14 stories that continue the adventures of the Hambly universes and characters. Each story is for sale for $5, and is offered in multiple formats for ereaders (epub, pdf, mobi). Payment is via Paypal, stories are delivered electronically when payment is received (near-instantly). We have a cart interface to make buying multiple stories easier.
An enormous thanks to everyone who has made this venture a success! Keep reading!
Purchase stories | Read Excerpts | Barbara’s “This is an experiment” post
–If you’d like to read an excerpt of any of the stories before committing, please continue on down the page!–
Formats available: mobi (for Kindle users), epub (nook, Sony Reader, Apple), and pdf (print out and read!)
New! Jenny and John/Winterlands
15.3 K + words | 25 pages
New! Sun Wof and Starhawk
14.5 K words | 24 pages
Antryg and Joanna
Sun Wolf and Starhawk
Antryg and Joanna
Vampire/standalone
Jenny and John/Winterlands
Benjamin January
Darwath
Sun Wolf and Starhawk
Antryg and Joanna
Benjamin January
Benjamin January
Sisters of the Raven/Various
Finished?
A Time to Every Purpose Under Heaven
Rose Janvier was the first neighbor across Rue Esplanade that morning at the sound of Agathe Truande’s screams: this turned out to be an extremely unfortunate circumstance for a number of the people concerned.
It was early June and suffocatingly hot in New Orleans. Though by nature a scholar rather than a housewife, Rose had enough sense to begin her day’s chores as soon as it was light enough to see. As a result, she had the worst of them – ashes shoveled out of the kitchen hearth and the chamber-pot scoured with turpentine – finished by seven, and had just filled the tea-pot from the hearth-kettle and taken up the butter from the cold-jar buried in the coolest corner of the yard, when she heard the scream.
Princess
The dragon lifted, weightless, a death-kite on the bitter northland wind.
Its voice spoke in his mind, like bronze-hued glass shredding flesh.
You are he called Dragonsbane?
“I am and I twilkin’ well wish people would stop callin’ me that. And what about you? A great grown drake your age stealin’ sheep? What’s that about?”
The dragon settled. Long hinder feet, dangling like a wasp’s, touched ground first. Then the whole snaky length of him came to rest on the ridge, so that the wind that howled from the north picked up its heat as it passed over those gaudy scales, and breathed across John’s face like the blast from a furnace-mouth. Its slender deadly whip of a tail curled forward, and rather than look at the dragon’s eyes, John kept his gaze on the mass of black and white razors at its tip. His heart hammered so that it was hard to breathe.
I wish to hire your services, said the dragon.
John said, “What???”
Pretty Polly
Pretty Polly was crying.
Though ice-winds scoured the bare mountains that surrounded the fortress-keep of Dare, in most of the Keep it was warm. Only in the outer chambers of the black fortress’s mazes did the huddled remnant of humanity have to build fires to fend off the creeping cold, and here in the complex of chambers and subdivided chamber-lets, niches, and nooks allotted to the Guards, the problem was more often stuffiness and the reek of cooking-smoke.
Yet in her dream, Gil Patterson felt the cold.
Though it was dark in her dream, she could see the white cat, and it cut her heart to see how thin Pretty Polly was; to see the blood on her dirty fur. Polly would lick her bleeding paw, stop, and mew in that tiny kitten-voice, though she would – Gil calculated even asleep – be nearly twelve now…
Damn her! she wanted to scream, through tears of rage and distress, God damn her for throwing Polly out…!
A Night With the Girls
“What’s the problem?” Starhawk of Wrynde swung down from her horse in front of Butchers infirmary tent. Though she hadn’t been in a mercenary camp in almost two years, she had a soul-deep sense of familiarity about the place, like the outhouse behind a familiar tavern: Are we back here again? Only the outhouse would have been quieter. Past the walls of Horran, the sun dipped toward the Inner Sea, red behind the squat black towers of siege engines. In front of tents the mercs sharpened swords and polished armor, repaired straps, chatted up the camp whores, or diced. Cook-fire smoke gritted in the eyes, profanity in the ears.
Be it ever so humble…
Butcher craned to look past Starhawk’s shoulder. “Where’s the Wolf?”
“And I’m so glad to see you, too,” replied Starhawk.
The troop physician laughed, embarrassed. “I’m sorry.” She made a show of checking her breeches pockets and the leathern purse at her belt. “I must have left my manners in my other clothes. I’m damn glad to see you, Hawk, but I meant it in my letter when I said we needed Sun Wolf here.”
Firemaggot
“Is that it?” The dry autumn moon was halfway to full; Joanna Sheraton could just make out a sprawl of buildings below the hillside where she stood. The plans in the Ventura County Assessor’s office indicated a complex of stables, garages, outdoor and indoor tennis courts, a disused generator-house and what had once been a formal garden.
Not a light shone. She wondered what it would look like by day.
Moonlight flashed across her companion’s round spectacle-lense, touched the long beak of his nose as he moved his head. “I can’t imagine there’d be two of them.”
“Are you kidding? There’s hundreds of these ‘ranches’ between here and Pismo Beach. It’s where rich people come so they can see for miles if someone’s coming after them.”
He said, “Hmmn.”
Libre
“If they fear she has been kidnapped, why not call the City Guard?” Benjamin January paused on the steps that led up to the gallery of the garçonnière, looking down at his mother in the narrow yard. He’d just returned from teaching his first piano-class of the winter – new students, Americans, in the suburb of St. Mary up-river – and had been hoping to get a few hours’ nap before he had to dress up again and play for a subscription ball over on Rue Orleans. There was a saying among the musicians of New Orleans, You can sleep during Lent.
There Shall Your Heart Be Also
“Kentucky Williams owns a Bible?” Benjamin January cast a doubtful glance cattycorner across the trampled muck of the Broadhorn Saloon’s yard to the shabby building’s open back door. The Broadhorn was a substantial building for this part of New Orleans, a neighborhood known quite accurately as The Swamp. Constructed of the lumber from dismantled flatboats, it stood a story and a half tall and boasted not only porches but a privy, though the four whores who worked out of it did so in a line of sheds that straggled away into the trees of the true swamp – the ciprière — beyond. Under the brilliant winter sunlight the bullet-pocked planks and unspeakably-puddled weeds looked every bit as grimy and rough-hewn as the establishment’s proprietress, who a few moments before had bellowed out the back door for January to come in: she needed his services.
Quest for Glory
FADE IN on Characters’ Locker Room #70-2418-ML. It’s a large gray concrete room with banks of dark-green lockers and wooden benches; there’s an open area in front furnished with a couple of round pink or gray melmac tables, some plastic chairs, and vending machines for coffee and snacks. On the tables are rumpled stacks of trade periodicals for Characters: Hero & Heroine, Plot Thickener, Archetype and Booked! A Handsome Golden-Haired Hero is sitting at the table reading Archetype, moving his strongly-chiseled lips slightly as he reads. A Noble Sword of High Lineage is propped at his side. A Handsome Vagabond is getting really bad coffee from one of the vending machines. At another table a Western Sheriff, a white-haired vampire, a black Hero-King, and an Unpreposessing Female Wizard are playing pinochle.
ENTER Handsome Dark-Haired Hero through the door from the hallway, looking around him uncertainly.
Handsome Dark-Haired Hero – Is this the place for the Hambly interview?
Sunrise on Running Water
The damn ship was supposed to be unsinkable.
Do you think I’d have set foot on the wretched tub if it weren’t?
I embarked at Cherbourg for a number of reasons, chief among them being that the Titanic entered port from Southampton at sunset, and loaded in the dusk. I’ve never liked the thought of shipping myself in my coffin like a parcel, with the attendant risks of inquisitive customs-inspectors, moronic baggage-handlers, and all the tedious beforehand wrangling with a living accomplice who might or might not take the trouble to make sure one’s coffin (or trunk – most of us prefer extra-large double trunks for travel) hasn’t been installed in the hold lid-down under several thousand pounds of some imbecilic American dowager’s frocks. Half the time one has to kill the accomplice anyway. Usually it’s a pleasure.
Corridor
“What is that?” Antryg Windrose, exiled Archmage of the High Council of Wizards, slid out of the car and walked to the top of the concrete embankment, graying curls ruffled by a stirring of smoggy wind. “Where is this place?”
Joanna Sheraton levered the Mustang into Park and pulled the hand-brake. “It’s the railroad tracks.” She locked the door, slammed it, and hastened her steps to reach his side. An angular six feet three, Antryg could outdistance her even when he moseyed. “Union Station is about a mile north of here—“ Invisible behind the dirty maze of rusted boxcars parked on weed-grown sidings, the hill-high piles of spare railroad ties and old car-tires. She’d explained to him about railroads, which he’d said his own world – parallel to hers, somewhere in the darkness of the Void – was just beginning to develop. “And that’s the river down there. This is not a good part of town.”
“It’s not a good part of the world.” His round spectacle-lenses flashed in the gray November light as he turned his head, brows drawn together as if striving to catch some sound below the thin whine of the wind as it keened along the vast gray ditch of the Los Angeles River.
Plus-One
“I wonder if magic could be used to affect slot-machines?” said Antryg. “It doesn’t work in this universe, of course, but theoretically, magic affects random events at a molecular level. Now that the tournament is over, might we stay an extra day and—
“Antryg,” said Joanna patiently, “one of two things would happen. You’d lose a hundred dollars worth of nickels learning that finite quantities of magic do not exist in this universe – something we both know already – and I wouldn’t get the programming done for Wondersystems’ billing department by Thursday, or you’d establish that finite quantities of magic do exist in this universe and get both your kneecaps broken by the crime syndicate that runs this hotel.”
“Could I purchase a slot-machine and take it home to experiment on?”
(all stories are copyright Barbara Hambly)
Barbara’s original Further Adventures introduction
…Barbara originally wrote an introduction to Further Adventures back when the venture began. At this point, the text is a little dated (although not less meant), and I decided to move this down the page a bit. If you’re just joining in, this post described the original four stories, including the first appearance of Antryg and Joanna in a very long time…
This is an experiment. As pretty much everybody knows, fantasy serieses get dumped by publishers – and as pretty much every author knows, other publishers generally do not fall over themselves to pick up these abandoned serieses.
That doesn’t mean the author doesn’t want to write about those people anymore, or that fans of the series are not longer interested.
These people are very real to me. I like them.
I also like being able to pay my medical insurance.
Thus – at the urging of those who’ve loved my old Del Rey fantasy serieses – I will continue to write original short stories about the people and places in those serieses: Antryg and Joanna, Sun Wolf and Starhawk, the gang at the Keep of Dare, John and Jenny, the Sisters of the Raven… anyone whom I’ve written about in previous books.
As I said, this is an experiment. I don’t need to make a lot of money out of this, but I do need to make some in order to be able to go on writing at all. Thus, I’m charging $5 per story, paid through PayPal. I hope to be able to continue writing a story every few months, in between longer projects. (Actually, another publisher DID pick up the Benjamin January series AND the Asher-and-Ysidro vampire books, so who knew?)
Three of these first four stories have appeared elsewhere already. “There Shall Your Heart Be Also” and “Libre” are both Benjamin January stories, the former having first appeared in Julie Smith’s 2007 anthology New Orleans Noir, from Akashic Books, and “Libre” seeing print in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine’s 2007 New Orleans issue. The first concerns the very strange case of who would want to steal the Bible of the most notorious female saloon-keeper in the Swamp at the back of town (and what she’s doing with a Bible anyway?); the second, the disappearance of Zozo Rochier, the daughter of one of the demimondaine friends of Benjamin’s horrible mother.
“Quest For Glory” was written for the program-book of a convention – perhaps a NASFIC? – at which I was Guest of Honor, though I no longer recall where. It’s a sort of pastiche about the casting-call for characters in my next fantasy novel (which at that time was Sisters of the Raven), and includes – besides people you later meet in Sisters – James Asher, Don Simon Ysidro, and Ben January. It is both short and silly.
“Firemaggot” is my first new and original for this section of the site. Dead rock ‘n’ roll stars, deserted palatial ranchos in Ventura County, Los Angeles in the mid-80s, and strange tiny monster-spawn that Joanna Sheraton’s cat drags home to the house she and Antryg Windrose have just bought in Tarzana… Antryg has to be doing something while he’s hiding out in LA.
All these stories are copyrighted.
I hope you enjoy them.
If you want to pay more than $5, or donate money, I would love that, too. There’s a Donate button all for you!
Many, many thanks, my friends! I hope this all works!
And I very much hope, more to come.
Barbara
I am interested in buying some of the further adventures but given some of the above comments would like to know roughly the length of each story first. Could these be added to the titles? I have all of the magic stories that were published but don’t really want to spend $5 for only a few pages of short story.
I really like Hambly’s work, but $5 per short story is pretty expensive, particularly when there is no discount for multiple purchases. I’d like to read all 14 stories listed, but that would cost me $70, which is more than the cost of two hardcover anthologies.
So excited to see these Sun Wolf and Starhawk stories–I’ve loved those folks for years and have always wanted more. I don’t mind $5! No way! Being in publishing and knowing something about what it takes to create a good story, I think $5 is *very* reasonable.
I’m reading Darwath for the first time, and might be back!
Thanks for writing these, and may there be more.
I would gently suggest that $2.99 per story is a reasonable rate, and selling them through the Amazon store would likely result in more readers.
That said, I did purchase five of them tonight–but I’m a bit of a hardcore fan, and I hate to think of these sequellettes being so difficult for casual readers to find.
Thanks for continuing to write these. Just finished the Windrose and Darwath trilogies and was glad to find out there was more to read!
I am so glad to see these stories. I love them, especially the Windrose ans Darwath universes. Thanks Barbara!
Great to see you writing in these worlds again! I have always loved your fantasy books, and have never quite given up on the hope of walking by a bookstore one day and seeing the first book of the Darwath prequel-trilogy :) You dropped many hints in the Darwath trilogy as to “how it all began”, but I would love to read the rest of the story of the “greatest wizard the Western world has ever known” :)
I am also curious as to whether you have considered Kickstarter or other artist-crowdfunding sites for continuing your work. They are specifically so people can support the work of artists, and you already being so successful means you have an established base of support. I’d certainly have contributed to a campaign for any of the FA stories that I’m currently buying on Amazon :)
Thank you for letting us share the stories of these characters again!
David
I’m interested in downloading the short stories, but not sure which of the formats to click on. I have a kindle and also have the kindle app on my PC for “cloud reading” –can anyone tell me if I should be ordering pdf, Mobi, or e-pub?
Thanks for the Benjamin January fix! (bought 3 stories) All very good, (and a bargain honestly, a writer is entitled to fair compensation for work) but “A Time to Every Purpose” feels like it wants to be a novel…hmmm, what about it, Barbara?
I paid $5 for THAT? I loved Barbara Hambly’s books, but Quest for Glory was a joke. In more ways than one. Tongue-in-cheek, but it took less than five minutes to read, and for five dollars?
I really feel ripped off. We’ll see if the rest of the short books I bought are the same.
You need a program called Calibre. It’s free. It comes in Windows, Mac, and Linux flavors. It can do all sorts of conversions, and more important in your case, it can load things on your iPad for you. It will also keep your ebook library organized, which is a Very Good Thing. You can pick it up over at MobileRead.
I am in the process of re-buying all of Barbara’s books on Kindle for Ipad. I’m certainly GLAD to drop $5 for each of these stories. I would like to read them on my Ipad, but I’m not sure how to transfer them. Maybe I just need to puchase them while using the Ipad?
-Clint
Hi, Clint! You transfer them through itunes. When you have your device hooked up, click on your device icon in the itunes left column. When you click, find a menu there called apps, in the horizontal menu on the top. In the Apps menu, scroll down find a section called file sharing. Kindle is one app that allows file sharing in various formats on the ipad. PDFreader is another… I don’t know what you have installed on your ipad, but try transferring them through the Kindle app, it works fine for me.