[Blackbird 02] • A Blackbird in Darkness

Epic fantasy.

Don't you love it? The brooding anti-hero, the gentle

race forced to fight for survival, the woman of mystery. Warriors, sorcerers,

demons, weird dimensions. Horses and swords! The perfect, ultimate, impossible

Quest.

It's hard to believe that it's almost exactly thirty years since,

as a schoolgirl, I sat down and wrote the first lines of A Blackbird in Silver.

It wasn't the first novel I'd started by any means, but it was the first one I

actually managed to finish. That was because the image that first inspired me

was the climax of the story. I kept going because I was always working towards

that goal.

I loved Joy Chant, Michael Moorcock, Tanith Lee, and most of

Tolkien - especially the portentous bits, the more high-flown and elvish the

better! I was and still am severely allergic to dwarves, trolls, stable-boy

kings and tweeness in general. I wanted to write something dark, something that

really mattered - at least to me.

A Blackbird in Silver and A Blackbird

in Darkness form a 'duet' that tells one story. The novel became a two-parter

due to my publisher. They suggested making it a trilogy but I didn't want to

write a middle volume of 'padding' so it became a duo, and both books should be

read as one. The idea sprang from asking myself, 'What is the hardest thing you

could possibly be required to do?' Clue: it's not killing the Serpent. (You'll

just have to read it!) And the Serpent M'gulfn? Growing up against the

background of the Cold War, with the imminent threat of nuclear annihilation

from bombs or unstable reactors, the image of lands laid waste and the

soulessness of it and the impossibility of stopping it... all that fermenting in

the murky depths of my young subconscious... that's where my Serpent came

from.

When I first began, my Blackbird world had a peculiar, intensely

weird and brooding atmosphere that I still feel when I return to it. When I came

to re-edit this Immanion press edition, I did so with a light touch. My style

has changed so much that I could have ended up completely rewriting it and then

it wouldn't have been the same book. Little has been altered - except that

Arlenmia's poor put-upon maid now has a name! So, with some considered pruning,

it keeps its original flavour and a certain na