At year's end: a Spiritwalker Universe short story
When I Grow Up + other spiritwalker tales
Some of you will have already seen this announcement on Twitter. I’m warning you now that you’ll be receiving one more newsletter within the week (or so) on the subject of 2021 goals, but I very much want to specifically highlight a short story I and the lovely Book Smugglers have made available online (with a fabulous illustration by Kelsey Liggett).
Please PLEASE feel free to share and signal boost to anyone anywhere, especially to folks who enjoyed the Spiritwalker Trilogy.
I will always be grateful to the enthusiastic and devoted readers who have championed my Afro-Celtic post-Roman icepunk regency adventure alternate-history fantasy, with magic both cold and fire, revolution, Phoenician spies, well-dressed men and hungry women, female friendship, a spirit world dangerously intertwined with the mortal world, sword fights and battles and ball games, world trees, the talking heads of decapitated poets, legal niceties, and therefore of course lawyer dinosaurs. Where would we be without lawyer dinosaurs, I ask you?
When I Grow Up is for all of you.
cw: sibling rivalry (but they really love each other)
NOTE: The story stands alone as a complete tale, so you can absolutely read it if you haven't read the Spiritwalker Trilogy. Be aware that it is positively RIFE with spoilers and layered with multiple in jokes relating to the series. But if you don't mind spoilers, then have at it. I wanted to write a sweet story for the end of a difficult year.
Below please find a complete listing (also available on my blog site I Make Up Worlds) of all currently known Spiritwalker Universe fiction.
(I believe there are a couple of fanfic stories on AO3 but legally I have to stay away from that so you’d have to search on your own).
The Spiritwalker Trilogy (the novels):
Short Fiction (set in the Spiritwalker Universe)
Bloom is a novelette set in the Spiritwalker universe about eight years before COLD MAGIC. While a few familiar characters appear, it is actually about an entirely different character’s journey through grief. A quiet story that I really love, it is available in THE BOOK OF MAGIC, edited by Gardner Dozois.
A Compendium of Architecture and the Science of Building is a short story set about a year after Bloom and takes place at Four Moons House. The elderly uncle of the mansa who has come home to retire after many years working abroad as architect, but things don’t work out quite as he expects. It appears (free!) in Lightspeed Magazine (includes an audio version).
The Beatriceid is Bee’s retelling in verse of the story of Dido and Aeneas, obviously the more correct version. Set during Cat and Bee’s school days at the Academy, the events take place before COLD MAGIC and as such can be read at any moment, especially if you enjoy the AENEID or like to take the piss out of the Romans, as I do. My apologies because at the moment there is no version of it online. It was originally published by Book Smugglers Publishing. As soon as there is an online version I’ll link here.
To Be A Man (A Roderic Barr Adventure) takes place at the same time as the final chapter of COLD MAGIC. This story has no redeeming social value whatsoever. You’ve been warned. You can read it on this website for free. An audio version is available for purchase (a mere $0.99) at Serial Box.
A print version appears in the collection THE VERY BEST OF KATE ELLIOTT (Tachyon Publications).
Cold Fire Bonus Chapter 31.5 (to be read after chapter 31 of Cold Fire, natch). XXX rated. No, really. I wrote it because N.K. Jemisin made me. If you, dear Reader, do not care for smut (and no reason anyone should), then it is perfectly fine to skip this chapter; the trilogy works fine without it. If you do like smut, here you go.
The Courtship is a coda novelette, to be read after the end of Cold Steel. It wraps up a couple of loose ends (but not all of them). It is available on this website HERE (contains adult situations and nudity).
The Secret Journal of Beatrice Hassi Barahal (with 28 fabulous black and white illustrations by Hugo Award winning artist Julie Dillon) is available at Gumroad as a pdf for $3.50. Discover Bee’s side of the story, with pictures from her sketchbook!
“I Am A Handsome Man,” Said Apollo Crow takes place after the Spiritwalker Trilogy and features an unusual denizen of the spirit world. It is available in THE BOOK OF SWORDS, edited by Gardner Dozois.
A Lesson To You Young Ones is a very short story featuring Maester Godwik, one of my favorite lawyer dinosaurs, and the lesson he teaches a classroom full of young pupils. It is available on this website.
When I Grow Up might best be described as the coda to the coda. Now available at The Book Smugglers.
In addition, I have four partially written but as yet unfinished Spiritwalker stories I hope to complete,* after which I would like to put together an illustrated Spiritwalker short fiction edition (with a black and white illustration for each story and a different artist for each story). In truth, I had hoped to create and complete that project for the 10th Anniversary of the publication of COLD MAGIC but life intervened and I didn’t have the energy, so a Spiritwalker collection remains a future goal.
1) How Tara, Daniel, Leon, and Helene meet. 2) Kemal’s back story. 3) That business with the airship at the beginning of Cold Magic. 4) How Doctor Asante came to live in the household. A possible 5) would be a story set in Lutetia under seige by Camjiata, with no recurring characters from the trilogy. Its opening chapter can be found here at the Decameron Project.