"Wicked Youth" sighted in F&SF
Mar. 8th, 2009 09:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellenkushnerA gold doubloon to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cerulean_sky, the first to sight the April/May edition of Fantasy & Science Fiction at her local newstand! I've actually had my copy for several weeks, but was waiting 'til I knew it had gone out to the general public before announcing that
MY NEW "RIVERSIDE" STORY IS NOW OUT!
It's called "'A Wild and a Wicked Youth'" and the double-quotes are because it's a line from a song*. I sent F&SF editor Gordon Van Gelder my background notes, and to my delight he printed them intact as the intro to the story in the magazine. Here they are for you now:
This story came to me in a flash in the darkness of a Waterson/Carthy concert last year, when the English folk artists let fly with their awesome rendition of the traditional outlaw ballad, "Newry Town" (also known as "The Newry Highwayman"): A young man, clearly a nice boy, "turns out to be a roving blade" and comes to a bad end while his mother cries, and everyone agrees, "There goes a wild and a wicked youth."
While the song's plotline does not really match my story's, it got me on the right path. I'd been wanting for a long time to write about the early life of Richard St. Vier, the gifted swordsman in my first novel, Swordspoint: a Melodrama of Manners. I've always known who Richard's mother was, and how he learned to fight; but it occurred to me that nobody else did, and it was time to get it down on paper.
(*The song is recorded on Waterson/Carthy's album "Fishes & Fine Yellow Sand." Here are the complete lyrics, plus notes.)
Here's my original post about the story, including links to my "process" notes for writing it, and the story's opening lines.
Here are reviews of the issue & the stories therein. The third one has a quote from my story. I have to say it was just a piece of connective material, to move from one scene to the next - but it always pays to make them more poetical.
cerulean_sky, the first to sight the April/May edition of Fantasy & Science Fiction at her local newstand! I've actually had my copy for several weeks, but was waiting 'til I knew it had gone out to the general public before announcing thatMY NEW "RIVERSIDE" STORY IS NOW OUT!
It's called "'A Wild and a Wicked Youth'" and the double-quotes are because it's a line from a song*. I sent F&SF editor Gordon Van Gelder my background notes, and to my delight he printed them intact as the intro to the story in the magazine. Here they are for you now:
This story came to me in a flash in the darkness of a Waterson/Carthy concert last year, when the English folk artists let fly with their awesome rendition of the traditional outlaw ballad, "Newry Town" (also known as "The Newry Highwayman"): A young man, clearly a nice boy, "turns out to be a roving blade" and comes to a bad end while his mother cries, and everyone agrees, "There goes a wild and a wicked youth."
While the song's plotline does not really match my story's, it got me on the right path. I'd been wanting for a long time to write about the early life of Richard St. Vier, the gifted swordsman in my first novel, Swordspoint: a Melodrama of Manners. I've always known who Richard's mother was, and how he learned to fight; but it occurred to me that nobody else did, and it was time to get it down on paper.
(*The song is recorded on Waterson/Carthy's album "Fishes & Fine Yellow Sand." Here are the complete lyrics, plus notes.)
Here's my original post about the story, including links to my "process" notes for writing it, and the story's opening lines.
Here are reviews of the issue & the stories therein. The third one has a quote from my story. I have to say it was just a piece of connective material, to move from one scene to the next - but it always pays to make them more poetical.