The Unfinished, Unwritten, and Unlikely

Here's where you can find information about Ethshar stories I haven't written yet.

The stories listed below have not yet been written, and aren't sold. Some of them have been started, but how far they've gotten varies immensely; some are little more than a title and concept, while others are outlined in detail and have the opening written. These don't yet have separate pages; instead, there's a brief description for each below. You can click on any title to jump down to that bit.

I can't say with any certainty that they'll all be novels; some may turn out to be novelets or novellas. I don't think any listed here will be short stories, but I'm working on at least one short story/novelet.

Incidentally, it's possible that one or two of these may tell you more than you want to know about previous books in the series, since some of them are direct sequels to previous volumes.

At the end of the list are a few quick comments about other possibilities, and about some titles that used to be on this list but no longer are.

Long ago I had a form that let readers vote on which one they most wanted me to write next, but after I had written the top few vote-getters that seemed to be getting pointless, and it was attracting spammers, so I removed it. I still list some of the final vote totals below.

And I list some ideas that weren't on the form. At least one of them really should have been, I just didn't remember it when I was setting the form up; most of them, though, I only came up with later.

Anyway, you can see what I was planning, even if most of these never happen. Enjoy!

Unpublished Ethshar Novels:

Written, but not yet in bookstores:

• No novels, but there's a story called "The Harvest" that's only appeared on my Patreon.

Ethshar Stories in Progress:

Currently being serialized on the web:

• None at present, and no more are planned.

Currently being actively written:

• Well, I'm working on Dancing with Wizards (not the final title), but saying "actively" might be misleading; it's going very slowly.

Unwritten Ethshar Novels:

Sorted by total votes received as of January 31, 2005, when the poll was discontinued:

• At the Sign of the Crimson Wolf:

  As explained in The Misenchanted Sword, Valder the Innkeeper no longer ages. To hide this fact, he owns two inns: The Inn At the Bridge, a day's journey north of Ethshar of the Spices, and the Crimson Wolf, in the Passes in Sardiron. Every so often he switches which one he runs himself, then later returns to the other claiming to be his own son. In 5230 Y.S. or so he's just arrived at the Crimson Wolf when an early blizzard leaves him snowbound with an assortment of troublemakers, several of them magicians.

  I've had this one in the works for a long time, but as it's a relatively low-key story I haven't pursued it very actively. I did work out some more of the plot not so very long ago, though.

  --110 votes

• The Rune of the Implacable Stalker:

  When a wizard mispronounces a name an innocent is accidentally targeted by a vengeance spell, and must find a way to elude and eventually defeat the supernatural creature pursuing him.

  This one was thought up while working on Night of Madness -- I was talking with my kids about the scene I was working on, and options I was considering for what might befall a character, and I mentioned the spell called the Rune of the Implacable Stalker.

  They loved the sound of it, and insisted there should be a novel about it. So there will be. They want it ASAP, but so far most of the voters out there haven't agreed with them.

  --41 votes

• Azraya of Ethshar:

  Remember her from With A Single Spell and Taking Flight? No? Well, I do, and here's her life story.

  She was born to a respectable Ethsharitic family, then orphaned as a girl of ten, and left to fend for herself. She refuses to settle for any of the customary ways to survive, and instead goes adventuring in the Small Kingdoms, but finds she's not the sort of adventurer most people were looking for.

  I've had this one planned since I wrote With A Single Spell, back in '85. I like the title character a lot.

  --29 votes

• A Feather from Her Wing:

  A young girl in the Small Kingdoms idolizes Irith the Flyer (last seen in Taking Flight), and when she finds a feather from Irith's wing she decides to return it to its owner. It's the excuse she needs to flee her abusive father and go looking for her hero.

  She finds the outside world isn't quite what she expected -- and neither is Irith.

  I'm a bit disappointed that this one did so poorly in the voting, as it's one of my own favorites. But then, if I ever do write any of these, I'm not actually bound by the votes.

  --10 votes

• Dumery of the Dragon:

  At the end of The Blood of a Dragon, Dumery and Aldagon planned to go into business selling dragon's blood. In Dumery of the Dragon they do exactly that, and discover that their competition isn't going to make it easy for them...

  This one's been planned since 1991, so I have no idea why I left it off the voting list.

  --not on form

• The Tower of Flame:

  A simple fire-lighting spell goes wrong, resulting in a permanent magical phenomenon -- and various people look for a way to cash in on it.

  --not on form

• Kelder the Small:

  Sometimes wizards throw around magic a little thoughtlessly. This is the story of someone who gets in a wizard's way and is turned into a mouse, and has to make a life for himself as a mouse with human intelligence. (Or near-human; there's some deterioration.)

  --not on form

• Dancing with Wizards (definitely will not be the final title):

  Readers have asked for more information about ritual dancers; well, here's where you'll find it, as one of the lead characters is a ritual dancer who is envious of the much greater wealth and power of wizards. He finds himself involved in a conspiracy to destroy the Wizards' Guild.

  The title will almost certainly change.

  --not on form

• The Almoner:

  The king of Ophera, on the Great Highway in the northern Small Kingdoms, has an employee, an almoner, whose job is to keep poor people from dying in ways that might embarrass the king -- starving to death, for example. This official has wide authority to aid him in carrying out his duty, including the right to enter any residence to make sure no one there is doing something unpatriotic like dying of hunger. Which is all very well until he forces his way into a building and finds himself intruding on a meeting of a secret society.

  --not on form

• Other:

  I included an option to vote for "Other" on the form, and more than a score of people did so, but I haven't found any of their suggestions sufficiently inspiring to be added to my list. Some were clever; a few were ideas I was already planning to use somewhere. Some were not clever at all. Some were strange; a couple of people clearly see Ethshar very, very differently from how I see it.

  The most common suggestions were for more about sorcery, more about Fendel the Great, and more about the Great War. More about sorcery, sure -- it'd be scattered through several of the novels listed above. More about Fendel -- well, he was going to appear again, but I wasn't planning to make him the lead character anywhere; it's just not his style.

  And as for more about the Great War -- naaah. I know a lot more about it than I've put into the stories, but I prefer to keep it in the background.

Ethshar Novels Formerly on the List:

• The Final Calling:

  This was serialized as The Final Calling and published as The Unwelcome Warlock.

  --140 votes

• A Stranger in the Forest:

  This was serialized as Ishta's Companion and published as Relics of War.

  --42 votes

• The Sorcerer's Widow:

  The Sorcerer's Widow was serialized and published.

  --not on form

• Stone Unturned:

  Stone Unturned was published.

  --not on form

  This subsumed several other, older ideas:

  • The Wizard's Garden (--63 votes)
  • The Demon's Master (--not on form)
  • A Slave of Wizardry (--27 votes)
  • Pender the Jeweler (--not on form)
  • The Petrified Prince (created for this project, not a pre-existing story) (--not on form)
• Charming Sharra:

  Charming Sharra has been published.

  Formerly "Sharra the Petty." This was completed, and published by Wildside.

  --not on form

That's all the stories I know of that I have thought out in any detail at the moment, though if I dug through my old files I might find more. I also have a list of things that I want to use in stories sooner or later other than actual plot ideas. Some of them might wind up as subplots, or in short stories, but some might become yet more novels.

Readers have asked whether I'll be telling any stories about theurgists, or demonologists, or witches, or ritual dancers, or scientists...

Maybe. I don't know. I think when I finish with the list above I'll be done with warlocks, but there's still more to be said about wizards and some of the other odd groups cluttering up the World.

We'll see.