In the first volume of this series I covered the origin of the idea of Ka Sirtago and Poet. That was twenty years ago.
This volume has been released in the year 2025. It was 2005 when I wrote the first Sirtago and Poet story. I have been writing these stories for twenty years.
During all that time the characters have developed and changed. They have grown older and, in some ways, more cantankerous (as have I, unsurprisingly) but in some ways they are still the same characters that I wrote about all those years ago.
There is, however, one significant change the stories have undergone and that is the elephant in the room that I need to address.
The first half dozen stories were written in the third person, ostensibly from Poet’s point of view. These early stories were shorter, the longest of which, Pieces in a Game, was around 12,000 words long.
The more recent stories are longer. They are all closer to 30,000 words and (and this is the important bit) they are told in the first person, exclusively from Poet’s point of view.
I have absolutely no idea why I decided to change that. After a span of about ten years, since Pieces in a Game was published in the anthology SWORDS OF FIRE, I had not written any Sirtago and Poet stories. Ideas for tales would occasionally roll around the old bean, but I did not actually sit down to write one until 2021 when I wrote Frozen Doom, the tale that ends the first volume in this series, BLADES AND ALCHEMY. That story was written in the third person.
I started writing the story that would become Through Dungeons Deep shortly after. I began writing it in the first person. I don’t really know why I chose to do that, but it just seemed to work. Having the stories told in the first person seemed to be more direct and more intimate. I also started hearing Poet’s voice all the more clearly in my head, much more so than when I was writing the earlier tales.
This direct connection to Poet seemed to galvanize the stories. It gave me a greater insight into the characters and it also helped to sustain the tales as they grew in length. The Sirtago and Poet tales that followed Through Dungeons Deep were all easily twice as long as the earlier stories and, consequently, they became far richer.
As I said, I do not know why I chose to do it that way but I am happy that I did and, for the foreseeable future, any and all Sirtago and Poet stories will be told in the first person from Poet’s point of view.
I imagine Poet scrawling down these tales, reminiscences of a life unjustly lived, perhaps. In that way I was inspired by the FLASHMAN novels of George MacDonald Fraser. In those historical adventures Fraser had an unapologetic Harry Flashman near the end of his life, writing his memoirs full of the unvarnished truth of his escapades, rather different and far more scandalous than his official CV.
When I write a Sirtago and Poet story now I imagine the same fate for the author. Near the end of his life, somewhat well established (perhaps) penning his adventures in exactly the way they happened. An old man’s fading memory notwithstanding, these are, I imagine, as close to the truth as we will get as far as these two characters are concerned.
Truth is a subjective term, of course, considering the fantastical nature of these tales.
Will there be more? Of course there will. There is a third volume in the works with one story already completed which will be accompanied by at least one if not two more tales.
It it my sincere hope that I will be able to write Sirtago and Poet tales for the next twenty years, at least.
Though, at this point, I have no plans to reveal Poet’s real name. I imagine at this point even Poet cannot remember his actual name. It will remain an enigma for a long while to come.
This volume is available as an e-book, paperback and Virtual Voice Audio wherever e-books and print books (Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, Smashwords, etc.) can be found on the ole’ World Wide Web!
Sword & Sorcery from RAGE machine Books
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