FOREWORD
Before We Begin, I Would Like to Say a Few Words
I learned how to read before I started kindergarten. I was an avid reader, devouring entire libraries’ worth of books. Unfortunately, since I read quickly, as soon as I found something I loved, I would have read all that was available.
Eventually I realized that if I wanted an unending supply, I was going to have to make it up myself. So I did.
The problem with being a writer is it’s a skill that doesn’t turn off easily once you have it ramped up to novel-a-year speed. It kind of goes into overdrive and every chance it gets, it spits out more ideas than you can possibly use. How did these established characters first meet? How did that person get his name? What was it like building a railroad through virgin forest filled with monsters? What if your brother was half-elf? What would a garden DIY show be like on a world with man-eating plants?
I write down all story ideas because a year goes by faster than I ever thought possible. At the end of the year, the next novel has to be queued up. At some point, I decided to make the ideas that didn’t fit into novels into short stories. Some of the short stories grew into novellas. Some ideas, however, stayed less than short stories.
Meanwhile I started to read fiction online. Okay, to be totally truthful, I started to read fan fiction online. There were a handful of worlds and characters where I once again devoured everything the author wrote. Other fans, however, had stepped forward to explore all the possible angles. I loved the explorations into lives of characters who didn’t have a point of view in the original story. I liked it when the fans took the plot in different directions just to see what it might have been like. And most of all, I was envious of the idea of dribbles and drabbles and such, where a moment is explored and yet not expanded. They were little snapshots of fiction—dependent on the knowledge of the original work—and yet always so vividly drawn.
I wanted to be able to use that freedom to weave something that wasn’t a novel, but something more than just a collection. With drabbles and short stories and novellas, I wanted to make a mosaic of the world of Elfhome. I titled it Project Elfhome and started to collect bits and pieces.
What you hold in your hands is the end result. This is a collection of novellas, short stories, and drabbles that join together to make a cohesive picture of four worlds colliding in one space. The City of Pittsburgh on Elfhome.