For those wondering where Raffalon fits into the Archonate universe:  in my first Archonate novel, Fools Errant, the protagonist Filidor carried with him on his wanderings a book entitled The Edifications and Discourses of Liw Osfeo.  The place names and settings of the Raffalon tales are the same as those of the Osfeo book.  As to whether or how those locations relate to Old Earth in its penultimate age, you’d have to ask that book’s author.

I will write more Raffalon stories as time goes by.  When I have enough of them, and the first-use rights have all been accounted for, I’ll put them into one volume and self-publish them as an ebook and a POD paperback.

There aren’t enough Osfeo tales to justify their own collection, so they will be included in a round-up of non-Archonate sf stories that I plan to put out in e- and POD-formats down the road.

Another Raffalon tale, “The Inn of the Seven Blessings,” will appear in the cross-genre anthology, Rogues, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, and to be published by Bantam Spectra next year.

To those of you who have goals you want to fulfill someday, don’t let that day wait too long.  Some doors close, never to reopen.

To those of you who have never read Vance, I envy you the discovery of one of the great, singular voices in literature.  Note that I’m not saying “in science fiction or fantasy” — but the whole great megillah of the human experience laid down in letters over the centuries by the best minds the species has produced.

He was that good.  And by his work he will be remembered, long after the rest of us are wandering among the shades.

They’re now available from Amazon and directly from CreateSpace’s estore.  Through the wizardry of my excellent webmaster, Bradley W. Schenck, if you click on the bookstore tab above and select “paperbacks,” the listed titles will appear.  If you then click “add to cart,” you’ll be taken directly to CreateSpace’s estore (they pay me a higher royalty than does Amazon).

Most amazing to me, though, is that recent changes in the book distribution industry mean that you could also walk into any brick-and-mortar bookstore in North America or Europe, order the titles, and they’ll come in just like any other published book.  Plus your bookseller will make a little.

I like booksellers.  Anything that keeps them in business is all right with me.

A fair summary of Filidor Vesh, at least at the start of the novel.  Here’s the first chapter.

The first titles out will be the short story collections 9 Tales of Henghis Hapthorn and The Meaning of Luff and Other Stories, which have been selling pretty well as ebooks.  They should be through the production process before the end of May.

Doing the paperbacks has slowed down bringing out the Guth Bandar story collection and one of my trunk books.  But I’ll probably get to that after I’ve relocated to Athens at the end of the month.

Those of us who do not sit high enough up the ladder in this business of fiction writing don’t get to meet all that many of our readers.  We don’t merit book tours or collect invitations to be Guest of Honor at a big con.  So when you care enough to send an email or to post a review somewhere, it helps.

As I usually respond to readers who email me:  I appreciate the encouragement.

It helps keep me productive, too.  I’ve sent another Raffalon story off to F&SF, and I’m working on another involving Erm Kaslo, the confidential op who first appeared in “And Then Some” in a recent Asimov’s.  I think Kaslo is going to be the first of my characters who actually goes through the universe’s wrenching transition from rationality to sympathetic association — or to use the vulgar term, magic.

My intent, as with the Guth Bandar stories that eventually became The Commons, is to write a Raffalon and a Kaslo novel in episodes, then string the elements together to make two ebooks.

The other members are Esther Sherman, Neil Williamson, Pauline Morgan, and Ros Jackson.

I’ll have lots of reading between now and the end of August.

Underland Press, the publisher of the Luff Imbry novel, The Other, has been bought by another house, Skyhorse Press.  They’ve asked if I want to do a sequel, or any other books I might have in mind.  Once I get settled in Athens, I’m going to write up a proposal for a sequel to The Other and we’ll see what happens.

I’ve got a major project in prospect, but I can’t announce anything until I see what level of interest it may stir in a major publisher that I’ve approached.  I can say that it ought to be big news within the community of Jack Vance fans.

In the meantime, I’ve been writing another novelette featuring the archetypal thief Raffalon, who was the protagonist of “Wearaway and Flambeau,” a story that ran in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction last year.

Sales of my self-published ebooks haven’t pushed me into betsellerdom (yet), but it’s gratifying to see people take them up in an age when reprints are largely disdained by the industry.  To those of you who have bought copies, I’d appreciate it if you could pester your friends and associates until they do the same.