The Three Quests of the Wizard Sarnod--for Capclave

This is now available for pre-order for those attending Capclave this year, where Ann and I will be guests of honor along with Connie Willis. Ignore the "sold out" notice. But you can only order, for now, if attending the convention. The sales of the book benefit the organization that funds and runs the con.John Coulthart is doing the cover and interior design. I've contributed an intro and Ann has done a tell-all afterword that compares me to Grod, which as this description from the book might indicate is no compliment!

Grod Lump was round and fleshy, hairy and squat, a misshapen node atop two monstrous legs. He had four brawny arms and a face like a burlesque of a boar. The eyes scattered across his body sometimes made his foes mistake him for Chun the Unavoidable or Chen the Inexplicable. His skin had the texture of battle armor. He kept his brain behind the iron bowl of his prodigious stomach. The huge hole in the top of his head, from which issued a kind of simmering flame and the constant smell of hot coals, was what Grod used to cook his master’s salamanders.

This version reinstates the character of Grod and expands (no pun intended) the role of Bloat Toad. If that is too cryptic for ya, here's more info:

The Wizard Sarnod has lived in isolation on an island in the middle of a lake for centuries. But one day, the Nose of Memory arrives to destroy his calm by dredging up the past, and he must send three of his familiars to the subterranean Underhinds on a quest to find two people, long banished: his brother and a former lover. In the Underhinds, they will encounter living dirigibles, fire dragons, the Bloat Toad, unimaginable perils, and long-buried secrets . . . Based on Jack Vance’s Dying Earth series, The Three Quests of the Wizard Sarnod is a longer and very different version of a story published in the Dozois-Martin edited Songs from the Dying Earth.