Unknown Adventures In Reprints

Apparently I've been hanging out with Alan Dean Foster, Lisa Smedman, Kevin J. Anderson, and, as it says in tiny type on the cover, "many more."

Over the years, I've written multiple short stories and, every now and then, one gets reprinted without my notice.* A prequel story to City of the Dead originally appeared on Wizard of the Coast's website. Called "Dreaming of Waterdeep," it tells how Gustin Bone acquired his guidebook to Waterdeep.  Gustin always has been one of my favorite characters. His story slipped away during a redesign of the WOTC website (along with "Exploding Pigs," another short adventure), one of the drawbacks of publishing only online.

So I was tickled to discover that the story now can be found in the Untold Adventures volume shown here. Having finally got my hands on a print copy, I had an enjoyable Saturday reading the other adventures by now very well-known authors. It's amazing how many folks dropped into the shared-world genre at some point in their careers. I'm also very happy to see that SFWA is starting to accept "game-related" writing as qualification of pro status.

*The publisher uses numeric codes, not titles, for books on royalty statements and for years I stared at the string of numbers and thought the notation was for a different story in a different anthology. This year the format of the statement changed and included titles, hence my discovery of a previously truly unknown adventure.