the Fellowship

At one time, the cellar of the current palace was made up of dank, dim chambers where the palace's slave-servants slept and sometimes worked. When the previous Chara made up his mind to free all the palace slaves, there was much discussion over what to do with the former slave-quarters. The somewhat belated consensus by the palace officials was that these rooms were unfit to live in. There was talk of turning the rooms into storage rooms.

To everyone's amazement, the palace's community of eunuchs came forward and asked that the dank, dim chambers be given over to them. They had never before had a place in the palace that belonged solely to them. Many of them, being recently freed slaves, had lived in the slave-quarters; they considered this their home, one that might finally belong to them, rather than to their slave-masters.

The Chara graciously granted them their new quarters and forbade anyone who was not a half-man from entering the quarters, except by invitation of the eunuchs.

I can testify that the eunuch community has done a marvellous job of redecorating the cellar, so that it is bright and cheerful. One room alone has not been touched: the slaves' punishment room, which remains as a stark reminder of this place's bloody past.

If you are invited to visit the eunuchs' quarters, I strongly advise you to visit the punishment room. My advice grows even stronger if you keep slaves yourselves.

[Translator's note: Free-man's Blade includes a visit to the slave quarters, courtesy of a half-man.]

BLOG FICTION

Tempestuous Tours (Crossing Worlds: A Visitor's Guide to the Three Lands #2). A whirlwind tour of the sites in the Three Lands that are most steeped in history, culture, and the occasional pickpocket.

New installments:

• The Chara's quarters.
• The Chara To Be's chamber.
• From the Chara To Be's chamber to the half-men's quarters.

FROM THE BACKLIST

In honor of Independence Day in the USA, a novel-within-a-novel about revolution.

Checkmate (The Eternal Dungeon: Sweet Blood #4).

The Eternal Dungeon is no longer a prison. It's a battlefield.

Split apart from their closest loves and friends, a small group of prison-workers seek to abolish the use of torture against prisoners in the queendom's royal dungeon. Time is running out, for the deadly High Seeker has already flogged and executed prison-workers who oppose his policies.

Do the reformers have enough time and skill to bring about radical change in the dungeon? Will they be able to overcome their mistrust of one another?

NEWS & UPCOMING FICTION

I hope those of you who have been affected the heat waves have been keeping cool. I and my family are nicely air-conditioned so far, but the past month or so has seen me dealing with a documentation problem, a flooded basement, and three family medical crises leading to trips to the emergency room and, in one case, a stay in the hospital.

All that hanging around for doctors to arrive has left me plenty of time in which to write, but I fell short of time in June in which to edit and lay out my next e-book. So I've rescheduled the release of the now-aptly-titled "Wait" to August.

In the meantime, I've decided to add in a new feature to my monthly updates: "From the Backlist." I know that I have a somewhat formidable backlist, and it may seem challenging to know where to start with it. Here's the secret: Start anywhere. I've written nearly all my stories so that they can be read independently of one another. Of course, if you hate spoilers with a passion, you'll want to start at the beginning of each series cycle. But otherwise, you may enjoy having the chance to dip into various spots of my backlist.

Website news: I've added Edward Eager to my Links page and have updated the links to other authors. Among other things, the site of Sylvia Engdahl (which hasn't been updated since 2024) has gone down, which is a little alarming, since the author was born in 1933. If you're interested in her writings, her quite-reasonably-priced books and ebooks are still available at bookstores - though for how long, I can't say; her more recent novels are self-published. Her Children of the Star trilogy, which I first read as a teen, deeply influenced my own writing. (I unconsciously swiped the ending of The Breaking from one of her novels.)

My fiction announcements are also available by e-mail and feeds.