Another sale to F&SF

I've sold another Raffalon novelette to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. "Genius" is a long one -- 14,000 words -- and features Cascor the discriminatorbudding thaumaturge. It's about politics, graft, and old crimes coming to light. It should run in 2016 and when I know which issue it will appear in, I'll post the info here.

This is my twenty-eighth sale to F&SF and the first since new editor Charlie Finlay took over. "Genius" will probably be my next-to-last Raffalon/Cascor tale. Added to the others, it makes a total of 91,000 words, enough for a collection. When the magazine's six-months after publication exclusivity period ends, I'll write a new one that will only appear in the collection and self-publish it as a $3.99 ebook and $12.99 POD paperback.

Down the road, I may put Cascor and Raffalon into a novel but for the moment I'm happy with them just being episodic characters.

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In the meantime, between drafts of the historical novel, I'm 7,500 words into a novelette to submit to Gardner Dozois's invitation-only anthology, The Book of Swords. Just as I originally created Raffalon for the George R.R. Martin/Gardner Dozois theme antho, Rogues, I've made myself a new roguish picaresque character called Baldemar (the name may change).

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I'm in London right now, having finished a three-week housesit in a little village outside Banbury. Tomorrow it's back to Italy to wind up the sit there. Then we'll load up the Vauxhall station wagon and drive to Cherbourg to catch a ferry to Ireland, where we're looking after a house-with-cats in Tipperary through to the end of April.

In May, it's back to the US west coast, sitting at a country acreage on the Olympic Peninsula. It's the same place where we tended nine standard poodles (in the house, not kennels!) back in 2010, but there will be no dogs this time -- although there may be some horses to shovel for.

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Happy New Year to everybody.