My short story Royal Steel went up today at Swords and Sorcery Magazine.
This is a story with a long history. I originally wrote it back in 2002 for the first Sword and Sorceress volume published after Marion Zimmer Bradley's death. It get held a long time and I actually thought I had a chance (especially after I had a story held right down to the final cut for the last three volumes, which were published out of her "hold" pile at the time of her death in 1999). However, at the very last minute it came back with a "liked it but couldn't find a place for it" response.
After that, it bounced around from one market to another for several years. I went through some rough times in which I pretty much quit marketing stuff because I barely had seconds to jot down story ideas because I was so busy in frantic efforts to make money to pay the ever-mounting pile of bills. So when that situation finally eased up, I decided to put it through a major revision -- but by that point so many markets had already seen it that I didn't have many places left to send it. So it's really great to have it finally see print, right as I was ready to give up on it.
