Launching new character: Baldemar
Back in November, I was invited to submit to Gardner Dozois's upcoming theme antho, The Book of Swords. So I wrote up a 10,000-word story about a wizard's henchman named Baldemar, who is sent out on a job that goes wrong. But it bounced: publishable but not good enough for a prestige anthology, Gardner said. So I rewrote it, and now it has sold.
I've since written an origin story for Baldemar and submitted it to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, my favorite market. If it sells and if the readers like the character -- a hardboiled operative in an archetypal fantasy world -- I'll write more of them. That's what I've been doing with a character called Raffalon the thief, originally conceived for the Dozois/Martin-edited antho, Rogues.
Ultimately, I'll gather all the Raffalon stories into a collection and self-publish them in ebook and POD paperback. I've done that with three of my other continuing characters, Henghis Hapthorn, Guth Bandar, and Luff Imbry -- and it seems to be a workable strategy. If Baldemar catches enough interest, I'll do the same with him.
I've since written an origin story for Baldemar and submitted it to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, my favorite market. If it sells and if the readers like the character -- a hardboiled operative in an archetypal fantasy world -- I'll write more of them. That's what I've been doing with a character called Raffalon the thief, originally conceived for the Dozois/Martin-edited antho, Rogues.
Ultimately, I'll gather all the Raffalon stories into a collection and self-publish them in ebook and POD paperback. I've done that with three of my other continuing characters, Henghis Hapthorn, Guth Bandar, and Luff Imbry -- and it seems to be a workable strategy. If Baldemar catches enough interest, I'll do the same with him.
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I submitted a Baldemar story -- "The Sword of Destiny" is the title -- to the antho. It covers a period in his life where he ceases to be a henchman to the wizard Thelerion the Exemplary. The one I've submitted to F&SF is "Ten Half-Pennies" and starts off with Baldemar as a ten-year old and tells how he came to be in the wizard's employ.F&SF has one more Raffalon story in inventory, a 14,000-word novelette called "Genius." It will probably run before the end of the year and that will begin a six-month exclusivity period during which the story can't appear anywhere else.
Once the six months are up, I plan to put all the Raffalon stories together in a collection and self-publish it as a $4.99 ebook and a $12.99 POD paperback. I will probably write a new Raff to include in the collection as an encouragement to readers to buy it.
Did you submit something different for the Dozois anthology?