At last, we’ve escaped summer, and what a brutal summer it was here in Tulsa! Fortunately, September as a whole was nowhere near as brutal as the weather.

First off, it turns out I was not done with all the rewrites, revisions, and additions for my client, as I’d believed back when I wrote the update for August. He decided he needed a few more chapters to tie off one plot thread more satisfyingly and asked me to tackle one of them, which I only finished yesterday. Now we’re done with that phase of the project, but as you can imagine, it didn’t leave a ton of time for my own writing this month.

Nevertheless, I did find some time for myself. I’d intended to try and kickstart the second scene of “Love Abides”, but a call for submissions to the monthly newsletter of Swords Against… Magazine fired my imagination. They want sword & sorcery flash fiction (max word count of 500), and everything I’d heard about them before emphasized the anti-authoritarian themes of the subgenre, so my mind leapt to a character concept I’ve been entertaining: a militant abolitionist who’s turned to piracy to combat the slave trade.

Enter Mathelin de la Lune, the so-called Mad Moon. Once an avowed brother in the Order of Watchers, he abandoned them in frustration with their refusal to wage a holy war aimed at the final abolition of slavery in Tyria. Now, he wages his own private holy war on Tyrian slavers, carnomancers, and merchants who build their wealth on the backs of slave labor. De la Lune has built himself quite the fearsome reputation, which I intend to show off in a piece tentatively entitled “By the Light of the Mad Moon.”

This flash fic will be told from the POV of Ifni ush Takhnarit, the bedslave of a necromancer and slaver targeted by de la Lune. “Dudes in Distress” are so rare compared to damsels, I thought it might be an interesting change of pace. In later stories, Mathelin and Ifni will form a romantic dynamic duo; there’s far too little sword & sorcery out there you can call…Achillean, I guess? Might as well change that!

The downside of my active imagination is “By the Light of the Mad Moon” already stands at about 230 words even though it doesn’t seem halfway through–or even close to halfway through–to me, which doesn’t bode well for falling within the limits for Swords Against…

For now, I’m probably going to set it aside and turn my focus towards 1) a new horror drabble for Story Street’s Halloween contest, and 2) the second scene of “Love Abides”. What became “The Goatskin Codex” kind of just fell into my lap, so hammering out a new horror drabble that’s actually horrifying may be tricky, but I’ve still got a week before their deadline and alternative markets. As for “Love Abides”, the fact it isn’t finished and I haven’t had the chance to work on it since June gnaws at me to no end. There’s nothing I want to accomplish this year more than tying on bow on that story!

Hopefully, as we get into the next phase of the project for my client (several rounds of light dev editing, copy editing, and proofreading) I’ll have the creative energy to carry it across the finish line.

Red Country was my main read this month. In fact, I only just finished it off over last weekend. Of the three First Law standalone novels, this one is easily my second favorite, just a hair behind Best Served Cold. Excellent action, phenomenal character work, and the western-inspired setting was refreshing. I wish more fantasy novels would borrow from it!

Taking a break from Joe Abercrombie, I’ve returned to Elric of Melnibone with the third book in my Stormbringer omnibus, The Bane of the Black Sword. The stories collected within are part of the original run of Elric novellas, so they feel more dynamic and classically sword & sorcery than some of the later material. I was very glad to see Theleb K’aarna get his just desserts in “The Stealer of Souls”, though it feels like he got off easy compared to a few other characters in the same story. On to “Kings in Darkness”!

One thing I’ve been following very closely this month is New Edge Sword & Sorcery‘s BackerKit for four slick sword & sorcery novellas, including a couple by authors you probably know well if you follow modern S&S. I’m especially excited about Fields of Hell; Orhan Timur is one of my favorite characters to come out of this new wave. The bonus zine of Luana Saitta’s Zeynep and Kawtar stories also caught my eye. It seemed like the crowdfund might fall a little short of that stretch goal, but there’s been a rush of backers in the final hours, and they blew right past the threshold.

Aside from the novellas and novelette-length zine, they’ve also got some great add-ons. Discounted issues of New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, some of their past novellas (including the new Jirel of Joiry one by Molly Tanzer), and postcards of the covers. Personally, I decided to spring for physical editions of the novellas and tacked on digital editions of New Edge. Great for market research and entertaining reads besides.

If any of this has caught your attention, go check them out on BackerKit. There are only about 18 hours left on the crowdfund!

All in all, I’d say September turned out to be a pretty good month for me. Almost suspiciously so. Hopefully the good vibes hold and carry on into October. I’ll see you all then with another monthly update!