The Headless Flute Player
This past week, I received the happy news that a short story I wrote a couple of months ago has been accepted for publication.
(In case you���re wondering, the pleasure of knowing a story will come out somewhere never gets old.�� At least it hasn���t for me.)
Look in the Middle
���The Headless Flute Player��� will appear in the collection Shadows and Reflections: A Tribute to Roger Zelazny edited by Warren LaPine and Trent Zelazny.�� A release date has not yet been set.
When I was asked to submit a story to Shadows and Reflections, I immediately decided that the best tribute I could offer Roger was to write a story expanding on one of the two novels that he had trusted me to finish for him: Donnerjack and Lord Demon.�� I chose Lord Demon because I really like Chinese material, as anyone who has read my ���Breaking the Wall��� series might have guessed, and the universe of Lord Demon includes Chinese elements.
As those of you who read the Friday Fragments may recall, in late 2014, I set myself to re-read Lord Demon.�� In doing so, I had one of those weird experiences that only happens when a writer has been publishing for many, many years.�� (Lord Demon was originally published in 1999.)�� I found myself reading the novel as if it had been written by someone else.�� Occasionally, I���d find myself remembering writing a specific bit or how I���d woven my material into what Roger had contributed, but mostly I just read Lord Demon much as I would any novel.
When I finished, I started thinking about how I might expand upon the novel.�� Initially, I���d considered writing a sequel, but I rejected this thought pretty quickly because Lord Demon has both a very rich setting and a fairly large cast of characters.�� I felt that a short story might lose intensity because of the need both to work in characters from the novel and to explain why certain characters were not involved.�� I also didn���t want to provide too many spoilers for the novel itself, just in case someone might read the story and decide they now wanted to read the novel.
So I decided to write a prequel.�� This choice gave me a very wide field in which to play since Kai Wren, like so many of Roger���s characters, is an immortal and enters the novel with a long life before him.
When Roger and I were living together, one of the ornaments he brought along was a slightly damaged carving of the Eight Chinese immortals.�� He explained to me that, for him, the damage was part of the appeal and that, someday, he���d like to write a story explaining how the flute player lost his head.
I still have that carving.�� It resides on the mantelpiece in my living room.�� I decided that I would tell the story of how the flute player lost his head.�� I don���t pretend that it���s the story Roger would have written.�� Despite our shared interests, we were very different people.�� However, now, whenever I look at the carving, I feel a certain pleasure that the story has at long last been told.
