08/30/2025
I’m pleased to say that Tuesday, September 2 will see the release of Swords & Larceny, an excellent anthology of sword & sorcery stories with a unique focus on thievery and heists. I’m proud to have a story included in this noble effort.
Swords & Larceny is from Baen Books and edited by David Afsharirad and Mark Finn. The authors are a diverse and talented lot and among them are a number of friends and acquaintances.
Other authors on board include Robert E. Howard scholar Mark Finn, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly editor Adrian Simmons, Conan comics scribe Jim Zub and ace fantasist James Enge, who I believe I’ve shared more TOCs with than any other author.
My tale, The Darkflame Deception, is one of my stories about the Archivist and his friend Lucella. These characters first appeared almost 25 years ago in Howard Andrew Jones’ prescient e-zine, Flashing Swords. They also feature in a novel I recently finished and need to shop around. The Darkflame Deception is a bit of an outlier in Swords and Larceny as the protagonists aren’t working the heist but trying to understand and solve an elaborate but seemingly nonsensical theft. It was great fun to write, and I hope some of you take the time to read it and let me know what you think.
All the best to all of you,
JCH
