Okay, guys, I have to say this was a great deal of fun for me. Some of the story suggestions were perfectly wonderful, things I wouldn’t have thought of myself but which were terribly obvious as soon as they were suggested. Obviously not everybody can win the anthology, but *many* of these ideas will, I think, end up as stories. Thank you all! Hee hee hee!
There are exceedingly moderate spoilers behind the cut, but I’ll put ’em behind the cut because they’re spoilers at all.
There were no fewer than five requests/suggestions for a story about Grace. Sadly for all the people who proposed that, you did not win, because I already plan to write a story about Grace someday (I realize you couldn’t possibly have known that, but it’s on my list of things to do). So on the one hand, you didn’t win. On the other, you’ll get your story, eventually. It’ll be at least novella-length, it will be called KISS OF ANGELS, and that’s all I can tell you now. :)
Chelsea got two requests (though somehow it seemed like more). I’m afraid Chelsea’s story will not be told. Chelsea feels it’s none of your business. (My *agent* doesn’t know Chelsea’s story, and I got a whole series of emails from her where she tried to guess it. It drives her nuts. :))
There were also requests for:
– more about Daisani’s secretary Vanessa,
– more about Sarah Hopkins (there’s a part of me that wants to go back and write that whole story, which would be called LONDON BURNING, but I donno, so much of it got told, or at least all the highlights, within the Negotiator trilogy that I’m not sure it’s worth doing…)
– the story of “the first time Malik lost” (I really, *really* liked that idea, I don’t know why I never thought of telling it!)
– the early days of Daisani and Rebecca’s (Margrit’s mother) relationship
– the world before humans arose and the Old Races were still battling it out for who might be in charge (that’d be book-length, I think, & I rather adore the idea)
– the Biali/Alban/Hajnal love triangle
– anything from Janx & Daisani’s past/future (apparently you guys like them as much as I do :))
– more about the selkies in the centuries they were gone
But the winner is
For some reason this idea really caught me. Possibly because I like the priest in the Negotiator trilogy so much, but somehow there’s just a real romanticism to that idea for me. I actually feel like I could build a book around the idea of a priest dealing with the Old Races, though I’m already terribly torn on *when* I would set that story. Or whether it would have to be a longer story, a series of its own, just trying to deal with the religious and spiritual connotations of the Old Races’ existence, from a Western theology’s point of view. I’m just, yeah. Utterly enamored of this idea. So, Blythe, if you will email your snail mail address to cemurphyauthor@gmail.com, I will get that ARC in the mail for you!