Yes, I'm still writing

My current writing project is titled A Thousand Wounds: Part II of The Sword of Bayne. It's the sequel to my novella Bayne's Climb: Part I of The Sword of Bayne.

A Thousand Wounds is another novella, and it's also somewhat experimental. What I'm attempting to do with this novella is to re-create some of the fantasy from the 1960s that was somewhat unusual, almost with a science fiction touch, that focused upon traditional fantasy characters finding themselves in a "duck out of water" situation or world, strange worlds that offer technology, philosophies and peoples different from the traditional fantasy worlds.

This was almost a sub-genre of fantasy for about a decade, but it seems to have died off by the 1970s and I've seen none of it since, though perhaps I've just not read enough. And genres like cyber punk and science fantasy aren't the same thing.

Authors who worked in this unusual fantasy sort-of-sub-genre were Mervyn Peak, Andre Norton, and Jack Vance. The likes of Michael Moorcock even touched on the edges of this material, though his work tended to be more dark than that which I'm striving for.

Another interesting thing, at least to me, is that this Bayne series does tie in with my Kobalos Trilogy, though not directly. It's the same world, only nearly 2,000 years earlier.

Also, I have big, long-range plans for the characters and world within my Kobalos Trilogy, and the Bayne character's history will eventually play a more important role.

How big are my dreams for my fantasy world? I'm not talking about a series of 12 or 13 fantasy novels, like Robert Jordan or similar authors. No, my goals are nothing so small. I'm talking about a series of 12 to 15 trilogies. Of which I've only completed one, The Kobalos Trilogy, and that trilogy actually takes place in the middle of the overall story.

Of course I'm at work on the Bayne trilogy, which is a trilogy of novellas instead of novels. And I'm almost finished with the first draft of the second novella, A Thousand Wounds. Check out the image at right to see the possible cover for A Thousand Wounds.

By the way, the third novella in the Bayne trilogy is titled Under the Mountain.