Embarrassing Relations

At the risk of putting myself out of the running for the Laziest Blogger Ever Award, I’m interrupting another long silence to let you know that a story I have co-written with Bernie Mojzes is now available in a collection called A Bard in Hand, edited by Michael A. Ventrella.

Our story, ‘Embarrassing Relations’, along with all the others in A Bard in Hand, takes place in Fortannis, the setting of Michael Ventrella’s novels. For the first Fortannis collection, A Bard’s Eye View, Bernie wrote a great story called ‘Bad Debts’ featuring Maris Goselin, a woman of considerable talent and charms. When Bernie decided to continue Maris’ adventures in the second collection, he thought it would be fun to team her up with Brian, a slightly mad and completely devoted cleric. I created Brian as a role playing game character, many moons ago, when Bernie and I were part of a weekly pizza and polyhedral dice fest (Ah, to hear DM Kim say “When we last left our fearful adventurers . . .”). Bernie remembered Brian, contacted me through the modern magic of social media, and before they could protest, Maris and Brian were thrown together in a partnership made in interdimensional space. 

The Official Blurb for Embarrassing Relations: After defending Ashbury from an unspeakable horror from beyond time and space, Maris Goselin finds herself with a new assignment: help the Duke avoid spending quality time with a gibbering out-of-town relative. It seems easy, but Maris soon realizes that although the relative may be insane, insanity is relative, and sometimes making a living has life-threatening consequences.

A Bard in Hand also includes stories by noted authors Davey Beauchamp, Jon Cory, Roy C. Booth and Brian Woods, Tera Fulbright, Jesse Grabowski, Henry Hart, Laurel Anne Hill, Mark Mensch, and Mike Strauss. You can read more about these stories on Michael’s blog here.

A Bard in Hand is available at these links as a Paperback or an E-Book.