Introduction
This book is the first in the series, but it was not the first novel I wrote, either in the series, or in my career. The first novel I wrote was well-intentioned, earnest, old-fashioned, and not very good. It had good moments, good scenes, but it was not a good book. It was set aside, and had not been touched in some time when my friend Kai Meyer wrote and asked me if I’d be interested in writing a book for a series he was conceiving and editing.
I thought that sounded like a swell idea, so he sent me three pages of notes for a series to be called MythWorld (or Mythenwelt in Germany), and there was one paragraph about the book he thought I could write, which would be second or third in the series.
The subject matter—Urban Fantasy with an Historical twist—was something I had a knack for, having several years of the graphic novel series StarChild under my belt. So, I jumped in with both feet and wrote the second book in the series, without having any idea whatsoever what would be in the first.
At that point, having read and liked the book, Kai and his publisher mentioned that the other writers hadn’t done any work on their books at all—something I was anticipating—and so I bought a case of Dr. Pepper, locked myself in my Studio for a week, and emerged with twenty pages of notes for the rest of the books. And at that point, MythWorld became more my project than Kai’s, and he graciously allowed me to have my head with it, and stepped back, acting more as a consulting editor than anything else. He and the publisher also allowed me to keep the trademark—so in Germany, the first four books were published—to decent sales and, in the case of Book One, significant acclaim—as Kai Meyers Mythenwelt, but in France, where I sold the rights to my StarChild publisher, it was simply MythWorld.
There were plans for two series of seven books each, plus a concluding fifteenth novel, but some problems with the original publisher resulted in only five being written and four released —until now.
This new edition, published by WordFire Press, signals the rebirth of my second greatest creative project (nestled comfortably between StarChild and the Imaginarium Geographica books) and we won’t be stopping until I’ve told all the stories I planned to tell. There are echoes—and more than a few direct ties—to my other works, and my readership has grown accustomed to my narrative style, so I hope that the stories within are to your liking. There are a lot more on the way!
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