Lace and Blade 2 Now Available
Feb. 21st, 2009 02:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
przedBoth work and home have been so crazy busy that I actually managed not to post when the anthology my first pro story can be found in finally became available. So a week late, here's the announcement.
An excerpt from my story, The Baroness' Ball:
Unlike my sisters, I was not made for garden parties or fêtes, preferring the cool comfort of my father's library or the exhilaration of a stolen afternoon spent on horseback in the woods of our estate. In such a room as this, with an atmosphere as airless and stifling as the people within it, all I could think of was the insistence of my mother that I find a husband I did not want, and the resolve of my aunt to find a candidate that would suit the family, if not me. I looked across the room and saw a gaunt young noble that my aunt had declared "an unpleasant young man from a family of no great reputation." An unease prickled my skin as I wondered if he was the manner of man I was destined to marry, and I cast about for an illness I could feign to convince my father, the Baron Arkadijs Rozkalni, and my aunt, the widowed Countess Ilze Berzins, to leave the ball early.
And then two men strode into the stuffy ballroom, and it was as if a cool, autumn breeze had caressed my face and stirred my blood.
They were clearly not nobility, not fashionable young men searching for wives to please their families. There was their age for a start. Though they were by no means infirm, they were past the age at which young nobles seek wives, perhaps as old as thirty. Then there were the circumstances of their attire.
The first man was handsome. His hair was, against the current mode, close-cropped and jet black, encumbered by neither powder nor wig. His eyes were framed by the longest lashes I'd seen on any person, man or woman. His expression had a haughty turn, but I fancied I could see a tendency to wry humor in the corner of his mouth. His frame was tall and muscular, his clothes well-tailored, if not entirely in fashion, and his sword, a simple rapier in the Frankish style, was clearly meant more for fighting than decoration.
The second man was breathtaking. More in keeping with current men's styles, he had longer hair, but such hair as I had never seen on any person. It ran riot with chestnut curls and was kept in the barest control by a thin emerald ribbon. His eyes were almond-shaped and feline, his mouth full. A dueling scar ran down one cheek, a mark that heightened his beauty rather than marred it. The sword at his side was even more common than his companion's, and clearly forged by a local smith rather than a more stylish foreign weapons master. Its scabbard was battered, its hilt wound in simple leather rather than silver wire. His clothes, however, were spectacular. Not the sort of attire this assembly of social climbers in imported silks would appreciate, but stunning, all lace and leather and linen, thrown together in a way that suggested the capital's bohemian quarter rather than the drawing room.
Lace and Blade 2 is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Amazon.ca and all the other usual flavours of Amazon.
The anthology has gotten several very nice reviews from Publishers Weekly and SFRevu, and all the stories I've read in it so far (about half) have been stunningly good.
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From the publisher's blurb... In the spirit of classic period swashbucklers, Zorro, the Scarlet Pimpernel, and D'Artagnan, brimming with romantic courtly intrigue and dangerous liaisons, with cloak and dagger and perfumed handkerchiefs, the language of the fan and stolen glances, with the manners of Jane Austen and the sparkling rapier wit of Oscar Wilde, here are nine fantastic stories of adventure, derring-do, love, and glamorous yet subtle magic. |
An excerpt from my story, The Baroness' Ball:
Unlike my sisters, I was not made for garden parties or fêtes, preferring the cool comfort of my father's library or the exhilaration of a stolen afternoon spent on horseback in the woods of our estate. In such a room as this, with an atmosphere as airless and stifling as the people within it, all I could think of was the insistence of my mother that I find a husband I did not want, and the resolve of my aunt to find a candidate that would suit the family, if not me. I looked across the room and saw a gaunt young noble that my aunt had declared "an unpleasant young man from a family of no great reputation." An unease prickled my skin as I wondered if he was the manner of man I was destined to marry, and I cast about for an illness I could feign to convince my father, the Baron Arkadijs Rozkalni, and my aunt, the widowed Countess Ilze Berzins, to leave the ball early.
And then two men strode into the stuffy ballroom, and it was as if a cool, autumn breeze had caressed my face and stirred my blood.
They were clearly not nobility, not fashionable young men searching for wives to please their families. There was their age for a start. Though they were by no means infirm, they were past the age at which young nobles seek wives, perhaps as old as thirty. Then there were the circumstances of their attire.
The first man was handsome. His hair was, against the current mode, close-cropped and jet black, encumbered by neither powder nor wig. His eyes were framed by the longest lashes I'd seen on any person, man or woman. His expression had a haughty turn, but I fancied I could see a tendency to wry humor in the corner of his mouth. His frame was tall and muscular, his clothes well-tailored, if not entirely in fashion, and his sword, a simple rapier in the Frankish style, was clearly meant more for fighting than decoration.
The second man was breathtaking. More in keeping with current men's styles, he had longer hair, but such hair as I had never seen on any person. It ran riot with chestnut curls and was kept in the barest control by a thin emerald ribbon. His eyes were almond-shaped and feline, his mouth full. A dueling scar ran down one cheek, a mark that heightened his beauty rather than marred it. The sword at his side was even more common than his companion's, and clearly forged by a local smith rather than a more stylish foreign weapons master. Its scabbard was battered, its hilt wound in simple leather rather than silver wire. His clothes, however, were spectacular. Not the sort of attire this assembly of social climbers in imported silks would appreciate, but stunning, all lace and leather and linen, thrown together in a way that suggested the capital's bohemian quarter rather than the drawing room.
Lace and Blade 2 is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Amazon.ca and all the other usual flavours of Amazon.
The anthology has gotten several very nice reviews from Publishers Weekly and SFRevu, and all the stories I've read in it so far (about half) have been stunningly good.
