Welcome to Ethshar!

I assume that if you've found this page you probably already know something about Ethshar, but just in case you don't: ''Ethshar'' is the name of an imaginary land that's the setting for an open-ended series of fantasy stories by Lawrence Watt-Evans.

Which is to say, me.

The ethshar.com domain is one portion of the Misenchanted Page, my somewhat tangled and over-ambitious personal and business website. Like many websites, it's perpetually under construction and mostly out of date; I have grandiose plans, but not the time to carry them out.

I do have An Introduction to Ethshar, which gives a quick overview of the setting, and pages about all the Ethshar novels, both published and planned. (They may not be entirely up to date, though...)

Cosmos paperbacks
Tor paperbacks
Wildside trade paperbacks

News: New paperbacks!

(Maybe another serial.)

The first two Ethshar novels, The Misenchanted Sword and With A Single Spell, have now been reissued in new paperback editions from Cosmos Books. (Cosmos is a mass-market imprint for Wildside Press.) The third, The Unwilling Warlord, will be out in November.

The tenth novel in the series, and the second one to be written as a reader-supported online serial, The Vondish Ambassador, is now available in a limited first-edition trade paperback. Most of the print-run has been distributed, and the remaining copies are offered on my Books for Sale page. Every copy comes with a map of the Empire of Vond inserted. I hope to see a mass-market edition from Cosmos in 2009; whether it will include the map remains to be seen.

The Spriggan Mirror is now available as a trade paperback, as a hardcover, and in a mass-market-sized paperback from Cosmos Books. This is the ninth Ethshar novel, and was the first to be written as a reader-supported online serial.

I believe Night of Madness and Ithanalin's Restoration, the seventh and eighth novels in the Ethshar series, are still available in the Tor paperback editions. Cover art for both is by Daniel Horne.

I plan to do a third serial, but when, and which story, is not yet 100% definite. I have higher-priority (i.e., better-paying) projects that I need to finish up before I can start it, but I do want to do another.

What's What with Ethshar Today:

The first six Ethshar novels, all long out of print in their original Del Rey paperback editions, are available again, some of them in multiple editions.

Very few brick-and-mortar bookstores stocked the trade paperbacks, since they're small-press reissues, but most of the online booksellers carry them, and they can be special-ordered through Ingram's.

E-book editions of several Ethshar novels are available through Fictionwise.

The trade paperback editions of the first six novels include bonus short stories; the mass market editions do not, and the later novels do not, only the first six.

Yes, there have been eight short stories so far, and only six novels include reprints. Chapbooks of the other two stories, "Sirinita's Dragon" and "The God in Red," were sent to donors who supported the online serials of The Spriggan Mirror and The Vondish Ambassador, respectively. I've put "Sirinita's Dragon" online, and plan to do the same with "The God in Red" when the Christmas season rolls around.

The chapbooks included illustrations by Kiri Evans; the online versions do not have these.

If and when I write a third serial I expect to provide some sort of exclusive extra like these again, but I have no idea yet as to its exact nature. I don't have any more short stories lying around at the moment, but I could write one...

I'm also considering the possibility of someday doing either a short-story collection, or a sort of catch-all that would include all the short stories and a lot of background material about Ethshar -- maps, histories, etc. So far there aren't enough shorts to fill an entire book, and I haven't had time or energy to put together anything else.