Writer Fridays: It's a Sword and Soul Celebration!

I need to tell you about a little sub-genre named Sword and Soul. Like me, it was born in the seventies and, like me, it had a really great father. Sword and Soul was nurtured into being by the great Charles R. Saunders when he penned his Imaro books. You see, while the country had made great strides towards equality, fantasy novels and their characters were still in a mostly Euro-centric world. Mr. Saunders created a black character to be a hero in a black country (something still missing from a lot of fantasy today).

Fast forward a little bit and many other writers put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, to create new, fantastic imaginings of Africa and African characters. One of the greatest is Milton Davis who wrote the Meiji series. Together with Mr. Saunders, they created a new anthology of Sword and Soul short stories called Griots.

It contains fourteen stories, including two by Mr. Saunders and Mr. Davis. The plans were made for a second one, this time concentrating on tales featuring female protagonists. It will be titled Griots II: Sisters of the Spear. The call was put out earlier this year for submissions. I answered it.

And made it in!

After much toil, and gnashing of teeth, I made my first fiction sale! It is such an honor to be included in an anthology with masters of the craft. The book with be in both print and electronic versions. So look for it early next year. I have the story titled, "Marked."