with my track record, is just as well^^–just a sort of teasery type of thing.  Like a preface.  Well, we couldn’t write a preface–the nearest we’ve ever been able to come to collaborating is this alternating short stories business^^^–so we did a very condensed sort of alternating-stories thing.  I don’t remember any more and I can’t find our copies of the second edition of WATER which are SOMEWHERE in Third House’s attic, but presumably THE SEA WITCH didn’t make the final cut, probably because I was having trouble not writing more novels and Peter had written about twelve short stories in frustration.  Maybe he’ll find a few more in some other file.

^ The original hardback illustration had been done by Trina Schart Hyman.  Siiiiiigh.  She’d really liked the idea of the ELEMENTALS series, and had done roughs for all four.  But the other three were too rough to use and she isn’t around any more to finish them.  Sometimes my being hopeless hurts more than other times.

^^ With SUNSHINE, DRAGONHAVEN, CHALICE and THE FRELLING PEGASUS TRILOGY, all of which began life as ELEMENTALS short stories, we could have had FLOWERHAIR AND THE WATER GOBLIN+ and HETTHAR, GELJDRETH AND THE EYE OF NEWT and . . . no, no, no, let’s not go there.

+ May I just say that neither Kes nor I would put up with Dvorak’s version of the story

^^^ And an unfinished novel written in emails between an English boy and an American girl.  Guess who let the side down there too.  SIIIIIIIGH.