Teasers & fragments

Introducing Morgane Quiniou

By Alex Brightsmith December 14, 2013 Leave a comment

It was a beautiful plan, and from the moment I saw it I’d been looking forward to working with the officer who drafted it – well, how was I to know? That was how it was presented. Our plan. Our people. And it was a beautiful plan. When the day came I arrived early and […]

Blake, on choosing dragons

By Alex Brightsmith December 14, 2013 Leave a comment

Pass the bottle, Davie, and let’s not talk about the girl. It’s been too long since we had a night for this, a night to not quite talk shop, a night for dragons. Isn’t that what you signed up for, Davie? Isn’t it what we all signed up for, slaying dragons? Only I think perhaps […]

References – a Find the Lady teaser

Thierry Dupois? He’s a good man, though he might try to persuade you otherwise. He’ll tell you that he just drives trucks. Don’t let him tell you that. He’ll fall rather easily into what he calls his obedient muscle role – and you may find it convenient to allow that, now and then, because he […]

VisDare / Introducing Hal

By Alex Brightsmith December 1, 2013 Leave a comment

Hal Marchant looked at the moon, hanging bone white in a washed-out dawn sky the colour of his mentor’s eyes, and knew two things. He must be dangerously overtired to be distracting himself with unhelpful comparisons. And he was late. He curled deeper into the inadequate cover of the bare winter bushes, surveying the fields […]

VisDare: introducing Salventi

By Alex Brightsmith November 14, 2013 Leave a comment

I knew that she would have one of the private chambers above the hall. As I paused, uncertainly, a girl came giggling through one of the doorways, a shallow bowl cradled expertly in the crook of her arm, and as she glided past me I saw an oily sheen of colour on the water’s surface […]

VisDare: Another glimpse of Khyre

By Alex Brightsmith November 7, 2013 4 Comments

When I surfaced in the muddy shallows, at the feet of a startled waterman, I knew that I had been right to go first to the priests, though I had gone for the wrong reason. I had gone because I could not conceal their mark much longer, and to reject that mark is the sure […]

VisDare: Memory

By Alex Brightsmith October 23, 2013 7 Comments

It makes me shudder, that picture. I suppose that sounds odd, when I keep it in my office. Perhaps I keep it here because it was taken on a perfect day, a day I’d been allowed to tie my hair back any old how, and spend time with my father. Yes, he loved his butterflies. […]

Find the Lady

By Alex Brightsmith October 20, 2013 Leave a comment

Falschspieler, Gerard van Honthorst Photo source I feel it’s time, I can say it: Find the Lady is coming soon. And what is Find the Lady? Haven’t you been listening at all? No, humour me. Find the Lady is the second Kathryn Blake novel. And the first would be? The first was Viennese Waltz, a […]

Introducing Jekka Storven

By Alex Brightsmith July 27, 2013 2 Comments

Some little time ago I was working on a story that involved one Salventi Anguila, also known as Venya Storven. I seem to have written these notes by way of putting my thoughts in order, though it may be that I always intended them as a blog. Whyever I wrote them, I have found them […]

Odd moments of genesis

By Alex Brightsmith June 9, 2013 2 Comments

You’re all very disciplined out there. Very structured. Very ordered. I am, as ever, impressed and a little bewildered. The concept of actually sitting down and writing something in more or less the right order fascinates me, and maybe I should try it one day, but I’ve never managed to write a full outline until […]

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