Barbara Hambly's Further Adventures Of...

I was just tipped off to Barbara Hambly's new experiment in direct fiction sales by a friend and went off to her website to find out all about it.  The short version: people keep asking for more stories in certain of her series that publishers have dropped.  So she's going to write short stories and sell them directly via her website, starting with a pair of previously-published Benjamin January tales (historical mysteries set in 1830s New Orleans) and a brand-new Windrose Chronicles story (Joanna and Antryg).  I downloaded all three, though I skipped a universe-crossing pastiche that was also available, at $5 each, and was quite pleased with my purchases.  Payment was via Paypal and the stories arrived within half an hour or so in PDF format.

"Libre" (16pp) was previously published in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine New Orleans issue in 2007.  It is a short tale of black doctor-pianist January tracking down the daughter of a placée (mixed-race mistress of a wealthy white man) who vanished just when her mother was negotiating a plaçage contract for her.

"There Shall Your Heart Be Also" (9pp) follows January as he treats a young woman who was viciously slashed by a man trying to steal the Bible of a female saloon-keeper.  January must track down both the man and the reason the Bible is so desirable to people not known for their religiosity.

I've enjoyed the Benjamin January series since the very first book, and I was happy to find both tales excellent.  Even though they're reprints, getting them directly saves me a lot of hassle trying to find the original publications.  I do wish Hambly would get her dance history correct, though -- 1835 is twenty years too early for anyone to be dancing schottisches.  I remember a similar howler in one of the early books when she had them playing "Childgrove" (a lovely tune from 1701, but hardly appropriate 130 years later!)  I think both tales would probably work adequately as introduction to the series (now eight or nine books long) for those who aren't already readers.  And I highly recommend the series; it's quality historical fiction with well-constructed mysteries.

"Firemaggot" (25pp) is the Joanna and Antryg story, taking place in the 1980s (when the original novels were set) and featuring the two of them battling demonic nasties in the gardens of a Los Angeles-area estate while handicapped by Antryg's inability to perform magic in our magicless world.  It's a good enough little story with a bit of mystery thrown in, but Antryg's fantasy universe is so much more compelling than our own and his character so much more interesting when he has to struggle with his conscience about the use of his powers that a real-world tale is just not as fulfilling, though Hambly does squeeze some of those elements into the story.  Her depiction of the simultaneously canny and naive Antryg and people's reaction to him are still spot-on, though:

“Like you mean it’s from another dimension?”

“Oh.” Antryg sounded a little surprised that there’d been any doubt. “Yes.”

“And you know this how?”

“I’m from another universe myself,” said Antryg, a response that seldom failed to elicit precisely the expression that it was now eliciting from the disillusioned guard.

“And you’re here on Interlibrary Loan?”

The story is a must-have for Windrose completists, but mostly it's a tease that made me really want a new novel-length tale with these characters.

I have no idea how the publishing industry is going to shake itself out in the face of e-publishing and other developments, but I'm quite willing to support authors who are trying this kind of experiment in direct sales.  I think for an author with an established fanbase, this could be a very workable project: she got me to pay twice the cost of a paperback for fifty pages of reading, and it went down fairly easily for me because $5 is the level of purchase people can and will do on the spur of the moment.

If anyone else is a Hambly fan and would like to read a bit more of her work, the "Further Adventures" page of Hambly's website is here.

And for those who would like to read the novels before or after the short stories, here are links for one in each series.  The first two in the Windrose Chronicles seem to be out of print, but the third is probably the best of the three and is a workable starting point.

Benjamin January #1 (1830s New Orleans detective fiction):


Windrose Chronicles #3 (cross-universe fantasy, much deadpan humor; ignore the completely irrelevant cover illo):

Comments

[Serge]

Diane Duane did some e-publishing a few years ago. Some readers had long asked for more stories in a series of hers - about magical cats, if I remember correctly. She'd post one installment, shake her PayPal can, then another installment would go up. I'm not sure how well she did. Sharon Lee & Steve Miller did something similar a couple of years ago.

[AJ]

Hmmm.... I'm hesitant to shell out $5/each for such short stories... but I DO love Hambly's work.

If anybody wants the first two Windrose books, my local huge used bookstore usually has a lot of old Hambly paperbacks for 1/2 cover price. I'd be happy to keep my eye out for them.

[Marilee J. Layman]

Serge, that's The Big Meow, which she hasn't been able to work on for a while because of health and personal reasons. I went ahead and bought the whole book at the beginning, and I don't mind. I have almost all her books and I'm happy to give her a bonus even if she can't get this one out. The August 20th for the next chapter is 2008.

Lawrence Watt Evans has been using the Storyteller Bowl mode for some of his books that publishers aren't taking -- and then he uses the money to have the books printed and sent out.

[Susan de Guardiola]

Marilee,
Yeah, I bought Big Meow too. I wouldn't mind her being way behind if we were getting any communication about status. Ah, well. I still feel it's useful to invest in these little experiments in self-publishing.

[Mary Aileen]

I also Meowed. I'm happy with what we got so far, although resolution would be nice.