Actually, it looks like we're on again, only now it will be Fiction Fridays! Which, you must agree, is alliterative. So it has that going for it.
To recap: I recently uncovered a book I wrote a number of years ago. Never mind how many. I can't count that high. But it was soon after I graduated college. I had been working for years on a serious satire (yeah, I know) about Society and Beliefs and Stuff, Man, and not surprisingly that book was gliding along like a zeppelin full of bricks. I hope I burned all the pages, although burning is too good for it.
What I did next was a great relief. I'd always been a fan of fantasy and science fiction, and when I wasn't wrestling with ponderous mega series like Dune or Lord of the Rings, I would cool off with light comedy. I read a lot of Piers Anthony, Robert Aspirin, Ron Goulart, Robert Sheckley, Terry Brooks (Landover series), Anderson and Dickson's Hoka books, and guys like Barry Longyear (Circus World), Marvin Kaye (The Incredible Umbrella), and even George MacDonald Fraser (The Pyrates, a lot more straight-up laughs than his other historical fiction). So when I had to stop thinking seriously for a while, Bob the Mage was the result.
I wrote three or so drafts and got it polished up to where I thought someone like Tor (which had a sense of humor back then) or DAW might be willing to run it as a paperback original. But I never got a foot in the door. Back in those days it was still thought, as had been prescribed for decades, that your best bet was to publish short fiction in genre magazines before making the leap to novels. However, the number of genre magazines had dwindled from dozens in the 1930s to about the number of fingers on Captain Hook. So I never had any luck there, either.
And it wasn't like Bob was great literature. It was written to be a funny adventure, and I think that it is. Desperately in need of editing, though, which was unable to do then but am able to do now (you're welcome, younger Fred). I think the story holds up and many of the jokes are pretty sound, so I'm going through it and bringing it up to modern Fred standards.
What's it about? About 200 pages. (Ba dum dum.) See? Humor!
The story is about a loser wizard, the eponymous Bob, who runs into trouble with the law, gets drafted into the magical corps, then mixed up with buccaneers, runs afoul of a mighty sorcerer, falls in love, and spends a lot of time running from people who want to kill him. Your basic picaresque fantasy adventure, told by our plucky hero.
I hope you'll stop by tomorrow for Chapter 1. It made me laugh out loud, and I hope it will do the same for you.
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