Story sold to Myriad Lands

Excellent news! My story "Untouched by Fire" has sold to the Myriad Lands anthology to be published this summer by Guardbridge Books. I first wrote this story...quite a while ago. Even ten years, I believe. I was in the middle of getting ready to write a novel set in a caste-based society strongly influenced by the history and peoples of India (working hard to immerse myself in a variety of aspects of the cultural dynamics there, so I didn't come across as some rampaging pillager). So, as I've often done when getting ready to dive into a new world and a new novel, I decided to write a short story set there. The full world was still fairly vague in my mind, but the story helped bring it to light. In fact, the character I created for the story--Jaritta, whose scar from a fire has caused her to be outcast--became such a strong character in my mind that she ended up being one of the central characters of the novel, which is set some fifteen years after this story. The story had a variety of close-but-not-quite rejections from pro markets over the years, but never could seem to find a home even as I continued to tweak and strengthen this or that part of it (much like the novel got a number of close-but-not-quite reactions from agents over that same time...), so I'm very thrilled to finally have some aspect* of the land of Eghsal see the light of day.

*Technically, in my mind anyway, this story of mine written even a few months earlier--"The Ship of Silk on the Calmest Sea"--was always meant to be a sort of folk tale told by the people of Eghsal. So in that sense a bit of the cultural heritage of the land has been published before...but its connection to the rest was never made explicit.

Comments

Emily McCosh said…
Hi Daniel, I'm also going to be in the Myriad Lands anthology! I was looking around the internet to see if anyone shared their success. So I know this is a bit late considering your post was back in February :) but congrats on the acceptance!
Emily
Daniel Ausema said…
Thanks, Emily--just saw this post now. The anthology looks great. Congrats on your story!