“Her friends used to make fun of her for even thinking she could smell power, but she could, and she smelled it on him.”
– from “The Monk’s Knife,” a Cake & Pewter story
My new cozy fantasy serial is here! “The Monk’s Knife” will publish in two parts on Substack starting today. It will include my own voice-over narration of the story. If you enjoyed Cake & Pewter: A Cozy Fantasy Novelette, then this prequel short story is for you.
I’ll admit that I didn’t set out to write this Cake & Pewter series. I actually wrote the manuscript of a cozy fantasy novel first, falling a little in love with the characters. I often do that when I spend enough time with a story. But then I took my time exploring various options for finding a home with the novel among traditional publishers. It wasn’t finding a place to land. In the meantime, I had all these characters whose stories I wanted to continue writing. What was a writer to do?
Write shorter fiction, apparently. At least, that’s what I did, writing some short stories and novelettes using those characters. As that shorter fiction found publication opportunities, I took them. That’s why “The Monk’s Knife,” which I wrote before Cake & Pewter, appeared as a prequel short story only after Cake & Pewter was published. And, that’s why both of these Cake & Pewter stories are appearing well before any full-length cozy fantasy novel, which I wrote first. I take the publication opportunities as they come.
I’m not sure what kind of “learning” in a writer’s life this will turn out to have been. Maybe it’s practice in patience, turning my mind to constructive next projects while I wait to see how an earlier project fairs in the world? Or maybe this is practice with impatience, finding ways to let my imagination run in the directions it wants to run regardless of any proper order of things? (I really like that last idea, actually.)
All in all, it’s been a good experience. And no worries about that cozy fantasy novel that spurred the Cake & Pewter world in the first place–I’ll get it out there one way or another!
So, head on over to Substack to read the cozy fantasy story “The Monk’s Knife” and/or listen to my audio narration of it (did I mention that I’ve gotten a new microphone?!) Hope you enjoy!
Callie J. Smith 