On the Perversity of the Muse

From a newsgroup post dated March 25, 2009:

I have lots of stuff in progress, and a shortage of time, so of course last night, was I working out plot details of Realms of Light, or perhaps considering finishing touches for Above His Proper Station?

Of course not. I was trying to remember all the details of “Tales of Sha’ar,” a collection of eight stories/vignettes I wrote in 1974, and wondering whether I could maybe actually turn some of them into publishable stories, now that I have thirty-five years more experience and know what I’m doing.

I’m pretty sure I still have the manuscript around here somewhere. Obviously not on disk, though.

I’ve tried to salvage these before, incidentally — they were incorporated into my abortive first attempt at a novel, Shadowdark, back in the ’70s. Didn’t work there, either.

Let’s see how many of the eight stories I can remember now…

“The Mansion of Lord Fire” — I remember the title and some of the descriptive passages, but not the plot — assuming it had one.

“How the Party Ended At Goldsand” I remember pretty well. I tried to recycle the central conceit in a different story in the 1980s, but never finished it.

“How Dal Fought the Death in the Palace of the Mute” is an absolutely dreadful title, but hey, I was nineteen. I remember most of that one.

Coming up blank on the other five. I think I had a couple more last night.

2 thoughts on “On the Perversity of the Muse

  1. >> “How Dal Fought the Death in the Palace of the Mute” is an absolutely dreadful title, but hey, I was nineteen. I remember most of that one.>>

    I kinda like it.

    I’d be tempted either to drop the “the” in front of Death, or add an adjective — “How Dal Fought the Three-Fold Death in the Palace of the Mute” or something — but it’s a very Dunsany title, and I like the voice of it.

    1. I will not deny Dunsany’s influence; the Tales of Sha’ar were a weird hybrid of Dunsany and Niven.

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