Category: Tyche’s Crown

The Power of Names

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Ever since I read Le Guin’s amazing A Wizard of Earthsea, I’ve been captivated by the idea of names having a kind of power. (Side note: if you haven’t read the Earthsea books, you’re missing out. I don’t use ‘amazing’ lightly; this is a series I re-read often. The writing is brilliant, the characters captivating, the stories both beautiful and poignant). Hobb has her own take on this with her Liveship books (also excellent). Same but different, you know? Worth your time (and I needed to look up ‘Fitz’ when I started on these books). Me, I’m pretty much a hack compared to those two. But I still want the names of my characters to have meaning. In my Tyche books, I named the crew with a purpose. Some of the characters were renamed from their originals (did you know, Hope used Read More …

Shore Leave

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Not everything in Tyche’s Journey is about death insects. Sometimes there’s a little R&R; time on a crust to unwind. When you’re the best goddamn Helm in the universe, shore leave needs to be a little more … special. This week’s #RichardWrites nets us a scene from Tyche’s Crown. Enjoy! When El woke, it was with a man’s warm arms around her. Warm, strong arms. Connected to a chest that, even in sleep, looked purpose-built. The smell of sweat and sex and after alcohol was around her, holding her tighter than his embrace. What the fuck was his name again? Johnson. Davison. Mendleson. Something-son. She was sure of it. El gave a lazy blink, taking in the room. Nice enough as far as these things went. Rented by the night rather than by the hour. Not attached to a bar — Read More …

When you’re out of options

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I try and put my people into tricky situations. Not just the guns-and-lasers-and-swords situations, because that kind of goes without saying. No, the type where they’ve got to make a choice where the first path is shit, and the second path is also shit. I especially like it when the actors do it to each other. Here’s a piece of Tyche’s Crown, the third of the Tyche’s Journey trilogy. The story so far is that … spoilers, so I’ll just say that Kohl is not having a great time, and Nate and Grace need to rescue a couple of their friends from the clutches of evil scientists. Oh, it’ll be fun. “Hey,” said Nate, then, “Hey.” He moved across the ready room to grab her, and Grace slumped into his arms. “Grace? Are you okay? Grace?” “I’m … fine,” said Grace. “You Read More …