The Dragon's Path

permission to take the things I love best and use them. So, for instance, I have a real fascination with medieval banking. There’s a book called
Medici Money
by Tim Parks I’ve read a half dozen times. So I grabbed that. And I thought about Dorothy Dunnett’s House of Niccolo books and George’s Ice and Fire books and all the adventure stories I grew up with. By talking about the things that unify the genre, I sort of loosened up about celebrating them. I thought about what it felt like to read David Eddings when I was fourteen, and get back to the things that would do that for me at forty. If that makes sense.
    You were talking before about writing novels as being different than short fiction. You’ve written a lot of short stories in your career. How do they differ from the longer work?
Well, the short stories tend to be weirder than the books. They’re very different forms. There are stories that just pop in thirty pages that would lay there like yesterday’s fish at three hundred. I’d say I probably do more experimental, difficult-to-categorize short stories and then use the books to apply what I learned there.
    You have a long history, I understand, of working in writers’ workshops. You attended Clarion West in 1998. You are a frequent participant at the Rio Hondo workshop in Taos. You were in a critique group in New Mexico for almost a decade. How much do you think that kind of experience helps writers?
For as much time as I’ve put in them and as much benefit as I’ve gotten from them, I’m actually still a little leery about them. If you get a good one, it’s invaluable. I have no doubt at all that Icame out of Clarion West and Rio Hondo and the local crit group better than when I went in. But there’s the ones you didn’t talk about too. I took a bunch of creative writing classes in college that I don’t think did much. I was in a couple groups before that weren’t much use, and were really probably counterproductive. A workshop depends on the people in it. Good people are great. Lousy people are perhaps less great, right?

introducing
     
    If you enjoyed
THE DRAGON’S PATH,
look out for
    THE KING’S BLOOD
    Book Two of The Dagger and the Coin
    by Daniel Abraham
    CAPTAIN MARCUS WESTER
    Sometime, centuries before, someone had built a low wall along the top of the rise. In the moonlight, the scattered rocks reminded Marcus of knucklebones. He knelt, one hand on the dew-slick grass. In the cove below him, three ships rested at anchor. Shallow-bottomed with paired masts. Faster and more maneuverable than the round-bellied trade ships that they hunted. One showed a mark on the side where she’d been struck not too many weeks before, the new timber of the patch bright and unweathered.
    On the sand, a cookfire still burned, its orange glow the only warmth in the early autumn night. From where they stood, Marcus counted a dozen structures—more than tents, less than huts—scattered just above the tide line. A well-established camp, then. That was good. A half dozen stretched-leather boats rested near the water.
    Yardem Hane grunted softly and pointed a wide hand to the east. A tree a hundred feet or so from the water towered up toward the sky. A glimmer, moonlight on metal, less than a third of the way to its tip showed where the sentry perched. Marcus pointedout at the ships. High in the rigging of the one nearest the shore, another dark figure.
    Yardem held up two fingers, wide brows rising in question.
Two watchers?
    Marcus shook his head, holding up a third finger.
One more.
    The pair sat still in the shadows made darker by the spray of fallen stone. The moon shifted slowly in its arc. The movement was subtle. A single branch on the distant tree that moved in the breeze more slowly. Marcus pointed. Yardem flicked an ear silently; he wore no earrings when they were scouting. Marcus looked over the cove one last time, cataloging it as best he could. They faded back down the rise, into the shadows. They walked north, and then west. They didn’t speak until they’d traveled twice as far as their low voices would carry.
    “How many do you make out?” Marcus asked.
    Yardem spat thoughtfully.
    “Not more than seventy, sir,” he said.
    “That’s my count too.”
    The path was hardly more than a deer trail. Thin spaces in the trees. It wouldn’t be many weeks before the freshly dried leaves of autumn fell, but tonight their steps were muffled by well-rotted litter and a summer’s soft